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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Car­ni­val 2014

Bridging a gap - producer unites old, new school soca acts

by

20140213

Mill­beatz En­ter­tain­ment has pro­duced 49 songs for Car­ni­val 2014, in­clud­ing So­ca Monarch semi­fi­nal­ists K Rich's Go Down and new­com­er Natasha Ben­jamin's Keep Them Wav­ing, as well as the Jab Jab Rid­dim which fea­tures Iw­er George, Olatun­ji Year­wood and Grena­da's Tall­pree.

How­ev­er, the cre­ation which re­mains clos­est to pro­duc­er David "Mill­beatz" Millen's heart is his Clas­sic 60s Rid­dim. Why? Be­cause it was the one pro­duc­tion that brought vet­er­an ca­lyp­so­ni­ans and young so­ca artistes to­geth­er, some­thing Millen had been try­ing to achieve for the past three years.

"I have been ex­plor­ing with this idea for the past three years, so to ac­tu­al­ly see it ma­te­ri­alise was re­al­ly an amaz­ing feel­ing," the 25-year-old told the T&T Guardian from his Trinci­ty-based stu­dio.

Millen not­ed that it was with the help of so­ca artiste, close friend and one of the stu­dio's writ­ers, Joel "Zan" Feveck, his co-pro­duc­er, Jablani, and Asy­lum band's gui­tarist, En­ri­co Came­jo, that he was able to pull off the pro­duc­tion.

"We were brain­storm­ing one night in the stu­dio and Jablani, who al­so plays the gui­tar, came up with this in­fec­tious strum that you hear through­out the rid­dim and from that mo­ment the idea just be­gan to flow with the di­rec­tion in which we want­ed the rid­dim to go.

"En­ri­co was al­so there and he added a few more notes and chords on his gui­tar and then I built my beat around it and the Clas­sic 60s Rid­dim was born," Millen ex­plained.

Once the rid­dim was com­plet­ed Millen con­tact­ed all the stu­dio's writ­ers, in­clud­ing Feveck, who wrote three songs on the rid­dim–I Want to Know, sung by Shiv­onne "Lil Bitts" Churche and Anslem Dou­glas, Good Morn­ing, sung by him­self and Ron­nie McIn­tosh, and an­oth­er track ti­tled Soak­ing Wet.

Oth­er col­lab­o­ra­tions on the rid­dim in­clude Olatun­ji Year­wood and Iw­er George with Play A Mas and Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter along­side Lord Nel­son singing Break­away.

Millen said at­tempts were al­so made to get more pi­o­neers of ca­lyp­so and so­ca, among them Su­perBlue, Ca­lyp­so Rose and David Rud­der, on board, but these at­tempts in the end were un­suc­cess­ful.

"Some of them were out of the coun­try and some out­right­ly did not want to sing on a rid­dim," he re­vealed.

He ad­mit­ted that at first even some of the ex­ist­ing col­lab­o­ra­tors were a bit skep­ti­cal about singing on a rid­dim, but not­ed that once they un­der­stood the ori­gin of the idea they were hap­py to work with the younger artistes.

When con­tact­ed, McIn­tosh con­firmed he was hes­i­tant at first be­cause rid­dims were not his thing. He added, how­ev­er, that once he un­der­stood what the young pro­duc­er was try­ing to ac­com­plish he jumped on board.

His younger col­leagues, Feveck and Churche, said they were just elat­ed to work with the old­er heads. Feveck said the Clas­sic 60s Rid­dim was about bring­ing back class to mu­sic, some­thing he would like to­day's dee­jays to in­cor­po­rate in their li­brary of mu­sic. Churche mean­while said work­ing with Dou­glas was an ho­n­our.

"I was hap­py to be cho­sen by Mill­beatz to do the col­lab­o­ra­tion with Anslem. He's a guy that has paved ways for young up­com­ing per­form­ers and song­writ­ers of T&T."

Millen, who to­geth­er with Star Blu En­ter­tain­ment, an­oth­er young stu­dio pro­duc­tion house, cre­at­ed the pop­u­lar 2013 Project 5 Rid­dim, which fea­tured Denise Bel­fon's Win­ing Queen and In­di­an 'Gyal' by Machel Mon­tano and Dru­patee, said the col­lab­o­ra­tions were to main­ly show the cur­rent mu­sic in­dus­try that the mu­sic of the past can live with the present day mu­sic. He said he be­lieved the mu­sic to­day was miss­ing the el­e­ment that made a song live for­ev­er.

"There is so much up­com­ing and even es­tab­lished artistes can learn from the vet­er­ans," Millen said.

"It's not about go­ing back to the past but it is about mak­ing a good prod­uct. Every artiste should strive to write and sing a song that tran­scends time."

Since its re­lease the rid­dim has un­for­tu­nate­ly not been get­ting much air­play on lo­cal fre­quen­cies, es­pe­cial­ly among ur­ban ra­dio sta­tions. Millen said he was a bit dis­ap­point­ed at this, but al­so un­der­stood that not every­one may un­der­stand or ap­pre­ci­ate the con­cept.

"The con­cept may not be un­der­stood by all right now but a mark has been made and as a pro­duc­er, I can say it will catch on in due time," he said.

On the brighter side, the rid­dim seems to be loved by ca­lyp­so/so­ca lovers in the US and Cana­da, as Millen in­di­cat­ed it was pop­u­lar in both coun­tries.

Asked if he would ex­plore an­oth­er such mu­si­cal ven­ture again, Millen said, "Mill­beatz will cer­tain­ly do some­thing again with the old and new school. The Clas­sic 60s Rid­dim was for the mu­sic lovers so we must do it again."


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