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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Inspired by mom...Nailah wants to take soca to the Grammys

by

Nasser Khan
1933 days ago
20200328

O Lawd Oye…Baila Ma­mi…Iron Love, and, of course, the pop­u­lar re­frain "We want More Sokah" in 2020 are pop­u­lar hits by fast-ris­ing so­ca star, the vi­va­cious songstress Nailah Black­man over the past three years since she burst on­to the scene.

The 22-year-old (she will be 23 in De­cem­ber), the grand­daugh­ter of so­ca/sokah in­ven­tor the late Lord Shorty/Ras Shorty I (Garfield Black­man) and daugh­ter of Ab­bi Black­man, had so­ca flow­ing in her veins even be­fore she was born! She is in­tent on tak­ing so­ca world­wide and to the Gram­mys with her unique sound­ing voice which has at­tract­ed fans all over the world from the Caribbean to Africa, Asia, and Swe­den.

Black­man tours all over the world and has touched stages such as Olympia in Paris and count­less oth­ers in Japan, Switzer­land, Cana­da, USA, and the Caribbean. She has al­so worked with some of the Caribbean’s biggest artistes such as Ca­lyp­so Rose, Tar­rus Ri­ley, Shenseea, Kon­shens, and Kees Di­ef­fen­thaller.

Among her many ac­co­lades in her rel­a­tive­ly short ca­reer, in 2018 Black­man was nom­i­nat­ed for the best new in­ter­na­tion­al act BET view­ers’ choice award and to date has close to 100 mil­lion views col­lec­tive­ly on YouTube, not count­ing oth­er mu­si­cal plat­forms. She won Groovy So­ca of the Year Fe­male with Baila Ma­mi at the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Awards in St Lu­cia, and she was nom­i­nat­ed for Best New So­ca Artiste and the Best Col­lab­o­ra­tion at the Your View Awards in Ja­maica. She won the Best New Crossover Act at the TTCO Awards in T&T, and her song Sokah was cho­sen by NJAC as one of the top 20 ca­lyp­soes of the year. She was al­so pre­sent­ed with a Cul­tur­al Am­bas­sador Award from the New York Sen­ate dur­ing 2018 Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions in New York.

Black­man con­tin­ues to make waves by be­ing the first so­ca artiste to be in­vit­ed to Al Jazeera TV. She was al­so fea­tured on Toron­to’s top two morn­ing show pro­grammes--Your Morn­ing and CBC Metro Morn­ing, Japan’s #1 per­form­ing plat­form--Abe­ma TV, top French Net­work--Trace TV and Canal + and Hot 97’s pro­gramme--Who’s Next. She has al­so been in­ter­viewed on New York’s top ra­dio pro­grammes such as WBLX with David Levi, Hot 97 Sum­mer Stage, and Pow­er 105 with Ny­la Sim­mone.

In 2019 Black­man showed her mu­si­cal ver­sa­til­i­ty and tal­ent with the re­lease of her first EP 'The Reel' and a per­for­mance at Coachel­la with Ca­lyp­so Rose. She was al­so fea­tured in the Coachel­la Cu­rat­ed se­ries aired to over 50 mil­lion peo­ple in April of the same year.

Her 2020 sea­son’s hit More Sokah was played by many steel­bands at Panora­ma in­clud­ing win­ning the large band cat­e­go­ry, played by Des­per­a­does on their way to their 12th ti­tle.

Al­though Black­man has been of­fered deals by top in­ter­na­tion­al la­bels, she is still await­ing the right of­fer. Un­til then, she is tak­ing T&T, the Caribbean and the world by storm.

9 QUES­TIONS WITH NAILAH

Where were you born and raised?

I was born in Pleas­antville, San Fer­nan­do and raised in var­i­ous ar­eas in Trinidad, but the main two ar­eas were La Fil­lette, on the north coast, and Rio Claro.

What schools did you at­tend in spite of spend­ing more time de­ter­mined to be­come an in­ter­na­tion­al star?

Lol. I at­tend­ed the La Fil­lette RC Pri­ma­ry and Rio Claro East Sec­ondary schools.

Born with ob­vi­ous tal­ent, who would you say have in­spired you the most and how?

My mom, Ab­bi Black­man, def­i­nite­ly in­spired me the most be­cause she was al­ways so hap­py, beau­ti­ful, and pos­i­tive. She is every­thing I al­ways want­ed to be in a per­son. She is one of my biggest role mod­els and one of the most tal­ent­ed and re­source­ful peo­ple I know.

The Gram­mys…your goal…how do you plan to achieve it?

I am de­ter­mined to reach the Gram­mys by do­ing so­ca in a man­ner that will ap­peal to peo­ple from all walks of life and by col­lab­o­rat­ing with top artistes from every cor­ner of the earth un­til every­one knows what so­ca sounds like, feels like and falls in love with the genre.

If you had to solve the ills of T&T, what would you do?

First­ly, I would tar­get the chil­dren by play­ing an ac­tive role in shap­ing their minds to be good, de­cent hu­man be­ings. Sec­ond­ly, I would have a manda­to­ry fam­i­ly life eval­u­a­tion done to try to re­pair and build bet­ter fam­i­ly life in every home in T&T. I will al­so give every cit­i­zen an op­por­tu­ni­ty to 1) make mon­ey or 2) fol­low their dreams. I will work on fix­ing the iden­ti­ty cri­sis Trin­bag­o­ni­ans have which I feel could in­stil a lev­el of pride and to­geth­er­ness which may cause crime to dwin­dle as we be­come each oth­er’s keep­er know­ing that we are all from the same coun­try. Last­ly, I will tar­get cor­rup­tion, wip­ing it clean at every lev­el.

If you could choose one lo­cal and one for­eign en­ter­tain­er to per­form just for you, who would they be?

Hmm…Kees, and my for­eign artiste would be Ri­han­na.

If you could pick one per­son to dine with, who would it be?

That would be Yara Shahi­di, she’s so young and an in­spi­ra­tion to me.

De­scribe your per­fect soul mate.

Good one! Let’s see…some­one who is un­der­stand­ing, easy go­ing and open, spir­i­tu­al, one who knows ex­act­ly what they want in life. Am­bi­tious but al­ways con­tent, gives me the per­fect bal­ance of free­dom, se­cu­ri­ty and con­trol. Very in­tel­li­gent and seeks knowl­edge. Re­spects every hu­man and liv­ing thing and un­der­stands how to care, com­fort, pro­tect and nur­ture me. A pas­sion­ate per­son who is self­less but un­der­stands their worth and nev­er lets any­one take ad­van­tage of them. Just an all-round good per­son who would take the time to un­der­stand who I am, what I love, and why I live.

In two words, de­scribe your­self be­gin­ning with your ini­tials N and B.

Nat­ur­al Bliss.


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