Meet the man behind 2026’s most played soca songs

NARIS­SA FRAS­ER

There’s a huge chance your favourite pow­er so­ca tunes for 2026 were pro­duced by the same per­son. In fact, many be­lieve he has per­fect­ed the “for­mu­la.” From Bun­ji Gar­lin’s Still A Road Man and Machel Mon­tano’s En­core, to Mi­cal Te­ja and Patrice Roberts’ Cap­i­tal, Xplic­it­Mevon (Mevon Sood­een) is pow­er­ing through the 2026 Car­ni­val sea­son.

Mu­sic lovers have been prais­ing the Diego Mar­tin pro­duc­er for his work over the past few years. His cat­a­logue in­cludes an­thems like Come Home by Nailah Black­man and Skin­ny Fab­u­lous, Anx­i­ety by Patrice Roberts, Every­time by Na­dia Bat­son and Take Me Home by Free­town Col­lec­tive. And last year, he copped his first Road March ti­tle with Mon­tano’s Pardy.

But even af­ter achiev­ing this mile­stone, he said his fo­cus this year was sim­ply on con­tin­u­ing to make good mu­sic.

“It’s all about be­ing con­sis­tent,” he said. “Rel­e­van­cy is def­i­nite­ly part of the so­cial cur­ren­cy. That in it­self is mar­ket­ing that would bring fu­ture busi­ness — and not just rel­e­vant in terms of the mu­sic in­dus­try but the wider pop­u­la­tion.”

He said all his of­fer­ings for 2026 are “fresh” as they were cre­at­ed post-Car­ni­val 2025. First up was the beat for what even­tu­al­ly be­came Still A Road Man. He cre­at­ed this around June and vo­cals were on­ly sent to him lat­er in the year. Ad­mit­ted­ly, there were cer­tain tech­ni­cal bits he was un­cer­tain about, but he trust­ed the singer’s vi­sion.

“He told me, ‘It’s about stay­ing true to my­self and this song re­al­ly speaks to that. I’m do­ing things my way,’’” Sood­een re­called.

And de­spite on­go­ing pleas from the pub­lic, Bun­ji has made it clear he will not be en­ter­ing the 2026 Road March com­pe­ti­tion. He is com­mit­ted to the song’s lyrics, “I say I done with com­pe­ti­tion, I eh fin­ished with the road.” But he has since re­mind­ed fans a song does not have to be reg­is­tered for mas­quer­aders to re­quest it to cross stages on Car­ni­val day. Asked if he, too, tried to per­suade Bun­ji to en­ter, Sood­een laugh­ing­ly said, “Every sin­gle day.”

As for Cap­i­tal, Te­ja pitched it to him in ca­su­al con­ver­sa­tion while they were both in An­guil­la in June.

“He had the idea and when we both came back in Au­gust, we end­ed up work­ing on that.” It speaks of Port of Spain be­ing “the heart ah the Car­ni­val.”

Both men wrote and pro­duced it, bring­ing Patrice on board.

En­core was the fi­nal song he worked on. He re­called the 2025 Road March prize-giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Oc­to­ber, where Mon­tano told him he al­ready had a song pre­pared to de­fend his ti­tle with.

“He was talk­ing about how next sea­son was go­ing to look for him and what he had lined up. He wasn’t look­ing for any­thing from me.”

But Sood­een, as well as Pardy co-pro­duc­er Kyle “Bad­John Re­pub­lic” Phillips and song­writer An­dre Jef­fers, fig­ured it wouldn’t hurt to pitch some­thing.

“We know Machel gets hun­dreds of songs every year but we said, ‘Let’s do some­thing for him to see if he will take it.’ I had a beat and Kyle and Jef­fers came up with some­thing… We knew we had to come good.”

Mon­tano fell in love with the track in­stant­ly, say­ing it res­onat­ed with him and cap­tured his decades of ex­pe­ri­ence as a singer.

Some pop­u­lar lines in­clude, “Front page is where leg­ends be­long but back­stage is where leg­ends are born,” and “Now we turn the mas to a mas­ter­piece.” In the cho­rus, Mon­tano psy­ches him­self up to “gih dem” per­for­mance.

“It re­al­ly was the last, last song. He record­ed it on Christ­mas night. We were late to the par­ty,” Sood­een said. But he be­lieves it all worked out. He al­so heaped prais­es on Jef­fers for the lyrics, which he called bril­liant.

Some of his oth­er songs that are do­ing well this year in­clude Love On D Road by Brave­boy, Bad Gyal by Nailah Black­man and Patrice Roberts, Steam on D Road by La­dy La­va, Sack­ie and Melick, and Par­ty Bag by Ani­ka Berry.

But there’s a par­tic­u­lar groovy tune that took over the na­tion’s air­wave —Kaya by Free­town Col­lec­tive. He said this was the re­sult of try­ing to con­vince Muham­mad Muwak­il and Lou Lyons to make a “gyal chune.”

“I told them that a lot of women see them as in­tel­lec­tu­al sex sym­bols. You al­ways hear and see women say­ing they’re very high­ly ed­u­cat­ed and fash­ion­able. So I said, ‘Let’s pur­pose­ly do a gyal chune.’”

It was in­tend­ed to be re­leased mid-2025, but sched­ul­ing woes and trav­el pushed it to Oc­to­ber. “Step out of meh dreams to meh re­al life,” Muwak­il sings be­fore adding, “She have a gov­ern­ment name but I call she good-look­ing.” The song in­stant­ly res­onat­ed with the pub­lic and the mu­sic video has since crossed 1 mil­lion views.

Typ­i­cal­ly, Sood­een al­so re­leas­es rid­dims every sea­son. But this year, he want­ed to fo­cus on “strong sin­gles.” And so said, so done. The songs are among the top 100 most-lis­tened-to tracks on Ap­ple Mu­sic in T&T and oth­er Caribbean coun­tries, and are be­ing blast­ed across the is­lands. Asked how it feels that more mem­bers of the pub­lic are now prais­ing and giv­ing cred­it to pro­duc­ers, he said it’s a great feel­ing.

He cred­it­ed his friends and fel­low pro­duc­ers Kasey Phillips (Pre­ci­sion Pro­duc­tions) and Nikho­lai Greene (NMG Mu­sic) for “paving the way” and shin­ing light on “those in­volved in the back­ground.”

He con­clud­ed, “I think that’s a re­al­ly beau­ti­ful thing to see be­cause we are the dri­ving force be­hind a lot of these songs. It feels re­al­ly good to get that recog­ni­tion.”