Trin­bag­on­ian mu­si­cal am­bas­sadors, Preedy, Su­cre, Turn­er, Melick, Ravi B, Joshua Re­grel­lo, KMC, La­dy La­va and oth­ers are all set to grace the stage at the One Caribbean Uni­ty Mu­sic Fes­ti­val this com­ing week­end and all ex­cit­ed to be a part of the cast of this his­toric event.

Speak­ing to Over­time Me­dia over the week­end, the 2025 Ul­ti­mate Youth So­ca Cham­pi­on, Nkosi Su­cre de­scribed the op­por­tu­ni­ty as “a dream come true". He said:

“For me to build this kind of mo­men­tum this year, to have a song get­ting air­play in the Car­ni­val sea­son," he said, "then to com­pete and win and be­come the Youth So­ca Cham­pi­on and now be able to grace the same stage as the King of Dance­hall - all be­fore the first half of the year is out… This is ma­jor mo­men­tum and I’m sooo grate­ful to be in this po­si­tion and see­ing progress in my ca­reer. Look­ing for­ward to rep­re­sent­ing for my gen­er­a­tion on­stage at One Caribbean!”

Su­cre con­fessed to be­ing an ar­dent fan of the Worl Boss:

"I've been a fan of Vy­bz Kar­tel since about 2010,” he re­vealed. “I re­mem­ber the first time re­al­ly lis­ten­ing to it and vib­ing with it, you know, I re­al­ly, re­al­ly en­joy the mu­sic, and I felt as though it was just a re­al form of ex­pres­sion. To be on a cast of such mag­ni­tude is def­i­nite­ly a priv­i­lege and a bless­ing be­cause this is a cast of renowned artists and Kar­tel has been fly­ing the flag of the Caribbean for many years, so I feel hon­ored and grate­ful to share the same stage and thank the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val or­gan­is­ers for in­clud­ing me and giv­ing me this op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

Na­tion­al Freestyle Cham­pi­on, Akeem “Preedy” Chance al­so ex­pressed his ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the op­por­tu­ni­ty and for the mu­sic of Vy­bz Kar­tel. He said:

“I am def­i­nite­ly a fan of Vy­bz Kar­tel. My gen­er­a­tion grew up on his mu­sic and ever since I was a youth - a kid in fact, I’ve been lis­ten­ing to Vy­bz Kar­tel, watch­ing Sting, be­ing a part of the Pas­sa Pas­sa era… Kar­tel was piv­otal to that time so I’m a big big fan and I’m hon­ored to be on the cast.” He stat­ed. “I re­mem­ber lis­ten­ing to his mu­sic and won­der­ing if I would ever see him per­form, so to have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to grace the stage and open for him is an achieve­ment. It's an amaz­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty that I want to make the best of the sit­u­a­tion."

Mean­while, the self-ap­point­ed, Queen of the Freaks, “La­dy La­va” (Keisha Har­ris) says she is equal­ly de­ter­mined to put her best foot for­ward at the much-an­tic­i­pat­ed event and is look­ing for­ward to per­form­ing for her home crowd al­so.

“It’s great to be on the line­up and it’s a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for me to not just be per­form­ing on the same stage as Vy­bz Kar­tel, but al­so to be able to do this in my own coun­try is an amaz­ing achieve­ment for me and the pa­trons can ex­pect me to give my best – 110% as al­ways.

“Every per­for­mance is dif­fer­ent and the en­er­gies are dif­fer­ent,” La­va con­tin­ued, “but I al­ways give my best ef­fort and I’m look­ing for­ward to per­form­ing for my coun­try and see­ing how they re­act to the songs that have been do­ing well. I have been per­form­ing a lot more out­side of Trinidad so far this year and Car­ni­val time was a dif­fer­ent vibe, so this will be the re­al test for the Steam.”

Asked for their thoughts on the re­stric­tions placed on Kar­tel's itin­er­ary, our lo­cal artistes said they ei­ther did not have enough in­for­ma­tion on that sub­ject (La­va), did not un­der­stand the rea­son for the re­stric­tions (Preedy) and gen­er­al­ly, they did not agree with such re­stric­tions. Nev­er­the­less, they all agreed that the au­thor­i­ties in charge of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty would know best how to man­age his vis­it and stat­ed their hopes that "the young peo­ple of T&T in­vest in his more re­cent pos­i­tive mes­sages, as op­posed to his tur­bu­lent past". 

"The best per­son to speak to young peo­ple about avoid­ing a life of crime," stat­ed Su­cre, "is some­one who has been through it and come out on the oth­er side pos­i­tive­ly, so it would make sense to have Vy­bz Kar­tel speak to the youths at this time when his mes­sages have clear­ly been on­ly pos­i­tive since his re­lease last year."

With mere days to go be­fore the event, the buzz and ex­cite­ment con­tin­ues to in­crease in in­ten­si­ty and tick­ets re­main avail­able on­line and from au­tho­rized out­lets na­tion­wide. For more in­for­ma­tion, please call the OCMF Hot­line at 794-6263 or log on to onecaribbean­mu­sicfes­ti­val.app

2025 Ul­ti­mate Youth So­ca Cham­pi­on, Nkosi "Su­cre"