Don’t expect any election-inspired social commentaries from veteran calypsonian Mr Blood this year.
The perennial finalist said singing about what transpired before, during and after General Election this year was simply not his focus for the Pic-O-De-Crop competition.
“Those who are into writing commentary will probably hone in on some of the stuff that happens during the election time. For me though, I have already got my commentaries ready. One is dealing with the problems of sexual harassment, whether it’s male or female. The other is about Barbados and Barbadians and our attitude towards Barbados and Barbadians. It’s not a politically based song.
“What happens during or after election, it will not determine what I sing. But for some people I’m quite sure they will go that route. I just don’t want to be one of those people who will just be listing off what went wrong or could be fixed and with no real solutions. Everyone will be doing that,” he said.
He was speaking to EASY magazine recently at his studio Reddhead Records in St Philip.
He said his focus this year was to put out quality music and make a great impact in the parties.
“The competition is neither here nor there for me. I will produce music that hopefully can get into the competition because that is the only real source of making your money back; so we do that. We will have to wait and see what I compete in this year. If I submit a song and it gets through to the competition, then, yes, sure I will compete. You can’t win if you don’t have a ticket,” he said while confirming that he will be a member of De Big Show again this year after performing for the first time with them last year.
In that tent is his Soka Kartel partner Mikey.
Crop Over 2016 he placed third in the Pic-O-De-Crop and second in the Party Monarch Finals.
Apart from working on his music, as is customary, Mr Blood is also working with a group of artistes, whom he referred to as the Reddhead Crew, on putting out quality music.
The group released a collection of their soca songs on May 1 this year.
“We are a family. When we launched in May, we were already working hard. We released 42 tracks. We have at least three or four more to release as time goes by. So we have been working steadily. The artistes have been really excited about the music and therefore we are excited that we will get some adequate airplay for the tracks for Crop Over,” he added.
Mr Blood said he liked the energy from the young people this year and believed they would do well.
“From their excitement, I think most of artistes are definitely going to be pushing a lot harder, making sure they are seen and heard, and I think we could have representation in all the competitions out of the camp this year. In my opinion, the music is great, the topics are good. We tried to expand on the topics this year instead of the usual bump and wine and stuff like that,” an excited Mr Blood added.
They are offering some of everything – from bashment to danceable commentary, witty to serious pace and more.
“You will hear D2.5, Chrissy D, Cameraman, Paula Dion, Jimmy Dan, Classic and Summa just to name a few.”
The surprise on the night was D2 with Beat Off Sain and a response from Nellee with Beat Off Wha Ting.
He said one of the group’s main focus was becoming more visible.
“The guys will be gearing themselves up, making sure their visibility is up because in this climate we decided that we were going to develop the visual. We will be putting out some videos, and hopefully we will be able to showcase them on all platforms,” he said.
Mr Blood also encouraged the young people to, “practise, practise practise. If you don’t put in the work, you don’t get the results.” (DB/NS)
