Joanne Brig­gs

If 50 CDs are sold for the week at $30 per CD, then that would cov­er the bills for the month. Sim­ple math is a sys­tem of sur­vival that has kept so­ca star Fire­ball afloat for some time now. So, to see him neat­ly at­tired in jeans, a shirt and a cap–knock­ing at the woundup win­dows of cars, try­ing to get the at­ten­tion of dri­vers wait­ing for the green light at Trinci­ty Cen­tral Road to turn on­to Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way, the im­age is a shock to some. To oth­ers, it's a joke. Ra­dio DJs have snig­gered on air about his present state. But for Fire­ball, whose re­al name is Ro­han Richards, it is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a down-in-the-dumps sce­nario. "It is one of my strate­gies to make it in the (mu­sic) busi­ness," he said frankly. "This busi­ness has its ups and downs and when you are down, you have to fight up.

At the end of the day, I have my re­spon­si­bil­i­ties." He cap­tured the spot­light with his falset­to op­er­at­ic voice as the first Syn­er­gy So­ca Star in 2006. This was quick­ly fol­lowed in 2007 by his first hit What I Want which mor­phed from so­ca to a re­worked hit by French DJ and remix­er Bob Sinclar that same year and topped the Eu­ro­pean Club Mu­sic Charts. Not to men­tion there was a saucy mu­sic video show­ing off his "boot camp" that con­vert­ed de­mure nerds to sil­i­cone-im­plant­ed sex­pots. In 2008, the song was re­leased by Record Plant Records in the US and hit the Bill­board Hot Dance Club Play Charts at num­ber 14.

That year, he was in con­tention with Madon­na, Ne Yo and Ri­han­na. He ad­mits though there were things that did not sit right with him af­ter his suc­cess­ful start. "They told me my per­for­mance was not good enough," Fire­ball said of his re­la­tion­ship with the com­pa­ny that helped him score on Bill­board. "That is what mashed me up." The hope of work­ing on a CD al­so went up in smoke. Back in Trinidad, he was feel­ing sti­fled. "My mu­sic was not get­ting played. I worked with top pro­duc­ers and still the mu­sic did not get played," he said. "Since 2008, I didn't get hire for a ma­jor fete...now I re­alise tal­ent isn't every­thing." His great­est les­son about this mu­sic busi­ness: tal­ent is five per cent of the game; 95 per cent is busi­ness.

So, he sells CDs; holds the mic as an MC for shows and roy­al­ties from his ear­li­er suc­cess con­tin­ue to come in. "You nev­er hear ru­mours of Fire­ball tak­ing drugs or sleep­ing on the road," he re­sponds to the jokes about him. His pre­vi­ous busi­ness was a juice ven­dor and he did well at it. His trade is steel bend­ing but he has no de­sires to re­turn to the con­struc­tion in­dus­try. The Laven­til­lian- now-Orop­une res­i­dent, says he'd rather the mu­sic busi­ness de­spite the stones al­ready hurled at him. "Mu­sic is easy for me. I have more than 1,000 songs.

Mu­sic is now part of me," he said. "Now I am so ver­sa­tile...I could switch my flows." On the road, or late­ly at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, he of­fers prospec­tive buy­ers a choice of his tal­ent–so­ca or reg­gae/ con­scious. "I re­mem­ber once, I stopped a French man at the air­port, ask­ing him to buy my CD. He told me 'I don't like Trinidad mu­sic' and con­tin­ued walk­ing. Then I asked him, 'Do you know Bob Sinclar? Then I'm Fire­ball.' It rang a bell with the man, he said he re­mem­bered me and told me how much he loved the video. He bought a CD," he said. When Fire­ball won the Syn­er­gy So­ca Star con­test, he walked away with $5,000, a mu­sic video and a cell­phone. Six years lat­er, he walks with faith that his time will re­turn soon. He says he has songs ready for 2014, wait­ing to re­lease an al­bum of 12 tracks. He is al­so con­sid­er­ing a mu­si­cal re­turn to Eu­rope. "Every­thing has highs and lows. The best is yet to come," he said.