Senior Reporter
otto.carrington@guardian.co.tt
Before the bookings, the radio play and the international calls, Sandra Emmanuel, popularly known as Queen Steam, said there were nights filled with tears, hunger and prayer.
The 58-year-old lost her job with the CEPEP last year after Government closed down the programme, leaving her and her family exposed to eviction and financial challenges.
“That leave me wanting to drink Lanate,” she said quietly.
“That leave me crying every day, crying every night. Begging God, ‘Open a door for me.’”
Unemployed and facing eviction, Emmanuel turned to GoFundMe and even TikTok appeals, but nothing materialised.
“Nobody didn’t take me on,” she recalled.
“All the Holy Spirit telling me is, ‘You have a song. I tell you, release it in 2026.’”
At first, she resisted.
“I say, ‘But look, I am 58, what would people say?”
But she said it was God who said, ‘Release it in 2026.’”
She obeyed and within months, her life changed.
“And here we are today,” Emmanuel said.
The song, rooted in raw social commentary, had actually been written nearly a decade earlier.
“Yes, ten years ago,” she explained. “A full decade.”
Music, she said, was never a late discovery. It had always lived inside her.
“Singing was always in me. I always make the school choir,” Emmanuel said, noting she was born on Boxing Day and named Daisy by her father.
“So singing is in me, you understand?”
Growing up on popular TV shows like The Brady Bunch, she dreamed of family harmony on and off the stage.
“I always wanted to have a band with my children, like the Brady Bunch.”
Despite poverty and single motherhood, she nurtured creativity in her household.
She said her children’s talents only confirmed her belief that music was destiny.
“My big son sings just like Bunji. He freestyles quick, quick. My daughter—West Indies Missy Elliott—she could rap fast-fast,” she said.
Emmanuel is also the mother of local entertainer Plumpy Boss, who was shot on July 28, 2024, in St Martin.
The inspiration for her breakout song, however, came not from fantasy but everyday life.
“When you see them, girls dressed nice, smelling sweet, ready to run out the road. Two of them alone. Two of them alone in the big bus. Two of them alone in the Lexus.”
She spoke candidly about complex relationships, generational contradictions and shared fatherhood.
“When the baby come, two of them calling daddy,” Emmanuel said.
“People will curse me; they will boo me—but it is reality.”
That honesty, she believes, is why the song resonated.
In the entertainment space, the response has been overwhelming.
“Boy, I might have to start refuse booking. I feel I might have to hire AI,” she laughed, adding she had 11 bookings in one Friday alone.
Despite jokes about artificial intelligence, Emmanuel was clear about one thing.
“This is not AI. This is me. Real thing.”
At 58, she says younger women are trying to keep up with her energy on the road.
“They appreciate it. They love the song,” she said.
And she is not stopping there.
She revealed plans for a calypso track titled Real Men Must Never Abuse Women, a project delayed only by finances.
“I didn’t have the money to stamp it up,” she said, crediting producer GQ for now backing the effort.
With interest growing locally and internationally—including calls from India—Emmanuel is cautiously navigating management and money.
“I can’t have nobody riding my back,” she said plainly. “I have bills.”
For now, she is working with Larry Fashions as her manager while maintaining control of her career.
The success, she says, is bittersweet —born from survival.
“I really put out this song to get money to pay rent,” Emmanuel admitted. “I didn’t want them to put me out.”
After months of begging and rejection, she said faith carried her through.
“The Lord says, ‘Girl, go and do the song.’ You cannot walk alone. You have to have faith.”
Today, Emmanuel stands firmly in her new identity—Queen Steam—not as a manufactured star, but as proof that timing, truth and belief can still change a life.
“God is the boss,” she said simply.
