KRISTY.RAM­NAR­INE

Kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

US-based so­ca artiste Ani­ka Berry is a fi­nal­ist in the Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­on with her hit Sad­dle on the Tilden Hall Rid­dem.

The mul­ti-chart­ing artiste is fea­tured on the Rid­dim along­side Machel Mon­tano, Lyrikal, Yung Bred­da, Voice, and Mot­to.

“I’m tru­ly ho­n­oured to be a fi­nal­ist for the Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­on,” she said. ‘This means so much to me, and I’m grate­ful for all the love and sup­port dur­ing each round. Trinidad has been miss­ing the com­pe­ti­tion as­pect for four years, so with it be­ing back, the ex­cite­ment is def­i­nite­ly there. Big re­spect to all the oth­er amaz­ing artistes in the com­pe­ti­tion. So­ca is the re­al win­ner here.”

The en­ter­tain­er, who was born in New York, made her break­through in 2022 with her sin­gle Jam­min. “I have been singing so­ca for the past four years, but I have al­ways been on the stage do­ing mu­si­cals and pageants since I was in my teens,” she said.

“I start­ed off singing R&B, but then I re­alised that what is nat­ur­al for me is so­ca. My fam­i­ly is from Trinidad, and I grew up lis­ten­ing to ca­lyp­so. It was just nat­ur­al for me to sing what made sense, what was in my blood.”

Berry, who has been vis­it­ing her fam­i­ly in San Juan, Trinidad, since child­hood, said for so­ca artistes like her and Imani Ray, break­ing ground in the lo­cal mu­sic in­dus­try has been dif­fi­cult.

“It makes a dif­fer­ence when you get per­son­al with peo­ple,” she said. “Be­ing over­seas, it’s kind of hard. Be­sides, like so­cial me­dia, it’s hard to get that con­nec­tion for pro­mot­ers to get to know who I am. Our ad­van­tage is that we have so­cial me­dia.

“My plat­form does well with telling peo­ple around the world who Ani­ka Berry is and what she does. I think we’re do­ing a good bal­ance now of tar­get­ing my au­di­ence in Trinidad when I’m not in the coun­try, and then when I am here, I am do­ing the ground­work to put the face and In­sta­gram to­geth­er.”

While pen­e­trat­ing the lo­cal so­ca scene took some time, the en­ter­tain­er’s mu­sic has made it to the Amer­i­can, Cana­di­an and Eu­ro­pean Reg­gae Charts with four Top 10 place­ments. She has al­so re­ceived fre­quent ra­dio play on some of the world’s biggest ra­dio sta­tions.

“I’ve been work­ing very hard for the past four years with so­ca,” she said. “I am part of the Record­ing Acad­e­my, which is the Gram­mys, so I think that my work is re­al­ly start­ing to show it­self. My man­age­ment, Isi­ah Phillip has re­al­ly been mould­ing Ani­ka Berry. It’s been a great ex­pe­ri­ence; I’m ex­cit­ed about the jour­ney ... I just got to re­mem­ber to have fun no mat­ter what.”

Berry is a reg­is­tered nurse in Philadel­phia and is the moth­er of a daugh­ter, La­iah, who will be three on Car­ni­val Mon­day.

“Some­times I go right in­to re­hearsals af­ter a 12-hour shift,” she said. “I’m work­ing on an al­bum as well, so some­times I’ll go to work, then go home, then to the stu­dio. It’s a lot of time and ef­fort. When do I sleep? That is the ques­tion.”

Be­fore com­ing to Trinidad for the 2025 Car­ni­val sea­son, Berry was on a mis­sion to make her name a house­hold one. “I just hope that my mu­sic would be heard. When I got here, I re­alised Sad­dle was be­ing played,” she said.

“That was my pri­ma­ry goal, and I think I su­per ex­ceed­ed that goal. And now I am a fi­nal­ist in the Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­on. I was not pre­pared for the mag­ni­tude of what Sad­dle is and what it’s be­com­ing, so by the end of the sea­son I know it’s go­ing to be big­ger. I’m just rid­ing the wave right now to see where every­thing is go­ing. I can’t wait; I’m ex­cit­ed.”

The en­ter­tain­er said Car­ni­val 2025 was just an an­chor for what’s to come. She al­ready has a packed year of book­ings with up­com­ing per­for­mances in Mi­a­mi, New York, Lon­don, and Mal­ta.

Ani­ka Berry plans to con­tin­ue push­ing the art­form glob­al­ly and hopes to be one of the in­dus­tries top so­ca artiste.

Four years in­to her so­ca ca­reer, Ani­ka Berry be­lieves she has found her break­out song. The singer, who proud­ly calls her­self “D Sweet­est Berry,” has un­der her belt songs like Gin­ger, Lash Up, Jam­min, AT, Ro­mance, among oth­ers, while she is grad­u­al­ly build­ing her cat­a­logue.

In a 2023 news­pa­per in­ter­view, she de­scribed her sound as “old-school” wo­ven with new-era flavours.” And Sad­dle is a per­fect ex­am­ple of this sound. Ja­son “Shaft” Bish­op wrote it, and De Red Boyz pro­duced the en­tire rid­dim.

She ac­tu­al­ly got the de­mo and rid­dim while at her main job as a nurse. Bish­op, who she has been work­ing with since 2022, told her she had two days to send back a record­ing.

“We were al­so work­ing on an­oth­er un­re­leased song, then he sent this. And I thought, ‘How am I sup­posed to learn this in two days?’” she re­called, laugh­ing.

“Nor­mal­ly, I take a week to re­al­ly learn a song. But for some rea­son, the song just stuck with me im­me­di­ate­ly. I record­ed it the next day; I felt com­fort­able with it, and I had to de­liv­er it.” Up­on sub­mit­ting it, she thought the rest of the team would re­quest “a few tweaks here and there … But they took it right away.”

Achieve­ments

* US iTunes reg­gae chart #2-Waist­line Dis­trac­tion

* US iTunes reg­gae chart #3-Gin­ger

* US iTunes reg­gae chart #9-Lash Up

* US iTunes reg­gae chart #13-Jam­min

* US iTunes reg­gae chart #27-Lash Up

* Cana­da iTunes reg­gae chart #48-Lash Up

* 2021 Team So­ca Ris­ing So­ca Artiste of the Year nom­i­nee

* 2023 Caribbean Elite Best New So­ca Artiste nom­i­nee

* 2024 CEM Break­through Artiste (March)