North Leeward Soca duo eyeing National Soca Stage

New North Leeward Soca Monarch, ‘KTB’ and ‘Vyper’ have their eyes set on the national Soca Monarch stage this carnival, and have welcomed increased collaborations between young artistes and their more experienced compatriots. The duo, who got the judges’ nod with their “Sideman” last Saturday, June 8, 2024 in the North Leeward Soca Competition, told SEARCHLIGHT on Wednesday that they are part of a small group of artistes of mixed ages, that includes young music producer, Josh Williams of ‘JJW Productions’. Vyper, whose real name is Jahlil Wiliams, and KTB, named Klyvert Brown, walked away with the first prize $2,500 prize money in last Saturday’ Soca Monarch Competition, and the accolade would be bigger at the national level.

For Mother’s Day, Josh, the cousin of Vyper, produced the beat to go with a Mother’s Day song, “Letter to Mommy”, that Brown penned for his mother.

“My dad got killed when I was seven. It just basically used to be my mom and my other siblings, so it was a way to show gratitude to her and let her know that she is appreciated,” Brown said.

“…my mother is somebody who played mother role, father role, everything.”

Brown said his producer had cautioned him that this song may not gain any traction given that its the carnival season, but he was not bothered by that, he simply wanted to do the song to celebrate his mom.

“…we distributed it on Mother’s Day, 7’o’clock the morning…, persons were messaging me saying they love the song. It was something where sometimes you have to let the people that are closest to you know that they are appreciated,” the young artist noted.

The past student of the St Vincent Grammar School said growing up, music was one of the tools he used to get him through life, and shared that his father was one of the founders of the Roses Crew.

“…music is my thing,”, he said, “I write Soca, Dancehall, any genre…I would just randomly be here then take out my phone and start writing something, even if it’s a one or two lines, I just write it down then get back to it.”

The popular duo said their winning Soca song ’Sideman’ was a foreseeable hit, adding though, that there were setbacks which delayed its release.

Brown explained that when “The final demo got sent out to us. It probably took like four hours just to…get it uploaded. It started downloading- crashed.”

They had already scheduled the timing of the release, so there was much anticipation among persons who had been told,” and we end up never drop the song until the next morning”.

Issues with the Wi-Fi both at his end and with the person responsible for doing the art work were identified as being responsible for the delay.

“I had to even give somebody my google account so they could log into my Youtube to upload it”, but Brown said even this was not working out.

“I gave up completely, and then the person shout me back saying they found the file.”

The Soca song which was released two weeks ago, now has over 20,000 views on YouTube and, “…over the last three days, we got over 8000 views”, Williams told SEARCHLIGHT on Wednesday.

Brown and Williams (KTB and Vyper), said they were confident heading into the North Leeward Soca battle despite their youthful 19 years age.

“We look at the whole structure and knew we had it locked”, said Williams, “I watch him and say, ‘parter this is ours anuh’”, he added.

Williams is currently employed at Hot 97.1, where he works as a DJ and is using that platform to perfect his craft.

He confessed being often reluctant in the past even to pick up a microphone, but said working with Brown on the track gave him a confidence boost.

“He stated that it [Sideman] was his first and last song. I played a song for him the other day and he was ready to jump on it. I told him next year, but it was good to see that he’s being influenced to actually want to push more and not being only on the turntable,” Brown said of his colleague.

The two share a friendship that started when they were both at secondary school. Williams would take his laptop to school and they would go over some of his work and critique it. At one point Brown was the ‘hype-man’ while Vyper DJ’ed .

KTB and Vyper are looking forward to being registered in the national Soca Monarch Competition and in the long term, they hope to continue writing and producing more music while learning from any setbacks.

The duo welcome the idea of more young artists being in the industry and Brown emphasised the importance of being open to criticism.

“You may come to me and ask me to listen something and I would tell you to change something about the song… because it could actually push the song further,” Williams pointed out.

“Something I realised is that failure is a part of success, as my cousin always says, a setback is a set up for a better comeback…”.