I met up with Blackman in Kingston last April, where she was one of many soca stars in Jamaica for Carnival in Kingston. Now she calls the land of reggae and dancehall her second home. The lyrics include the term “yardie,” a Jamaican word which Blackman deliberately inserted to establish a connection to Jamaica, the first place she performed outside of T&T. The song also signalled her intention to spread her wings across the Caribbean. “I took it hard at first, but I was like, Nailah you are trying to pay some rent, so I went back to the drawing board and asked myself, What do you want? I wanted people to know my name, so what’s better than having a song with a title that rhymes with your name?” “I wanted to come out with a pop summer song, and Anson said, No, you need to come out with a local soca/dancehall/pop song that will make you international but local at the same time,” Blackman says. “Baila Mami”, on the Parallel riddim, was a strategic move to establish Nailah as a solo artist and get her name known. “I know exactly what to do to make you popular.” Under Anson’s guidance, Nailah became the breakout star of 2017, following up her collaboration with Kees with a string of singles: “Baila Mami”, “Badish” with Jamaican rising star Shenseea, and “O Lawd Oye”. When she decided to try her hand at soca again, she was discouraged by many producers, who felt it would destroy her sound.īut producer Anson Soverall, known professionally as Anson Pro, saw her potential. And the merchandising of the Sokah brand is just one cog in Blackman’s engine, which has gathered steam towards an international career since she burst out on the soca stage in 2017 with “Workout”, a duet with Kes the Band frontman Kees Dieffenthaller.įormerly a neo-pop/alternative singer known on the underground open mic scene, Blackman participated in soca and calypso competitions in school, but hated them. As he explained it, “so” represents the soul of calypso, while “kah” comes from the Hindi word for “divine.” Shorty’s aim was to unite the two major races in T&T - Afro- and Indo-Trinbagonians - through music.īlackman took the genre back to its origins this past Carnival, when she launched her EP Sokah and its title track. “Sokah” is the original spelling of soca, the genre of music invented by her grandfather, the late Garfield Blackman - known as Lord Shorty before he found God and became Ras Shorty I. “The whole concept of Sokah is Trinidad and Tobago, so my main colours are gold, red, black and white.” The line will consist of clothing which will be repurposed with new materials, namely denim, crocus, and mesh. She doesn’t yet have a date for the launch, but the first collection will be called Everything Is Connected. So in between writing, recording, and performing, Blackman takes time to source materials and do sketches. So I want to work with people who are like-minded,” she explains - hence her support of T&T designers like the Brown Cotton label in her “O Lawd Oye” video.īlackman is putting her money where her mouth is, too, with the launch of her own fashion line called Sokah - a line formerly owned by her mother, Abbi, the eldest of the fourteen children in the Blackman clan. Why can’t we be like us? Let’s be Trinbagonian. “When I travel, I get so angry at Trinidad and Tobago - I love us, but it’s like we always want to be like somebody else. “We want to look like outsiders, outsiders want to look like us,” she says. In her videos, on stage, even on an ordinary day hanging out with friends or running errands, the twenty-year-old singer exudes a combination of star quality, youthful exuberance, and confident sexuality in her attire.įashion is a big deal for the rising star from Trinidad and Tobago, who learned to sew at a young age, and makes her own clothes. More than just determining her brand, fashion is one of the ways she plans to stamp her presence - and, by extension, that of T&T - on the international stage. One of the most striking things about Nailah Blackman is her sense of style.
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