CARISA LEE

Re­porter

The Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­on 2025 com­pe­ti­tion has an­nounced its fi­nal­ists, who will com­pete for the ti­tle and a $1 mil­lion prize, fol­low­ing Sun­day’s semi­fi­nal at the Na­pari­ma Bowl, San Fer­nan­do.

The fi­nal­ists are:

Ani­ka Berry – Sad­dle

Bla­ka Dan (Grena­da) – Bless­ing

Cas­sell – Sen­sa­tion­al

Dash (Grena­da) – The Tape

Ding Dong – Throw­back

Nailah Black­man – For­ev­er

Or­lan­do Oc­tave – Auc­tion

Preedy – Blaze Fire

Snakey – De Ham­mer

Yung Bred­da – Great­est Bend Over

The re­serve fi­nal­ist is GI with ‘Mock­ing Mout’

Sev­er­al big names in the so­ca fra­ter­ni­ty—like Nes­sa Prep­py, Kris Ken­ndy, Jadel, and Swap­pi—did not ad­vance to the fi­nals of the Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­on com­pe­ti­tion, which will take place on Feb­ru­ary 20, 2025, at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah.

Be­fore the se­mi-fi­nals, Kern "Trinidad Kil­la" Joseph had to pull out of the com­pe­ti­tion be­cause he was un­able to be phys­i­cal­ly present and his plan for a holo­graph­ic per­for­mance was re­ject­ed by the or­ga­niz­ers.

The first re­serve Melick Bap­tiste took Kil­la's space. And on Fri­day, Iw­er George al­so with­drew from the com­pe­ti­tion and was re­placed with Tril­la G.

The com­pe­ti­tion is bro­ken in­to two cat­e­gories: the Youth and Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­ons. On the night of the fi­nals, there al­so will be a so­cial me­dia wild card. USC said de­tails of the rules of the Wild Card el­e­ment will be an­nounced on its so­cial me­dia pages.

The five Youth So­ca Cham­pi­ons are Chris­to with his song ‘Uni­ty’, Kristi­na James with ‘So­ca Like Dat’, Paris Coutain with ‘Lick Up’, Sack­ie with ‘Ta­ble’, and Su­cre with his 2025 of­fer­ing ‘The Great­est’.

The 2024 To­ba­go So­ca Ti­tans win­ner, Verrse, is the re­serve.

When con­tact­ed about Sun­day's turnout, USC Di­rec­tor Jerome "Rome" Pre­cil­la said the venue was packed with lots of flags.