Nigel Teles­ford

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Amer­i­can rap­per Jef­frey “Ja Rule” Atkins briefly stirred and flirt­ed with con­tro­ver­sy dur­ing Sat­ur­day night’s R&B Brunch con­cert at the Queen’s Park Oval, Port-of-Spain, af­ter us­ing sev­er­al ex­ple­tives on­stage.

In the past, sev­er­al per­form­ers were ar­rest­ed for us­ing ob­scene lan­guage while per­form­ing on­stage, so Atkins’ spicy de­liv­ery im­me­di­ate­ly raised ques­tions among some pa­trons about Trinidad and To­ba­go’s long-de­bat­ed ap­proach to ob­scene lan­guage laws and the un­even en­force­ment en­ter­tain­ers have faced over the years.

“Like he try­ing to get lock up tonight?” one fe­male pa­tron re­marked dur­ing his per­for­mance.

“Well, I go bail him out!” re­spond­ed an­oth­er with a chuck­le.

The rap­per lat­er apol­o­gised to the au­di­ence and kept the re­main­der of his per­for­mance clean, as the event con­tin­ued sur­pris­ing­ly with­out in­ter­rup­tion.

De­spite this eye­brow-rais­ing mo­ment, the sec­ond edi­tion of this pop­u­lar con­cert se­ries still de­liv­ered a night packed with nos­tal­gia, sin­ga­longs and was laced with Caribbean en­er­gy as Ja Rule and R&B princess Ashan­ti (Ashan­ti Haynes) per­formed a med­ley-style set be­fore a size­able crowd num­ber­ing in the thou­sands.

Some mused that at­ten­dance ap­peared slight­ly small­er than last year’s in­stal­ment, but pa­trons dressed styl­ish­ly to match the up­scale brunch theme and re­mained en­gaged through­out much of the evening, with women es­pe­cial­ly singing along, word for word, while film­ing the per­for­mances on their phones.

The live ac­tion start­ed rel­a­tive­ly on time with a slew of lo­cal acts, in­clud­ing vi­o­lin­ist, An­dre Don­awa, songstress Arielle Cowie, so­ca acts Ki­mi, Kim­ba Sorzano, Tevin Hart­man, Free­town Col­lec­tive, Er­phaan Alves and Preedy, fol­lowed at prime time by Ja Rule and Ashan­ti. The Amer­i­can pair de­liv­ered an al­ter­nat­ing med­ley of so­lo hits and col­lab­o­ra­tive records that helped de­fine ear­ly 2000s hip-hop and R&B crossover cul­ture, but the slow­er-paced de­liv­ery of their set of­ten left the typ­i­cal­ly re­served au­di­ence sway­ing more in nos­tal­gia than ex­plo­sive ex­cite­ment, as pa­trons sang along, filmed mo­ments on their phones and wait­ed for bursts of high­er en­er­gy through­out the night.

Ashan­ti, who ap­peared es­pe­cial­ly com­fort­able en­gag­ing the lo­cal au­di­ence (fol­low­ing pre­vi­ous vis­its, col­lab­o­ra­tions and per­for­mances with Road March king Machel Mon­tano), told pa­trons that “Trinidad is like my sec­ond home,” while al­so open­ly em­brac­ing lo­cal cul­ture, when she de­clared, “I love so­ca mu­sic.”

Al­though the Amer­i­can stars re­ceived strong re­spons­es through­out their per­for­mance, the over­all en­er­gy in­side the venue no­tice­ably shift­ed when­ev­er Caribbean acts and sounds en­tered the playlist. The loud­est re­ac­tion of the night ar­guably came when so­ca star Aaron “Voice” St Louis made a sur­prise ap­pear­ance mid­way through the show, in­stant­ly trig­ger­ing a thun­der­ous roar from pa­trons and el­e­vat­ing hands in uni­son across the venue.

Voice ap­peared to tease a remix col­lab­o­ra­tion of his 2026 hit Cyah Be­have fea­tur­ing Ashan­ti—a po­ten­tial crossover move that would fur­ther strength­en the grow­ing mu­si­cal re­la­tion­ship be­tween so­ca and in­ter­na­tion­al acts.

Ashan­ti lat­er closed her por­tion of the set with her sig­na­ture hit, Fool­ish, cre­at­ing an­oth­er ma­jor sin­ga­long mo­ment among long­time fans.

Fol­low­ing the slow­er-paced R&B-heavy show­case, DJs Kevon X and Poi­son Sound in­ject­ed more up­tem­po en­er­gy in­to the event be­fore Ja­maican dance­hall artiste Ra­heem “Valiant” Bowes took the stage around 11.35 pm.

Valiant ini­tial­ly re­ceived a warm wel­come and brought a more en­er­getic dance­hall pres­ence to the con­cert. How­ev­er, mo­men­tum slowed dur­ing an ex­tend­ed au­di­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion seg­ment in which he in­vit­ed three women on­stage to sing one of his songs while the crowd se­lect­ed a win­ner. The seg­ment stretched on for sev­er­al min­utes and shift­ed the per­for­mance in­to a more con­ver­sa­tion­al zone be­fore the set re­sumed.

Still, Sat­ur­day night’s event once again high­light­ed Trinidad au­di­ences’ ap­pre­ci­a­tion for in­ter­na­tion­al R&B and hip-hop acts, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly re­in­forc­ing the un­matched re­ac­tion so­ca and dance­hall mu­sic con­tin­ue to gen­er­ate when­ev­er Caribbean per­form­ers take cen­tre stage.