ROYALTY Anti-Stush NYC 2013: Julianspromos Highlights
During Memorial Weekend 2013, Julianspromos documented ROYALTY Anti-Stush at Pulse 48 in Brooklyn, New York, capturing a night of live Soca featuring some of the artists and music driving the 2013 Carnival season.
Held on Friday, May 24, 2013, the event featured Bunji Garlin and Fay-Ann Lyons, alongside performances from K Rich and the Brooklyn-based Request Band, bringing Trinidad and Tobago Soca together with New York’s own Caribbean live-music scene.
Sheniele “Vivaa” Dodson was inside the event for Julianspromos, with the surviving footage preserving the overall ROYALTY experience as well as individual performances and interviews with K Rich and Request Band.
ROYALTY Anti-Stush at Pulse 48
ROYALTY Anti-Stush took place at Pulse 48, located on East 48th Street in Brooklyn.
The venue had previously been known as C-PAC, the Cultural Performing Arts Center, and remained closely connected to Caribbean concerts, parties and live entertainment in Brooklyn.
Its location placed ROYALTY directly within one of New York’s largest Caribbean communities during Memorial Weekend, when the city’s Soca calendar traditionally becomes particularly active.
The event brought visiting Trinidad and Tobago artists together with New York-based performers and Caribbean audiences in an environment built around live music rather than simply a DJ-driven fete.
Bunji Garlin and Fay-Ann Lyons
The headline footage captures Bunji Garlin and Fay-Ann Lyons, one of Soca’s most recognizable musical couples, during an especially important year in their careers.
Both artists had entered 2013 with strong Carnival music.
Fay-Ann’s releases included “De Stage Open,” “Eff” and “We Doing This Owah,” while Bunji was carrying a record that would eventually become one of the most internationally recognized Soca songs of the decade.
That record was “Differentology.”
Only a few months before ROYALTY, Bunji and Fay-Ann had been performing the same 2013 material throughout Trinidad Carnival and across the regional Carnival circuit.
The Year of “Differentology”
By May 2013, “Differentology” was already becoming one of Bunji Garlin’s defining releases.
The song had emerged during the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival season with an unconventional sound that differed from much of the faster Power Soca dominating the period.
Its distinctive guitar-driven production, memorable chorus and Bunji’s Ragga Soca delivery helped the song begin traveling beyond the traditional Carnival market.
Throughout 2013, that momentum would continue building.
“Differentology” eventually became a crossover record for Bunji, receiving increasing international media and radio attention and helping expose new audiences to Soca.
The ROYALTY footage therefore captures Bunji during the actual year that transformation was taking place.
Fay-Ann Lyons in 2013
Fay-Ann Lyons entered the event with her own extensive Carnival history.
Already a Road March and Soca Monarch champion, Fay-Ann had established herself as one of the most successful female competitors and performers in modern Soca.
Her 2013 Carnival campaign included “De Stage Open,” which reached the Power Soca Monarch semifinal stage.
By this period, Bunji and Fay-Ann were performing extensively together through the Asylum musical family while maintaining their individual catalogues and identities.
Their appearance at ROYALTY gave New York audiences access to two artists carrying some of the most recognizable Soca music from that year’s Trinidad Carnival season.
K Rich Brings “Wine Back” to Brooklyn
Another artist documented by Julianspromos was Kenneth “K Rich” Richards.
K Rich had entered the 2013 season with “Wine Back,” a Groovy Soca release produced by Precision Productions that had quickly gained attention within the Trinidad Carnival market.
The song was one of Precision Productions’ earliest releases heading into the 2013 Carnival season and helped introduce K Rich to a wider Soca audience.
“Wine Back” carried him into the 2013 International Groovy Soca Monarch semifinals, placing the emerging artist alongside many of the established names competing that year.
At ROYALTY, Julianspromos captured both his live performance and an interview with Sheniele “Vivaa” Dodson.
The footage documents K Rich performing “Wine Back” in Brooklyn only months after the song had been part of Trinidad Carnival 2013.
For the archive, that timing matters.
Rather than preserving a later performance of an older record, Julianspromos captured K Rich while the song and his profile were still closely connected to that current Carnival season.
Request Band Represents Brooklyn Soca
ROYALTY also featured Request Band, bringing the New York-based live Soca scene directly into the event.
Based in Brooklyn, Request Band developed a sound combining Soca and Calypso with Reggae, Dancehall and other Caribbean influences.
The band had worked with and supported numerous Caribbean performers while also developing its own catalogue and reputation for energetic live performances.
That made Request Band an important part of the musical infrastructure surrounding Caribbean entertainment in New York.
Visiting artists could arrive from Trinidad, Barbados or other islands, but bands based within the diaspora helped maintain a year-round live Soca scene between Carnival seasons.
Request Band Performance and Interview
Julianspromos preserved both Request Band’s performance at ROYALTY and an interview conducted by Sheniele “Vivaa” Dodson.
The footage gives the archive a different perspective from the Bunji, Fay-Ann and K Rich material.
Rather than documenting only artists traveling into New York from the Caribbean, it captures musicians who were already part of Brooklyn’s own Soca community.
That combination reflects the reality of New York Caribbean entertainment.
The scene was built through constant interaction between visiting artists, diaspora performers, live bands, DJs, promoters, media and audiences.
Pulse 48 and Brooklyn Caribbean Nightlife
Pulse 48 was well positioned for an event such as ROYALTY.
Located at 1020 East 48th Street in Brooklyn, the venue had operated previously as C-PAC and regularly hosted Caribbean concerts and parties.
Its Brooklyn location placed live Caribbean entertainment directly within the communities supporting the music year-round.
Venues like Pulse 48 served an important role in the early 2010s.
They gave established international Soca performers, emerging artists and New York-based bands opportunities to appear on the same stage without requiring the scale of an arena or major outdoor festival.
ROYALTY was part of that ecosystem.
Sheniele “Vivaa” Dodson on Media
By May 2013, Sheniele “Vivaa” Dodson had become an established part of Julianspromos’ on-location event coverage.
The ROYALTY footage shows that role extending beyond hosting a general event recap.
Her interviews with K Rich and Request Band allowed the coverage to move between performance footage and direct artist conversations.
That approach had become increasingly important to Julianspromos.
Instead of simply recording what happened onstage, the platform was building an archive around the people creating the music as well.
From Carnival to New York
The timing of ROYALTY also illustrates the international cycle of Soca music.
Trinidad Carnival had ended only a few months earlier.
Artists then carried the season’s music into events throughout North America, Europe and other Caribbean markets as the international Carnival calendar continued.
Bunji was traveling with “Differentology.”
Fay-Ann was carrying her 2013 catalogue.
K Rich was performing “Wine Back.”
New York audiences were therefore experiencing music that had only recently been competing for attention on the road and inside fetes in Trinidad.
Three Videos, One Night
Three surviving Julianspromos videos now help reconstruct ROYALTY Anti-Stush.
The main highlights capture Bunji Garlin, Fay-Ann Lyons and the wider atmosphere of the event.
The K Rich footage preserves both his “Wine Back” performance and interview with Vivaa.
The Request Band video documents the Brooklyn live band and its own conversation with Vivaa.
Placed together, the videos provide a much fuller record than any individual clip could offer.
They capture established Soca stars, an emerging Trinidad artist and a New York-based Caribbean band all within the same event.
From the Julianspromos Archives
ROYALTY Anti-Stush NYC 2013: Julianspromos Highlights brings three surviving pieces of original coverage together into one historical feature.
Held at Pulse 48 in Brooklyn on May 24, 2013, the event featured Bunji Garlin and Fay-Ann Lyons during the breakthrough year of “Differentology,” K Rich performing his 2013 Carnival release “Wine Back,” and Brooklyn’s Request Band representing New York’s live Soca community.
With Sheniele “Vivaa” Dodson documenting the event and interviewing K Rich and Request Band, the footage captures several sides of the Caribbean music scene that Julianspromos was covering during the early 2010s.
More than a decade later, the three videos preserve one Memorial Weekend night when Trinidad Carnival music, emerging artists and Brooklyn Soca came together under one roof.
