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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Patrice brings Drue ‘back’ for concert leaving some ‘unsettled’

by

Shane Superville
520 days ago
20240209

Patrice Roberts’ ‘I Am Woman’ con­cert promised a star-stud­ded line-up of artistes on Wednes­day night. How­ev­er, one ap­pear­ance left some pa­trons pleas­ant­ly sur­prised and oth­ers un­set­tled at the event.

Roberts’ fi­ancé and fel­low so­ca artiste Ri­car­do Drue died on De­cem­ber 13, 2023, af­ter he was found un­re­spon­sive in An­tigua.

The Ah Love it Here hit­mak­er’s death prompt­ed mourn­ing in the so­ca com­mu­ni­ty across the re­gion with sev­er­al artistes and en­ter­tain­ment fig­ures of­fer­ing con­do­lences to Roberts.

Dur­ing the con­cert at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Roberts paused her per­for­mance to have a short in­ter­ac­tion with a com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed ver­sion of Drue.

Dur­ing their “con­ver­sa­tion” the dig­i­tal avatar was heard as­sur­ing Roberts that he was at peace.

“I want you to know that I am okay and I’m proud of you.

“Don’t cry for me.

“I want you to take care of your­self and con­tin­ue be­ing a great moth­er to our daugh­ter and to our boys. I love them all.

“To my fam­i­ly, friends and fans I miss you all and ap­pre­ci­ate the love you have shown.”

As footage of the video cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia, sev­er­al com­menters shared their thoughts.

One user sug­gest­ed that the trib­ute was Roberts’ way of get­ting clo­sure af­ter Drue’s death, while an­oth­er was moved by her con­tin­ued love for him.

“I find it so sweet ... she loved him and she is just ho­n­our­ing him.”

How­ev­er, oth­er users took is­sue with Roberts for us­ing Drue’s im­age and voice af­ter his death, ar­gu­ing that it was dis­taste­ful and dis­turb­ing.

“Not sure I agree with this. He is de­ceased and can’t make videos so any­thing of this kind is ir­rel­e­vant,” one com­menter opined.

An­oth­er of­fered ad­vice to the so­ca songstress.

“Let him cross over Patrice. Pulling him to this side is not do­ing his spir­it any good. Trea­sure the mem­o­ries but let that man lov­ing­ly tran­si­tion,” the poster said.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via What­sApp yes­ter­day, Roberts’ man­ag­er Adan­na As­son said the 2006 Road March win­ner was “sat­is­fied and com­fort­able” with the trib­ute.

“She (Roberts) un­der­stands that oth­ers may have dif­fer­ing opin­ions and she re­spects that,” the man­ag­er said.

As­son added that she felt the trib­ute was done re­spect­ful­ly and in­clud­ed a per­for­mance from Drue’s dancers from An­tigua.

She added that Roberts orig­i­nal­ly want­ed to pay trib­ute to Drue us­ing holo­gram tech­nol­o­gy but that was not fea­si­ble.

Even­tu­al­ly, the pro­duc­tion team with sup­port from lo­cal an­i­ma­tor and mu­sic pro­duc­er Ash­win See­gob­in through his Smash Pro­duc­tions stu­dio cre­at­ed Drue’s dig­i­tal avatar.

See­gob­in who al­so con­tributed to the re­sponse pro­vid­ed by As­son to Guardian Me­dia said the fin­ished prod­uct re­quired a com­bi­na­tion of an­i­ma­tion soft­ware to recre­ate move­ment with some in­ter­po­la­tion soft­ware us­ing Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI).

“Over 20 lay­ers were used to cre­ate a holo­graph­ic im­age. Tech­niques used in the film in­dus­try. I worked on it over the course of two weeks with re­search, test­ing, tri­al, edit­ing etc.

“The en­tire ap­proach in cre­at­ing this Dig­i­tal Avatar of Ri­car­do was to en­sure that he was de­pict­ed the way Patrice and her team want­ed it.

“I want­ed to en­sure that it was a fit­ting trib­ute.

“As much as AI was used, my abil­i­ty to cre­ate this dig­i­tal avatar is based on my back­ground in graph­ics and an­i­ma­tion,” he said.

In the so­ca fra­ter­ni­ty it­self, com­pas­sion was shown to­wards Roberts.

So­ca artiste Akeem “Preedy” Chance orig­i­nal­ly de­clined com­ment cit­ing his re­spect for Roberts and Drue, but called on the pub­lic to “look at the pos­i­tive side” of Roberts’ trib­ute.

“Any neg­a­tives should be over­looked. Every­one should try to fo­cus on the pos­i­tives rather than fo­cus on the neg­a­tive.

“They are just try­ing to cel­e­brate his life.”


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