NARIS­SA FRAS­ER

Even as they faced winds “strong like a ty­phoon,” hun­gry sharks cir­cling their ship, an oil leak and a mal­func­tion­ing com­pass, so­ca singer Snakey and pro­duc­er Alex “SandX­i­la” Aird com­mand­ed the rag­ing seas all the way to the 2026 Grena­da Pow­er So­ca Monarch fi­nal, where they an­chored down on the ti­tle.

Of­fi­cial­ly re­leased on June 14, Rag­ing Seas tells the sto­ry of a ship’s crew fac­ing “pres­sure in the en­gine room” as their ves­sel be­gins to sink. It was the most-lis­tened-to song on Ap­ple Mu­sic in Grena­da for weeks.

The en­er­getic track was writ­ten and pro­duced by Aird, per­formed by Rio “Snakey” St Paul, and mixed and mas­tered by Re­zo­nance.

Snakey sings, “What the hell go­ing on at the helm? I doh have a clue,” be­fore ask­ing, “Who in charge ah d ship? Who re­spon­si­ble for d ship? I want to know, I need to know. Point me to the cap­tain!”

He out­lines all the chal­lenges be­fore them, but the crew re­fus­es to pan­ic. Much like James Cameron’s Ti­tan­ic, in which mu­si­cians play on as the dis­as­ter un­folds, the men chose to “play ah mas on d boat as it goes down.”

“I want you take out yuh rags and flags for mas and gath­er up all your crew,” Snakey sings. “Hold on the rail and rock it, rock it, dais wa we go do.”

While many be­lieve the song was writ­ten from a po­lit­i­cal an­gle, its voy­age ac­tu­al­ly be­gan in 2024, in­spired by Aird’s then-place of em­ploy­ment.

The 42-year-old singer-song­writer and pro­duc­er told WE En­ter­tain­ment the com­pa­ny was learn­ing to nav­i­gate a new sys­tem. “So from cap­tain to cook, every­one was on the same lev­el.” But younger staff grasped it quick­ly, so some­times ju­niors were guid­ing se­niors. “There were mo­ments of chaos and it begged the ques­tion, ‘Who is re­al­ly run­ning this?’”

It was ini­tial­ly meant for an­oth­er artiste but even­tu­al­ly got in­to the right hands.

Snakey, 32, has been in the mu­sic in­dus­try for the past 14 years. He re­called col­lege days when he would per­form for fun with some friends.

“Me and the boys would be clash­ing, beat­ing ta­bles, beat­ing buck­ets and singing,” he said.

But some­one told him he should con­sid­er tak­ing mu­sic se­ri­ous­ly and con­nect­ed him with Aird.

They’ve been work­ing to­geth­er since then, re­leas­ing songs like Turn Up, For­ev­er, Wicked and oth­ers.

Fast-for­ward to 2025. Mo­ments af­ter Snakey per­formed in the Pow­er So­ca Monarch pre­lim­i­nar­ies, Aird called to con­grat­u­late him on his per­for­mance.

“He said, ‘I have some­thing for you for next year.’ The same night, he sent the de­mo and I was like, ‘Bro, why the hell you didn’t send me this be­fore?’ I felt the dam­age a chune like that could do.”

But Aird’s re­sponse was sim­ply: God and time.

A four-time semi­fi­nal­ist, it was this song that would take Snakey to the fi­nals for the first time. Ad­mit­ted­ly, he said, it “was not an easy road at all,” as it was filled with a lot of work and sac­ri­fices.

In ad­di­tion to be­ing a so­ca artiste, he is al­so a po­lice con­sta­ble in the Roy­al Grena­da Po­lice Force. Aird, who is al­so his man­ag­er, ex­plained that Snakey al­ready had a bit of a “so­cial me­dia buzz” for his polic­ing style.

“He has been a great role mod­el, es­pe­cial­ly with the lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and cour­tesy he showed to the pub­lic.”

So they cap­i­talised on that hype through the mu­sic.

On Bac­cha­nal Fri­day night, sev­er­al peo­ple in the au­di­ence sport­ed their cap­tain hats, locked in and ready for the per­for­mance. Fire­works lit up the sky as crew mem­bers in­vad­ed the stage on their ship, and in some play­ful ban­ter, the ship was named MV Bless­ing. Mud­dy, the 2025 Pow­er So­ca Monarch cham­pi­on, en­tered this year with a song ti­tled Next Bless­ing.

The crowd went wild when Snakey greet­ed them as the in­stru­men­tal be­gan. Flares, rags, flags—and any item peo­ple could find—were be­ing thrown in­to the air or waved around. This on­ly in­ten­si­fied af­ter he de­liv­ered the song’s open­ing line, “It’s go­ing down.”

He end­ed the per­for­mance by hop­ping in­to a “boat” in the crowd and sail­ing away.

Snakey said he was filled with joy up­on see­ing the crowd’s re­sponse.

“To see the sta­di­um rock from left to right and lit­er­al­ly see­ing over 20,000 peo­ple’s hands in the air? That was amaz­ing.”

Aird de­signed and con­cep­tu­alised el­e­ments of the per­for­mance, as he al­so does stage pro­duc­tion.

“He is more than a pro­duc­er and a man­ag­er to me, he’s a re­al broth­er and he mo­ti­vat­ed me a lot. I told him, ‘I must give you a crown be­cause I see the ef­fort and sac­ri­fice you made for me to be in this po­si­tion now,’” Snakey said.

And he did.

He de­throned Mud­dy to be­come the 2026 cham­pi­on.

When the re­sults were post­ed on­line, many T&T artistes re­post­ed them, in­clud­ing La­dy La­va and Yung Bred­da. Lo­cal ra­dio sta­tions have al­so been giv­ing the track air­play, and it even earned a nod from so­ca star Machel Mon­tano.

In an In­sta­gram video re­act­ing to 2026 Grena­da so­ca, Mon­tano said Rag­ing Seas is “go­ing to be big in Trinidad.”

Aird shared it to his sto­ry with the cap­tion, “And to know that I chan­neled my in­ner Machel when I was writ­ing.”

He re­called, “I re­mem­ber I was just sit­ting in stu­dio think­ing about (the song) and I heard a voice say, ‘It can­not be stopped.’”

It was from that mo­ment that his mind be­came at ease. And so said, so done.

He added that in ad­di­tion to his own suc­cess­es, he en­joys help­ing oth­ers.

“I’m very big on de­vel­op­ing tal­ent. I’m some­one who be­lieves in nur­tur­ing and guid­ing and get­ting re­sults out of peo­ple and chang­ing their lives.”

As for Snakey, he said while he isn’t ex­act­ly the most ex­citable or “fussy” guy, he is ex­treme­ly grate­ful to his team and sup­port­ers.