Contributor: Francesca Hawkins. It’s impossible to miss the supersized images of MX Prime and the Ultimate Rejects blazing on new billboards at the prime entrance to the Savannah track. Erected overnight and in time for Sunday's Panorama semi-finals, the sign is positioned at the symbolic gate to the big stage. It’s yet another signal that the soca smasher “Full Extreme” continues to carry the keys to Trinidad and Tobago's Carnival 2017. From the moment of the song’s launch early in the season, the musical machine of Edghill Thomas and producers/DJs Johann Seaton, Avaron Vanloo and Joel Aming has swept across radio, dance parties, pan yards and into the wider Caribbean, leaving many other soca offerings to follow its trail. What sets “Full Extreme” apart is the song’s riveting ability to fully disrupt established notions of the soca genre. True to the soca form, here is a full-on fete-jam loaded with dance hooks and party lyrics; it’s also an incendiary commentary on the dismal state of national affairs. In every respect, these opposing points of view fuse soca’s party mandate with kaiso’s overt political tradition. Flashback to exactly 30 years ago and we find Stalin’s monarch-winning kaiso, Bun Dem (1987). In this other fire-laced musical commentary, the bard and St Peter stand together on Judgment Day deciding which despot deserves hell’s fire. This time around, the soca gives up no names for burning, offering the public imagination an open space to respond and call out any offenders it might wish to. Part of Full Extreme’s genius is the way in which it situates our collective responsibility into the lyrical mix. It’s us who “doh business”, we are the ones to “hold them and wuk them”, the kerosene and gasoline are ours to “light it up”. The chorus line “We jammin still” might just be the most used hashtag for the season and its use swings from captioning a best time in the fete, to an acidic underscore for an apparent national indifference and lack of accountability over escalating levels of social decline. Early in the season, 96.1FM’s recorded clip of Tweez, Ezel and Ishmael’s live session with MX Prime and the Ultimate Rejects floated across my feed (YouTube, published Dec 17, 2016). Tweez sets up the interview with the opener that MX has been a guest on the station “millions of times”. It’s a jaded nod to the artist’s 20 long years in the soca trenches. As the video cuts to MX Prime, we observe the artist, newly trim and lean - gone is the round baby face of his previous incarnations as Maga Dan and Maximus. Speaking wide-eyed about his collaborations with The Ultimate Rejects and their experiments with electronic dance music, little was said about the song’s lyrical potentials. By January, MX Prime was willing to concede, "This song is no longer mine. When you release a song, is everybody song” (Joanne Briggs, Guardian Newspaper, Jan 11, 2017). Image courtesy Peter Christopher, taken at Fete Royal at the Queen's Royal College, February 11. Regardless of which song eventually wins the 2017 road march title, “Full Extreme” will etch its way into musical history as an outstanding example of how lyrical/musical tricks and skills can move our often-criticized soca music towards new octaves of cultural relevance.
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