Nailah premieres on Tidal

MELISSA dOUGHTY

IF YOU go to Tidal.com, you’ll see Rap Radar on air with its guest Will Smith. Scroll further and you’ll see Ella Mai’s remix Boo’d up featuring Nicki Minaj and Quavo. Then there is the Bonnet chronicles and just beneath that there is soca artiste Nailah Blackman’s exclusive Tidal release. It is a remix of her current single Dangerous Boy featuring Tarrus Riley.

By any standards, this is a major accomplishment says her co-manager Anson Soverall. The remix was exclusively released on Tidal on Tuesday. Tidal is a subscription-based music streaming service.

Soverall added that Blackman was the first home-grown artiste to accomplish this. In a phone interview yesterday he said, “She is the first Caribbean or West Indian artiste, home-grown, to get a release on any major streaming platform. We are not talking about artiste who went away and made it big already.”

It was reported in a June 6 Newsday article that Blackman would be exclusively releasing a song on the streaming platform. This came shortly after it was announced that Blackman was nominated for the Black Entertainment Television’s (BET) Viewer’s Choice: Best New International Act on June 5. Blackman, however, did not win the award.

Soverall said of Blackman’s Tidal release, “This is a major accomplishment by any standards because even US artistes fight to get stuff like this done. The only other exclusive I see right now is Beyonce. Beyonce has a song she released exclusively as well. This is like a real major accomplishment and a milestone.”

Although Blackman did not win the BET award just being nominated was an accomplishment for the 20-year-old. Releasing exclusively on Tidal is simply another step in Blackman’s ascent to stardom, Soverall added.

“It gives a good look to follow on the heels (of the BET award) with an exclusive Tidal release as well as a Noisey magazine article,” he said. The Noisey article was written by Sharine Taylor and published on June 4. Blackman is also currently featured in Zing, LIAT’s in-flight magazine as well Caribbean Airline’s Caribbean Beat.

Soverall said there are “a couple of other international magazine releases” scheduled including one with Al Jazeera TV. She is also scheduled to do an interview with New York radio station Hot 97 among others.

He said she is also currently in talks with record labels but he was unable to name any of them due to the sensitive nature of those discussions. She has already collaborated, he added, with some Grammy-award winning producers and writers and “that music is in the works right now...”

To demonstrate Blackman’s rising stardom, Soverall said, not only is she is not booked just for Caribbean shows anymore but she is also being booked for international shows outside of the diaspora.

This, he added, “just shows we can take a home-grown artiste, who does soca and fusion, and build them alongside the big names.” Soverall said Blackman’s next releases will be international and feature some “big names”. He could not say who the big names were. Those songs should be released during the July/August period.

Blackman’s Lah Lah Land, a children’s concert, will be held this Sunday at the Queen’s Park Savannah in Port of Spain from 12 pm to 6 pm.