THEY HAVE BEEN jamming and dominating airwaves across the region since the turn of the year, but last Friday it only took one member of the four-man group Ultimate Rejects to steal the show at Gimme Soca with the mega hit Full Extreme.
Front-man MX Prime from Trinidad barely made it to the end of the first verse before the tune was pulled up and restarted. And this was repeated about ten times afterwards so the hundreds in attendance had plenty opportunity to sing the hook, “We jamming still,” solidifying why it claimed the 2017 Road March title during Trinidad Carnival.
His performance stood out on an otherwise lukewarm show, which featured numerous other acts from Barbados and across the region.
The show started two hours late at popular party spot Daiquiri Beach, Pirates Cove, Bay Street, but that allowed organisers time to fill up the venue.
It was a first time back in Barbados for some of the acts, including Derek Pereira, also known as Dawg E Slaughter or Tron, who performed De Tribute – Jook and Jook, Ricky T, who also performed the crowd favourite Freaky Girls and the show’s emcee JW, noted for action-song Palance.
His performance of the 2010 was nostalgic and was better received by the audience than his numerous attempts to be comedic.
However, the impact of bashment soca was no laughing matter as many of the local acts were crowd-pleasers with their dibby tunes.
Scrilla was the first act on stage and he appeared just after 1 a.m., performing songs such as Drop De Bumpa, Mek Bumpa Go Round, and his signature hit Gyal Drop.
Mid-performance he invited fellow artiste Coopa Dan to the stage (he did Champion Gal), and this trend continued throughout the rest of the show as the crowd had no problems receiving Marzville’s execution of Bang Bim or his introduction of Stabby, who performed Peep Back. But they were not too keen on his début of new track Tic Toc, which features Trini act Problem Child.
Likewise, Stiffy shared the stage with Jagwa and they performed Bus Crawl. The 2016 Bashment Soca king then also performed many of his hits, including Maintenance Man, Eyelid, Squat and Tek Off Something. He looked shocked when people in the audience began to throw their jewellery on stage.
Back-to-back International Soca Monarch Voice sang Cheers to Life and Far From Finished, Lyrikal did Cloud 9 and Dip and Roll and Skinny Fabulous, the show closer, ended his set with Duracell.
Though entertaining, the show gave a sense of repetition throughout and as is customary many of the artistes who managed to make it past 4 a.m. were welcomed back to the stage to sing snippets of a song. (TG)
