Party Monarch King ‘Lil Rick’ retains title

RICKEY “Lil Rick” Reid has done it again.

He retained his Party Monarch title in fine style on Sunday night at the MQI/98.1 The One Soca Royale, taking home a fully loaded Mazda 3 and $10 000.

By around 3 pm, hundreds of soca lovers were filling the venue, but had to wait four hours to see the start of the "Party Monarch" competition, which was switched this year with the "Sweet Soca Monarch". It however gave contestants in both competitions the opportunity to use pyrotechnics and other lighting to enhance their stage performances.

In addition to the versatile DJs keeping everyone entertained until the start of the show, the audience were also given a session called “Bashment Reload” just after 4 pm, which featured Hardware, Scrilla, Lady Essence and Verseewild. Bashment Soca King, Stiffy, also graced the stage before the start of the competition, with his bashment hits – which he apparently had to rush through.

First out of the blocks just after 7 pm, Lil Rick energised the crowd with his hit “Energy”, which earned him a massive 90 points ahead of Ras Iley and Grynner who amassed 62 points, to take second prize of $20 000, Mistah Dale with Soca Famaleez with 70 points and Mikey with 60 points.

In addition to bringing an energetic performance, Lil Rick made a call for the violence to cease and pleaded for more love and unity in the county. He repeated the call during his victory speech which came after midnight.

Peter Ram also rocked the crowd with his performance of “Upside Down”; with aerialists and dancers he had the massive crowd on their feet. However his intro on stage appeared to be stalled for close to a minute, with the band looping his intro and his fans wondering how this apparent delay would sit with the judges.

The dynamic duo of Darcy “Ras Iley” Small and MacDonald “Grynner” Blenman were also crowd favourites as they brought back the sweet music from a golden era of soca. With the two first appearing with “Kaiso Nursing Home”, they brought a good performance with fire breathers and firemen with hoses, as they brought fire to the stage.

Faith brought a positive message to the women in the audience with “Run It” as she highlighted the powerful women in a Cleopatra-themed presentation. She ended her presentation with Barbados’ own star athlete Akela Jones joining her on stage.

Mikey’s spectacular performance was also well-received by the audience. Adding some of the old soca music in his presentation including “Congaline” and “Dollar wine”, he also took the audience back to his early beginnings, taking off his shirt and showing his moves with some of the members of the grass skirt posse.

Newcomer Saffiyah’s nerves were understandably evident at the start of her performance of “Tun Up”. After she began to warm up, judges undoubtedly could see glimmers of the performer who rocked the stage during the semi-finals of the competition and who had fun in the process. On Sunday she seemed focused on the choreography but the strength of her vocals still shined through. In fact, the Party Monarch King singled out the talent of young performer Kayla “Saffiyah” Thorpe, who he predicted will go far and vowed to take her under his wing. (JH)