Aba A Luke

It takes a spe­cial kind of artiste to put his so­ca ca­reer first in such a way that even while he lives and com­pos­es his mu­sic in the Unit­ed States, he still finds it nec­es­sary to trav­el to T&T to re­lease his Car­ni­val con­tri­bu­tions. One such artiste is Lyrikal.

In the sea­son ahead, he is ex­pect­ed to please au­di­ences across the board, from small jams, to big fetes and cer­tain­ly the all-in­clu­sive events. In the first week of De­cem­ber, the artiste who has main­tained a lev­el of con­sis­ten­cy, flew to Trinidad where he re­leased a track called Born for Dis on a rid­dim of the same name that fea­tures fel­low en­ter­tain­er, Zan. It was his third re­lease ahead of C2K12 and he said the pub­lic could def­i­nite­ly look for­ward to more on the hori­zon.

Hard work­pays off

Ear­li­er in the sea­son, Lyrikal, re­al name De­von Mar­tin, de­liv­ered two groovy sin­gles to en­tice so­ca lovers. The first track was Whey Yuh Want, a col­lab­o­ra­tion with SASS band leader, Na­dia Bat­son. The sec­ond sin­gle was the very in­fec­tious, Win­ing Away, which was pro­duced in New York by Shawn "Mas­ter­mind" Noel.

"Hard work pays off in any­thing you do. I ba­si­cal­ly keep in the stu­dio and stay in touch with my­self, and I try to stay in the mix with my peers and I'm al­ways record­ing," Lyrikal said, adding that its part of his strat­e­gy in en­sur­ing that his name be­comes a house­hold one. Mu­sic be­ing his full-time ca­reer choice, the East New York res­i­dent, who grew up in Bel­mont and then moved to Bon Aire be­fore mi­grat­ing, said he would con­tin­ue to cham­pi­on the cause of tak­ing so­ca mu­sic to the heights of suc­cess.

"So­ca is we cul­ture and I love it to meh heart. I have a great pas­sion for this mu­sic so I'll be con­tin­u­ing try­ing to spread this mu­sic."I can't do it by my­self, no one could do it by their self. We need the uni­ty and I just want to be part of this whole fra­ter­ni­ty of spread­ing the mu­sic world­wide-to the plan­et," said Lyrikal.

Mu­sic, lyrics and more mu­sic!

He has been writ­ing for oth­er artistes, even find­ing the time to pen lyrics to a track he plans to do with HD fe­male vo­cal­ist, Patrice Roberts."I wrote the song with Patrice in mind but I don't know if it'll be re­leased this sea­son, " he said.An­oth­er sin­gle has al­so be record­ed with Mar­t­ian Mu­sic's Don Iko, and he high­light­ed that this par­tic­u­lar track is a pow­er sin­gle and on a rid­dim with oth­er artistes. He wasn't too cer­tain, how­ev­er, as to when the song would be re­leased.

De­spite all the talk of so­ca and the Car­ni­val vibe that lies in wait, Lyrikal has head­ed back to New York where he plans on spend­ing the Christ­mas hol­i­days with fam­i­ly be­fore re­turn­ing to T&T for Car­ni­val 2012. When asked what he would tell any­one who had nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced a Tri­ni Car­ni­val, he said, "Yuh have to come and ex­pe­ri­ence the great­est show on earth. It's all about ex­press­ing your­self, leav­ing your job and stress be­hind."

Like many oth­er Trin­bag­o­ni­ans liv­ing over­seas, the idea of free­dom and en­joy­ment with­in Car­ni­val at home are very re­al sym­bol­isms of the fes­ti­val and it's part of the rea­son they re­turn an­nu­al­ly. For Lyrikal, the mu­sic is rea­son enough, and he re­vealed that fol­low­ing the sea­son, some­thing huge will be launched among a group of artistes which in­cludes, Ker­win Du Bois.