Nikita is showing no signs of tiring as the photographer makes her do pose after pose – on a mossy rock, lying on a tree branch and jumping in the surf at the beach by the Boatyard.
The singer had flown in from Trinidad the Thursday, performed Friday night at Naniki Jazz and was up early Saturday morning. When we arrived at her house she was already dressed in the first outfit, hair and make-up in place but no team was there.
“I did the make-up myself but my hair was done by Sandra Reid at Options Hair Salon for the show,” she said, showing off her cute short cut while her brother Jabari tries to hold Syd, the ten-month-old pup that kept smelling our feet.
She grew up as Nikita Browne from Eden Lodge, attending The Lodge School. Her musical career started at a young age, singing with her older cousins at their preschool graduation as dictated by her grandmother.
Nikita comes from a musical family – The Leacocks.
“I always have the biggest smile when I talk about my family. My family is my world. They mean so much to me and growing up in a musical family has been the biggest blessing in my life. The Leacock family is huge and extremely close and as you could imagine, every family gathering is a full-on musical . . . we always find a reason to sing,” she said, laughing.
“It all started with both my grandparents being choir masters and with seven boys and four girls of their own, they naturally became a mini choir which grew bigger and bigger as the family expanded.”
Nikita made special mention of aunt Carolyn Leacock who she would watch perform at her shows at Island Inn. Her parents John and Veronica Browne (who just celebrated 29 years of marriage) were also in a folk group called The Ellerslie Folk Chorale and sometimes she would be the only child in the group so they eventually developed a children’s division “School of Performing Arts”.
“That’s where I gained most of my experience onstage. We performed everywhere, entering NIFCA every year and it taught me a lot in terms of use of stage, microphone technique, everything.”
She started entering competitions and performing at various showcases, at church and at school, eventually joining a band with Shane Forrester called IOP and that opened up a new chapter.
“It taught me a lot more of the music industry as a business, how to write set lists, how to work with musicians and how to be an all-round entertainer. During that time I sang background vocals for a lot of local artists in studio and live from Aja, Toni Norville, Livvi Franc, J-Co, Arturo Tappin and the list can go on.”
Growing up with mostly R&B/soul and gospel music (“Whitney Houston is my biggest influence and of course I can’t forget Anita Baker, Chaka Khan, Toni Braxton, Mariah Carey, Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley”), Nikita wanted to pull away from the background to be a solo performer and as Niki Nicole she became a staple on the hotel circuit and a resident performer at the Sandy Lane Hotel, meeting and performing for a lot of greats – Simon Cowell, Patti Labelle and most recently Marc Anthony.
Most people would know her from the all-female showcase Honey Jam Barbados, where she would give goosebump renditions of Whitney’s and Beyoncé’s songs as she vividly remembers childhood memories of standing on top of the coffee table with a comb or brush as her microphone singing One Moment In Time and I Have Nothing to her dolls and teddy bears.
On to soca
Last year under the Marville management group, many would have seen Nikita emerge on the soca scene and perform at various events, a move that surprised many who were used to hearing her sing R&B and soul. She travelled last year to perform at various events in Trinidad and the Multinational Festival in Philadelphia,
“At Honey Jam, I released my first single Rising and that was my tribute to 1990s R&B/hip hop but I always wanted to achieve the fusion of R&B/soul with sounds of the Caribbean like reggae and soca, hence the soca releases in 2013 . . . . Many people have said I have moved away from R&B, to doing soca, but part of our plan to fuse both genres.
Nikita, who has lived in Brighton, St George, for the last 12 years, holds an associate degree in tourism and travel from the Hospitality Institute because “I want to spread Caribbean soul and expression to the world through my music and my voice.”
You are so passionate about music; did you ever have a different career path in mind?
“Nope, music is all I ever wanted to do,” she said adamantly.
Nikita, who also performed last year at Naniki Jazz in Antigua, said picking her songs is “a well thought-out process, as you want to showcase your voice and versatility as an artiste as much as possible. It’s extremely important that you leave the audience with a clear understanding of who you are, said the artiste who lists Beyoncé’s Listen as her favourite song to sing.”
Her songwriting skill has grown since writing her first song at age 15 called One Shot. “As you get older and you experience more, inspiration would come from what you go through in the many phases of your life whether it’s personal or through a friend and I love that I can use music as my outlet and therapy.”
Nikita is in Trinidad, working on her new release and doing some stints on the Carnival scene. “At this present moment, I’m in the studio everyday, working on my new album. R&B/reggae tracks to follow and performances at various festivals throughout the year.”
In everything there are negatives and positives and for Nikita she is loving the “opportunity to share and perform my music, travelling and meeting different people in the industry and overall doing what I love.”
On the negative, it is “extremely time-consuming and you end up missing a lot of birthdays, weddings and so on. You open yourself up to a lot of critics and artistes are very sensitive [about] their music, but it’s all worth it in the end when you meet that one fan [who] tells you how much your music means to them and that’s what I look forward to most.”
Are you where you want to be in your music career? “I’m a firm believer in everything happening for a reason and not before its time, so to answer that question, yes, I’m exactly where I need to be in my career and it’s only going to get better from here.
“I believe I’m so close to achieving all that I want in my musi, and my performance at Naniki Jazz confirmed that it’s possible. The world of music has shifted once again and all eyes are on the Caribbean. I want to be at the forefront of that movement!”
