Car­ni­val 2013 is an his­toric one for Shiv­onne Churche aka Lil Bitts. Not on­ly is it the tenth an­niver­sary of her en­try in­to the mu­sic in­dus­try but the first year the young singer will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the fi­nal round of the In­ter­na­tion­al Pow­er So­ca Monarch. The com­pe­ti­tion, set for Fan­tas­tic Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 8, will al­so be the first time Churche shares a stage with liv­ing leg­end Austin "Su­perblue" Lyons.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view last week the 29-year-old shared that she was ex­cit­ed about per­form­ing in the same are­na as Su­per Blue."I was ac­tu­al­ly hang­ing by him the oth­er day and he told me he was hear­ing about me. So that felt good that some­one of his stature ac­tu­al­ly knows about me and my work," she said.Churche made it to the fi­nals with her per­for­mance of the song Raise de Dust–one of five sin­gles she's re­leased for the 2013 Car­ni­val sea­son.

Raise de Dust has not got­ten sig­nif­i­cant ra­dio air­time and many have ques­tioned Churche's po­si­tion in the fi­nals.The crit­i­cism was dis­ap­point­ing, ac­cord­ing to Churche, but par for the course in T&T. "That's Tri­nis for you. We're very opin­ion­at­ed. Peo­ple say every year for So­ca Monarch, oh it's be­cause he has a big name that's why he's in the fi­nals.

"Now you have some­body who's in the fi­nals based on per­for­mance and they still have some­thing to say. But this is my op­por­tu­ni­ty to show every­one why I de­serve to be in the fi­nals." An­oth­er Churche sin­gle that caused con­tro­ver­sy was Hon­er Woman. The song delved in­to her ob­ser­va­tions that the "out­side woman" had gone from be­ing a very se­cre­tive af­fair to a very brazen one."I got a lot of beat­ing for that song be­cause peo­ple thought I was pro­mot­ing horn­ing. What was fun­ny for me with that is a guy could sing a song about horn­ing and no one would say any­thing but as a woman sings about it, its a prob­lem."

How­ev­er, crit­i­cism is just one of the many chal­lenges Churche faces in the in­dus­try and none of these chal­lenges hold her back.Lat­er in the year, she'll be re­leas­ing her first al­bum Oh Yeah to cel­e­brate the decade of her mu­sic. The al­bum will in­clude new tracks as well as old ones such as her 2004 break­out hit My Coun­try, Bump and Care­ful.Churche is pumped for So­ca Monarch and says she won't be hold­ing any­thing back be­cause it's her first time in the Pow­er cat­e­go­ry.

"Raise de Dust was re­al­ly about find­ing dif­fer­ent ways to sing about jump­ing and wav­ing and win­ing and this year. We're all out with the pre­sen­ta­tion to show peo­ple why I made it to the fi­nals."

FACT FILE

Name: Shiv­onne Lil' Bitts Churche

Date of Birth: Oc­to­ber 31st, 1984

Home­town: Bel­mont

Ed­u­ca­tion: Sa­cred Heart Girls RC and Wood­brook Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary

Hit songs: My Coun­try, Bump, Care­ful

More In­fo

�2 For more in­for­ma­tion you can find Lil Bitts on her Face­book page: Shiv­onne "LIL' BITTS' Churche. You can al­so fol­low her on Twit­ter: @Lil­Bitts. To vote for by text for Lil' Bitts use her text code–BITS–and send to SO­CA (7622).