Poetic Injustice? A Marxist Critique of Ultimate Rejects’ “Full Extreme”

In 2008/9, SALISES hosted “Is Calypso Dying?” forum at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus. Panelists included Singing Francine, Elizabeth Montano, Brother Resistance and Dr. Louis Regis. Dr. Regis’ contributions stimulated the most responses from attendees. He asserted that soca music did not explicitly express a political consciousness as calypso music had. Praising a few and more prominent examples such as Bunji Garlin for their lyricism, Dr. Regis angered the audience in what appeared to be his dismissiveness of the genre. To this day, he remembers the heated environment he helped create at that panel discussion. I disagreed with him then and now. His analysis was not “wrong”; an interpretation of soca through the literary canon of calypso blinds anyone from a number of its political commentary and discourses.

In 2017, Machel Montano and Bunji Garlin’s “Busss Head’, Dloxx and Machel Montano’s “Take It Down,” Voice’s “Far From Finished”and others highlight the capacity of artistes to weigh in on current social and political matters in their own way. Similarly, “Full Extreme” by the Ultimate Rejects shows that soca music is a critical site to study ideological contestations and circulation as our society takes shape. Full Extreme is an escapist call in Carnival that reflects our contemporary mood of political disconnection and nihilism.

The story of the song is simple: the Ultimate Rejects are clearing the way to celebrate carnival with high spirits as a new force in Trinidad and Tobago. The possibility of social decay resembling looting that followed the 1990 coup d’état (“the city could bun down”/”de building could fall down”) and economic failure (“treasury could bun down”/”economy could fall down”) are not enough to stop the revelry (“Recession /Doh bother we /Promote a fete/And you will see/And we go party/Til’ the full extreme/And light it up/With kerosene”).

Ultimate Rejects expose the pitfalls of a “Carnival mentality” (the term popularised by Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime Minister of Singapore but also alluded to by the late Dr. Eric Williams). The Carnival mentality refers to an unproductive work ethic that condemns the economy to backwardness. It is also used to speak to the inevitability of failure for political resistance movements which struggle to sustain themselves due to this mentality of Trinbagonians.

Full Extreme is a part of a tradition that weighs the seriousness of social problems and the lure of entertainment in Carnival. Brother Valentino’s ‘Dis Place Nice’ stands as a classic among all:

“Three quarter of a million of people
cannot get up and do something bout de struggle
But they plan for the next holiday
To fete their lives away
And forgettin’ that they own the soil
Of which their fore-parents toiled…
For the people who form the constitution laws
For the oppressors and foreign investors…”

Unlike the Ultimate Rejects, Valentino marks the undercurrent of discontent and resistance:

“But ah hear some people talkin’ bout a revolution day, change is on the way”

Although listeners and fete-goers know MX Prime (Maximus Dan) and the Ultimate Rejects are “conscious” soca artistes who produce lyrical content and positive messaging in their songs, this reputation makes us look past how ‘Full Extreme’ negates economic decline with entertainment, the challenges of youth apathy, and dispossession with escape.

Is ‘Full Extreme’  interested in working class and/or popular liberation (or offering us a truth about it)?

Instead, it promotes a drift from political action. In a society where the rich become richer and the poor become poorer, the refrain “we jammin’ still” serves as a stage command to accept the status quo. In our culture, we must encourage our people to jam, but we must also communicate a politics that cultivates desire through the idea of solidarity, against alienation and individualism, and a movement in carnival that reconstitutes current economic and social relations.

Perhaps it is only MX Prime, once Maximus Dan, who can deliver this message with  success. He represents merit and incorruptibility as he represents authority and diversion. This song is a form of poetic injustice; it rises in the face of an economy shrinking by 4.5%, austerity cuts, a mountain of homicides and domestic violence cases, and offers nihilism as a response.

The choice, for the Ultimate Rejects, is to celebrate and ignore problems. This song fits well with the elitist shift in carnival to more exclusive and isolated all-inclusive experiences separated from the wider context of political and social life. The song is a depoliticised complaint about the economic recession and alienation.

The Ultimate Rejects’ ‘Full Extreme’ has proven the critics of soca wrong – the music has a message!

As a people, our job is to deconstruct the message and determine its utility as a way of thinking about our culture. I draw great pleasure from seeing the return of Maximus Dan with the visibility and respect he commanded in the early 2000s. I do think however, that the politics of this song also represents his physical and stage transformation to MX Prime. In ‘Full Extreme’, the Ultimate Rejects ultimately defend, not defect from the status quo and the current economic order that maligns so many young people who listen, love and jammin’ still to the song.

In this “recession soca,” am I the one who is missing soca’s new party? Was Ultimate Rejects working with irony here? Did MX Prime/Maximus Dan sneak his messages about our love for fete and bachannal while running away from the social and economic hardships in our faces?

At least, we can take pride in knowing that the calypso is not ‘dead’. It is here with us, in our soca music.

So make way for the U
make way for R

Tell them I feeling good
Like a new machine
Like morning dew
Fresh on de scene
And we go party
To the full extreme
And light it up
With gasoline

O Lord, the city could bun down
We jammin’ still
We jammin’ still
De building could fall down
We jammin’ still
We jammin’ still

Just hold them and wuk dem
Hold them and wuk dem
Hold them and wuk dem
Just hold them and wuk dem
Hold them and wuk dem
Hold them and wuk dem

No, we don’t business, woi
No, we don’t business
We get on like we don’t business
We get on like we don’t business
Free up like yuh doh business
Free up like yuh doh business, woi
No, we don’t business, woi
No, we don’t business

Recession
Doh bother we
Promote a fete
And you will see
And we go party
Til’ the full extreme
And light it up
With kerosene

The treasury could bun down
We jammin’ still
We jammin’ still
Economy could fall down
We jammin’ still
We jammin’!