Carisa Lee

Re­porter

Carisa.Lee@cnc3.co.tt

Al­though he’s still out of the coun­try, so­ca artiste Kern “Trinidad Kil­la” Joseph has qual­i­fied for the se­mi-fi­nals of the Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­on com­pe­ti­tion at the Na­pari­ma Bowl Am­phithe­atre, San Fer­nan­do, on Sun­day. How­ev­er, he is yet to con­firm with or­gan­is­ers whether he'll be here to ful­fil his oblig­a­tion to the com­pe­ti­tion.

Dur­ing the draw­ing for the or­der of per­for­mances at GML Labs, Guardian Me­dia Build­ing, St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive se­lect­ed po­si­tion num­ber sev­en for the Es­ki­mo singer.

“I guess he’s still out in the cold,” event di­rec­tor Jerome “Rome” Pre­cil­la joked at the time.

But Joseph's qual­i­fi­ca­tion raised ques­tions among those present, as the event is not on­ly a com­pe­ti­tion but a re­al­i­ty tele­vi­sion show that re­quires par­tic­i­pants' pres­ence in the days ahead of Sun­day.

Pre­cil­la ad­mit­ted it pre­sent­ed a unique sit­u­a­tion.

“Trinidad Kil­la's rep­re­sen­ta­tive will have to let us know in terms of the or­gan­i­sa­tion... as to what will take place,” he said.

Pre­cil­la said like most of the se­mi-fi­nal­ists, Joseph au­di­tioned vir­tu­al­ly and was se­lect­ed but made it clear the singer has to be present on Sun­day.

“I do not know Trinidad Kil­la’s im­mi­gra­tion sta­tus, it’s not our con­cern, all we know is that he must be phys­i­cal­ly present there,” he said.

Con­tact­ed via What­sApp yes­ter­day on whether he will be present for Sun­day’s se­mi-fi­nal, Joseph said he did not want to let the "cat out of the bag" but said his 2025 so­ca Es­ki­mo re­minds him of how much he miss­es home.

“My mes­sage to Trinidad and To­ba­go, I love you all from the bot­tom of my heart. Every day I get up and lis­ten Es­ki­mo and cry, I miss home so much but every­thing hap­pened for a rea­son...But soon link up,” he said.

So­ca artiste Melick Bap­tiste re­mains on re­serve un­til Trinidad Kil­la’s han­dlers con­firm his at­ten­dance, but the “Take Bam­boo” singer is not sure he should wait around, as he has a busy sea­son.

“We will ne­go­ti­ate if it makes sense to do it still or not be­cause, at the same time, it is time too and time is pre­cious to you be­cause I have a bar busi­ness, as well as we have plen­ty of book­ings this week full out, so it’s like to push away stuff to do some­thing and it’s not even too sure,” he Bap­tiste said of his sta­tus in the com­pe­ti­tion.

He ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment at mak­ing the semis di­rect­ly.

“To be in a re­serve po­si­tion know­ing that this song, peo­ple say­ing, I won’t say it, peo­ple that I have so much of a great song and then still not even be­ing a foot in­side, it kind of dis­ap­point­ing to me,” he said.

Bap­tiste and Heav­en “Snakey” Charles qual­i­fied as re­serves for the semi­fi­nals. How­ev­er, Snakey got a semi­fi­nal spot af­ter Do­mini­ca's Gael Jno-Bap­tiste, whose “Some­one Else” is a hit this sea­son, pulled out of the com­pe­ti­tion.

“I hap­py now to feel con­fi­dent that al­right, I am in the semis of­fi­cial­ly,” Charles, who will now per­form in po­si­tion num­ber 14 on Sun­day, said.

He ap­pre­ci­ates the re­al­i­ty el­e­ment of the com­pe­ti­tion.

“I think it works in uni­son with my be­lief, fol­low­ing God does show you pa­tience is one of the most im­por­tant things, I think be­ing on the re­serve first gave me a chance to think and re­flect,” he said.

The com­pe­ti­tion has two cat­e­gories, one for the youth with a first prize of $200,000 and the main event, where the win­ner will take home one mil­lion dol­lars.

The fi­nals are card­ed for Feb­ru­ary 20 at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah.

(Se­mi-fi­nal draw)

1. Kris Ken­ndy

2. Ju­by

3. Bla­ka Dan

4. Or­lan­do Oc­tave

5. GI

6. Iw­er George

7. Trinidad Kil­la

8. Nes­sa Prep­py

9. Ding Dong

10. Yung Bred­da

11. Preedy

12. Imani Ray

13. Ani­ka Berry

14. Snakey

15. Dash

16. Nailah Black­man

17. An­thonell Bra­vo

18. Jadel

19. Cas­sell

20. Swap­pi

Re­serve: Melick Bap­tiste

Youth Con­test

1 Verrse

2 Su­cre

3 She­quan

4 Seyi

5 Ju­ni­ah Li­fa

6 Aaron Dun­can

7 Paris Coutain

8 Kristi­na James

9 Sack­ie

10 Chris­to

Re­serve Sadaeya