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Patrice Roberts VibeZ

Sixteen tracks of Trinidadian soca from a singer who has been at the top of the form for twenty years. If your only Carnival reference is a beach advert, start here.

Patrice Roberts and the business of Carnival

Patrice Roberts is from Tobago and has been a major figure in soca since her teens, when she was singing with Machel Montano's band. She has since built one of the most consistent careers in the genre — a run of Carnival-season hits, Road March contention, and a body of work that has broadened well beyond the party record.

Soca deserves better framing than it usually gets. It emerged in Trinidad in the 1970s as calypso absorbed Indian and American influences, and it operates on an annual cycle: songs are written for Carnival, released in the season, competed over, and then either enter the canon or vanish. That structure produces an extraordinary rate of output and a genuinely competitive songwriting culture.

Roberts' particular skill is writing soca that works outside the season — songs with enough emotional substance to survive being played in March.

What to listen for

"Any Way" and "Carry On" are the essential entries — both huge in their seasons and both built on the specific soca combination of enormous energy and a lyric about perseverance.

"I Am Soca" with Kerwin Dubois is a statement of identity, and "Better Days" is the most reflective thing here.

"Like It Like This" and "Feelin' It" both feature Kes — Kes the Band, the most internationally visible Trinidadian act of the last decade — and the pairing is a good introduction to how soca collaboration works.

"Camera" with Afro B is the Afrobeats crossover, and it demonstrates how naturally soca sits alongside West African pop — unsurprising given the shared rhythmic ancestry.

"World On Fire" with DJ Private Ryan and Freetown Collective is the most musically ambitious track on the list, and "NO TIME LIKE NOW" is a multi-artist Carnival anthem featuring most of the island's biggest names.

Go deeper

Machel Montano is the essential starting point for soca generally — the genre's biggest star and its most restless innovator. Kes, Bunji Garlin, Fay-Ann Lyons and Destra Garcia are the others to know.

For the roots: Lord Kitchener and Mighty Sparrow in calypso, and Lord Shorty — later Ras Shorty I — who is generally credited with inventing soca itself.

And if any of this connects, the honest recommendation is to experience it in its proper context. Recorded soca is a shadow of what it does on a road in February.

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