Ran­dall Mitchell, Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts is ex­tend­ing his deep­est con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly and friends of beloved So­ca artiste and song­writer, Ri­car­do Drue.

In a state­ment, Min­is­ter Mitchell af­firms Drue’s con­tri­bu­tion to the lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al cul­tur­al sec­tors.

He adds, “The So­ca fra­ter­ni­ty and in­deed the Car­ni­val com­mu­ni­ty have suf­fered a great loss with his pass­ing. His years of work as an en­ter­tain­er have un­doubt­ed­ly helped to spread the so­ca genre across the world and brought hap­pi­ness to many. He cer­tain­ly will not be for­got­ten.”

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports the so­ca artiste was rushed to the Sir Lester Bird Med­ical Cen­tre on Tues­day af­ter he was found un­re­spon­sive. He died while re­ceiv­ing treat­ment. He was 38.

Drue was the son of for­mer tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty Nico­la Bar­riteau.

He be­gan his ca­reer in his home­land of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da where he was a lead vo­cal­ist in an all-boy band, which is now de­funct.

Here in Trinidad and To­ba­go Drue was one of the front­line singers of the pop­u­lar band A Team. He al­so per­formed with Im­ij and Co and D’All Starz bands and was well known for his So­ca hits “Vagabond”, “ID (Stamp Yuh Name)” and “Pro­fes­sion­al”.

“At this point, I don’t know what to say. The A Team band is in a de­pressed mode. Ri­car­do would be missed,” said a shocked Zarin Mare­an, A Team Man­ag­er.

“His last per­for­mance with us was on Sat­ur­day night at Cen­tral Bank. He was his nor­mal, en­er­getic self.”

The singer was in Car­ni­val 2024 mode with the re­leas­es of Ah Live It Here, All Night with Ova­dose and Birth­day Suit fea­tur­ing Kevon X and Pshy­co.

Just this morn­ing Drue’s fi­ancé Pa­trise Roberts spoke on SLAM 100.5 FM where she said that Drue was so sup­port­ive, lov­ing and car­ing.

They have a daugh­ter named Lily.