Gillian Moore

The crowd went crazy for Atak­lan on Ju­ly 3, at the T&T launch of The Mix at Casa de Ibiza on Tra­garete Road in Wood­brook.

The event, of­fi­cial­ly ti­tled Al­ric & Boyd and VTM present The Mix, takes place in�Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, and now T&T. It's a week­ly par­ty fea­tur­ing an artiste per­form­ing a�few of their songs. The whole thing is cap­tured on video and, ac­cord­ing to Ja­son Cox of�VTM, one of the pro­mot­ers of the event, it will even­tu­al­ly be or­gan­ised so the events�can be streamed live be­tween the is­lands. The crowd took their time ar­riv­ing, and at first it seemed the turnout would be low.

But by the time Atak­lan start­ed singing at 1 am, the club was full and his fans made up for�their tardy ar­rival with wild en­thu­si­asm. They screamed, shout­ed, waved and went wild for the young rap­so man, who came look­ing cool in all black and�dark glass­es. He im­me­di­ate­ly es­tab­lished great rap­port with the au­di­ence, teas­ing them by com­ing on­stage singing his hit, Flood–then "wheel­ing" and say­ing they couldn't hear that one so�ear­ly on. He went through a slew of his hits, in­clud­ing the al­ways-pow­er­ful Naked Walk and Span­ish Girl, for which he came in­to the crowd to get close to a fe­male fan. He sang two odes to his home­town, Straight Out of Mor­vant and Nev­er Mov­ing Out of�Mor­vant, as well as the Ras Shorty I-in­spired Who God Bless/My God Doh Sleep,�salut­ing the jamoo icon for help­ing him in his ear­ly ca­reer. Atak­lan called out to fel­low per­former Mis­tah Shak in the au­di­ence, and brought him�up to the mi­cro­phone.

Far left: Atak­lan per­forms at the T&T launch of The Mix con­cert se­ries at Ibiza on Tra­garete Road, Wood­brook, on Sat­ur­day night. The 2010 Di­manche Gras debu­tant sang a snip­pet of one of his songs, Re­al Lib­er­a­tion, call­ing for bet­ter con­tent and qual­i­ty in so­ca mu­sic. He, too, got his share of loud cheers. "Klan­nie" reprised Flood and con­tin­ued with the brand new I Am Me, Love Rein­car­na­tion�and reg­gae remix of Shad­ow in the Dark. He had his DJ, Rhythm In­ter­na­tion­al, cut short most of his songs, re­mark­ing�that he was on­ly sup­posed to per­form three songs at the event.�Point­ing to the video mon­i­tor, which was show­ing a re­cent Mix con­cert in Ja­maica, Atak­lan said he had at­tend­ed that show. He said the siege that took place in the Tivali�area, while po­lice hunt­ed for out­law "Dudus" Coke, had in­spired a new song, Kingston�Town, which he shared. He brought the set to a close with the fiery Flam­beau, keep­ing the au­di­ence un­der his�spell right to the end. Af­ter his per­for­mance the par­ty went on to the sounds of DJs VTM and Nap­py Head Troop­er. The next edi­tion of Al­ric & Boyd and VTM present The Mix will take place at Ibiza on�Au­gust 7.