Ryan “DJ Private Ryan” Alexander hopes history is made with Pepper Vine and soca star Machel Montano wins his first Chutney Soca Monarch crown with a song he co-produced.
The popular DJ and producer spoke to Newsday in a face-to-face interview on February 12 about the song, working with Montano as well as future plans and the global path for calypso and soca.
If Montano does win on March 1, it will be a great accomplishment for Private Ryan as well as all involved in the project.
This is not his first time working with Montano. They collaborated in 2022 on the Touch the Ground single for the Save Soil project. He said there are other project in the works with Montano.
Pepper Vine sits atop the Bombay Tea Riddim and features Montano, Lady Lava, Drupatee and Jus Now. The song and Montano’s entry into the competition, 25 years after the celebrated Real Unity single, also with Drupatee, is poetic to Private Ryan.
“I know he is up against Rikki Jai so it is two kings. Rikki Jai is a legend but I want to be the winner,” he said.
The beat came while Private Ryan was travelling and he was looking to “create a futuristic-sounding, chutney soca-meets-Bollywood kind of vibe with energy.”
He and Montano were going through some of his beats to try to figure out what they wanted to do and came upon the Bombay Tea Riddim.
“We said, ‘This one is futuristic.’ He had the same idea as I. He said we had to figure out a way to bring it to life. We did not know who to send it to, to write anything on it. It takes a certain type of writing.”
He went into the studio with singer/songwriter Mela Caribe and did some work on it.
“I said we need something that would encourage movement and then we came up with the ‘loose waist, wuk up yuh spine, rude waist and dutty wine.’
[caption id="attachment_1139682" align="alignnone" width="1024"] DJ Private Ryan believes that the writing in soca and calypso has improved. -[/caption]
“We pitched that to Machel as the idea and then he said, ‘Okay, this is perfect.’ Then we started to piece it together.”
The team realised it was 25 years since Real Unity and Montano wanted someone who could bring some new energy to the sound. Lady Lava immediately came to Montano’s mind, Private Ryan said.
“It was a process. She was travelling and we had to pin her down in Toronto. We had to go to her to get her vocals and piece it together. That is how we got Pepper Vine.”
Raymond Ramnarine’s Rags is the other song on that riddim.
He met Ramnarine while attending 2024 Caribbean Premier League (CPL) and told him he was working on the beat and he should hear it.
Calypso in the new storytelling era
Private Ryan, like many others, has realised calypso and its derivative, soca, are in a new era.
Calypso and soca were now, “In a sense, a way of telling the stories of the streets of life, of experiences. For some, especially the youth, in terms of the era we are in now, it attracts them because they want to tell their stories.”
Artistes like Yung Bredda and others singing calypso and bein
