KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

Ba­jan so­ca artiste Ru­pee’s (Ru­pert Clarke) Tempt­ed to Touch has been cer­ti­fied gold by the Record­ing In­dus­try As­so­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca (RI­AA).

The RI­AA has ho­n­oured mu­sic’s best through its Gold and Plat­inum Awards Pro­gramme for the past 60 years. When an artiste earns a Gold and Plat­inum cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, they join the ranks of an elite group of beloved mu­si­cians.

The 2004 hit track Tempt­ed to Touch was in­clud­ed on Bill­board’s 12 Best Dance­hall and Reg­gae­ton Cho­rus­es of the 21st Cen­tu­ry at num­ber five. The song reached num­ber 44 on the UK Sin­gles Chart and num­ber 39 on the US Bill­board Hot 100.

“Nat­u­ral­ly, get­ting in­to mu­sic, there are cer­tain goals that you set for your­self,” said Ru­pee.

“Bill­board Charts suc­cess: I made it to Hot 100 twice. A Gram­my, which is still a lit­tle elu­sive, could hap­pen if not for me, I can con­tribute via writ­ing. A Gold record or a Plat­inum record by the RI­AA. That re­cent­ly hap­pened. Tempt­ed to Touch has re­cent­ly been cer­ti­fied gold. We’re wait­ing on the plaques to make it of­fi­cial.”

His sign­ing to At­lantic Records was an­oth­er ma­jor ac­com­plish­ment.

“An­oth­er mon­u­men­tal part of my life and some­thing that I am ex­treme­ly proud to ac­com­plish. That was def­i­nite­ly a bless­ing,” he said.

“The roll­out and sched­ule they had in terms of push­ing the sin­gle was a crazy sched­ule. Of course, peo­ple on the out­side think it’s a bed of ros­es, and you have your bed made for you. It’s non-stop hard work; a lot of the shows you are do­ing are ac­tu­al­ly for free, but you have to put in the hard work and make sac­ri­fices.

“And of course, af­ter be­ing signed, I couldn’t be as avail­able to Trinidad or Bar­ba­dos Crop Over as of­ten as I would have been be­fore be­ing signed. At the end of the day, I saw it as me rep­re­sent­ing the Caribbean as a whole, rep­re­sent­ing Bar­ba­dos, and putting the work in to al­low oth­ers to walk through.”

Born to a Ba­jan fa­ther and a Ger­man moth­er in Ger­many, Ru­pee lat­er mi­grat­ed to Bar­ba­dos with his par­ents. Ru­pee emerged on the lo­cal so­ca scene when he joined the pop­u­lar Ba­jan group Coal­ishun, per­form­ing song hits like Ms Thun­dah and Ice Cream.

Dur­ing that time he worked as a graph­ic artiste with Mc­Cann Er­ick­son, a job he lat­er gave up to be­come a full-time en­ter­tain­er in 2000. The Ba­jan artiste, who first per­formed in Trinidad in 1996, knew in or­der to im­merse him­self ful­ly in the world of so­ca he had to be part of Trinidad Car­ni­val.

In the ear­ly 2000s, Ru­pee was one of the head­line acts for the pop­u­lar school tour run by the now de­funct ur­ban ra­dio sta­tion 98.9 FM which was led by O’Bri­an Haynes. Week af­ter week Ru­pee head­ed to var­i­ous schools in T&T to per­form.

“School tour was ab­solute­ly phe­nom­e­nal and a big part of who I am,” he said. “Those days are for­ev­er etched in my mem­o­ry; we got footage of them. Fans come with fold­ers with clip­pings and pho­tos from those days, posters I would have signed be­cause back then I would have moved with posters I would have de­signed for the kids. Those were re­al­ly spe­cial days to me.”

The artiste who per­formed hit af­ter hit, in­clud­ing Blame it on de Mu­sic, al­so made the ex­pe­ri­ence spe­cial for his fans.

“I would have been the one to stay back, in­ter­act with the kids, and sign posters for hours with my broth­er Dex­ter and team,” he added.

“I have peo­ple who would come up to me and say, ‘Ru­pee, re­mem­ber when you came to my school back in the day? They are now adults in the par­ties I am singing at, and they them­selves are chil­dren who grew up on my mu­sic too, whose par­ents would play.”

The artist cred­it­ed his fans as the foun­da­tion of his iden­ti­ty and work.

“At the end of the day, if fans don’t lis­ten to the mu­sic, if they don’t spread it, you don’t ex­ist,” he said. “I am al­ways cog­nisant of the fact that they are the nu­cle­us of who I am. They al­low me to put food on my ta­ble; they al­low me to feed my fam­i­ly.”

He had the fol­low­ing ad­vice for young and up­com­ing artistes in the busi­ness: “I see some artistes when fans ap­proach them; they are very stand­off­ish, push them away, and re­ject them. Me, I am nev­er that.The fan does not need to know what kind of day you are hav­ing; all the fan needs to know is that they’ve been there for you and you are there for them.

“Now with so­cial me­dia and new lev­els of ways to in­ter­act with the fans, it takes it to an­oth­er lev­el of un­der­stand­ing. I am eter­nal­ly grate­ful. I got fans who have been with me for the en­tire jour­ney, and so­cial me­dia has opened a whole new realm as well.”

T&T re­mains very spe­cial to the artiste who con­tin­u­ous­ly sings this coun­try’s prais­es. His grand­par­ents were mar­ried in Trinidad, and his dad lived in Trinidad for a pe­ri­od of time.

“With­out a doubt, there is a bredrin in Trinidad who looks iden­ti­cal to me,” he said. “No lie. Even to the point where we were in a fete at one time, fans were ap­proach­ing us, and they could not tell who is who. They were go­ing up to him ‘O God, Ru­pee boy, we re­al­ly love his mu­sic.’”

He de­scribed his vis­its as an in­cred­i­ble ex­pe­ri­ence, one that in­volves re­turn­ing to vis­it ‘fam­i­ly’.

“Trinidad Car­ni­val nat­u­ral­ly is the mec­ca; this is a place where pro­mot­ers come from all over the world,” he said.

“Me­dia, peo­ple through­out the re­gion, peo­ple from across the globe—it’s def­i­nite­ly a fo­cal point as it re­lates to an artiste be­ing present. It’s the place you want to be to get the ex­po­sure, to get the mileage; if you want to be in that cir­cuit that en­com­pass­es all the ma­jor fetes around, Trinidad is the place to be.”

In De­cem­ber 2024, Ru­pee once again re­turned, this time for the launch of his sin­gle My Kin­da Gyal on the Pineap­ple Rid­dim done by Dwayne Bra­vo’s 47 Pro­duc­tions in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Monk Mu­sic.

“Dex­ter (Thomas) sent me the Rid­dim and im­me­di­ate­ly I fell in love with it,” he said.

“I must have writ­ten about three songs on it. It was hard for us to de­cide which one we want­ed to go with. We even­tu­al­ly chose My Kin­da Gyal. The feed­back has been over­whelm­ing; the rid­dim has been do­ing fan­tas­tic, and the launch is on par with some of the biggest la­bel launch­es I have seen in my ca­reer. Bra­vo, Monk, the team went all out.”

When he is not per­form­ing, the en­ter­tain­er spends his time in Bar­ba­dos with his two chil­dren, Chloe, 18, and Re­ece, 13. “That’s my world; every­thing re­volves around them,” he said. “They are the rea­son I do what I do. Be­ing home for the fam­i­ly is a ma­jor part of it. In terms of re­leas­ing stress.

“Phys­i­cal­ly you are al­ways in and out of the is­land. I make an ef­fort to be at home as of­ten as pos­si­ble and leave as close as I can to the gig. Trinidad Car­ni­val is one of the hard­er runs be­cause you are away for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od of time.”

An ac­tive gamer (Xbox and FI­FA), Ru­pee boast­ed that he is now in Di­vi­sion 2 while invit­ing fel­low gamers to seek him out.