Cherisse Moe

He has the voice. He has the pas­sion. He has the de­ter­mi­na­tion. And his boy­ish good looks? Well, that doesn't hurt him ei­ther.Mov­ing with an ac­cel­er­at­ed pace to carve his name in the mu­si­cal land­scape of T&T, K Rich is on a mis­sion to show the world what he's made of.Chris­tened Ken­neth Richards, the 22-year-old for­mer front-line singer of the lo­cal rock band 5 Miles To Mid­night, and mem­ber of the so­ca group Reelest 8 has cer­tain­ly paid his dues. These days he prefers to call his own shots as a so­lo so­ca artiste.

A nat­ur­al when it comes to the stage, his con­fi­dence and abil­i­ty to con­nect with his au­di­ence could al­so have some­thing to do with the fact that he has per­formed with one of so­ca's biggest stars-his step­fa­ther, Austin "Su­per Blue" Lyons."I re­mem­ber be­ing a back­up singer for him when he per­formed in front of thou­sands of peo­ple. I was just eight-years-old but it was a great ex­pe­ri­ence," he re­called."He has taught me a lot and has al­ways played an in­te­gral role in my de­vel­op­ment. He re­al­ly un­der­stands the sci­ence of so­ca mu­sic."

His lat­est sin­gle, ti­tled Noth­ing Less, has been get­ting noth­ing but love from the mass­es and word on the street is that the groovy so­ca will be a force to be reck­oned with for Car­ni­val 2k12.Pro­duced by Ja­son "Nur­ton" Carter & Ken­wyn "GB" Hold­er, the catchy track, which fea­tures back­ground vo­cals by his sis­ter, Faine, is fast be­com­ing a hit and has re­cent­ly caught the at­ten­tion of the pop­u­lar Caribbean en­ter­tain­ment Web site, Toron­to-Lime.com.With­in its first week of re­lease, K Rich said the song de­buted at num­ber ten on the sta­tion's mu­sic chart."It's been bub­bling nice­ly. See­ing my song on an in­ter­na­tion­al site was def­i­nite­ly a mov­ing feel­ing," he stat­ed dur­ing our re­cent in­ter­view. "It's grown quite or­gan­i­cal­ly and the re­views have been ex­tra­or­di­nary."

No but­ter­flies

At the time of the in­ter­view, the artiste was sched­uled to leave the coun­try the fol­low­ing day for Flori­da where he was booked to rep­re­sent the red, white and black, at sev­er­al shows staged to cel­e­brate Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val, which kicked off on Oc­to­ber 6."Right now I have no but­ter­flies," he said, laugh­ing. "But I think it would come mo­ments be­fore I go on stage. It's like an adren­a­line rush. But, it promis­es to be an amaz­ing ex­pe­ri­ence."The "Slow Mo" singer, who al­so plans to de­liv­er some is­land pop tunes through­out the year, ar­tic­u­lat­ed that while he is aware that the so­ca in­dus­try is not al­ways kind to new artistes, he re­mains un­fazed."At the end of the day, you can't beat good mu­sic. No mat­ter what the DJs think about that song, if the peo­ple want to hear it, it will find it's way on the ra­dio."

Prov­ing his worth

The Glen­coe res­i­dent, who's be­com­ing pop­u­lar, es­pe­cial­ly among fe­male fans, stat­ed that while his phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance may raise some eye­brows and plen­ty ques­tions about his longevi­ty as a so­ca artiste, he's tak­ing it all in stride."A lot of peo­ple have been ques­tion­ing who I am. They want to know who is this guy? But how I present my­self falls on my shoul­ders. I know peo­ple will talk, but so far, things have been pos­i­tive. I think the way I look will on­ly be­come a prob­lem if I make it a prob­lem," he de­clared."One thing I have learnt is that it's im­por­tant to be­lieve in your­self. You tell peo­ple who you are not the oth­er way around."And al­though the Be­hav­iour­al Sci­ence ma­jor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean said a ca­reer in fam­i­ly coun­selling would be his sec­ond op­tion "if the mu­sic thing doesn't work out," K Rich be­lieves that his jour­ney to so­ca star­dom has just be­gun. Right now, he's work­ing hard and en­joy­ing the ride."I def­i­nite­ly think I'm gonna change the game," he con­clud­ed.