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Unstoppable dancehall figure Blaiz Fayah teams up with Martinician beatmaker Mikado for ‘Ring Ring’

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Following the highly acclaimed release of his album ‘Shatta Ting’, the unstoppable dancehall figure Blaiz Fayah, who performed for DJ AG live in Kings Cross this week, unveils a bonus single, ‘Ring Ring’!

With a sharp and powerful production by Martinican beatmaker Mikado (Alpha, So Coman, Ou Pani), the track combines Blaiz’s signature flow and a catchy hook written by Specta, which come together perfectly in this huge shatta track which will keep dancehall fans whining!

‘Money Pull Up’, from the album is still going viral and has already accumulated billions of views and generated more than 1 million user generated content on Tiktok in 2 months. The track earns 10k daily from a dance challenge that turned into a global trend within just a few weeks. See here.

As influencers and enthusiastic fans all around the world join the challenge of busting some serious moves to this sizzling dancehall banger, the popularity of the track has earned it the #1 spot on the reggae / dancehall chart on Shazam, over 28 million streams on Spotify with more than 400k streams in one day and the track’s video on Youtube has surpassed 9 million views. Read Blaiz’ interview about the track with Billboard here.

With his unique style, Blaiz Fayah is experiencing growing success across the globe, from Colombia to Kenya, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, and France, where he hails from. With ‘Money Pull Up’ leading his current wave of success, Blaiz currently boasts over 3 million monthly listeners and 320 million views on YouTube.

If you’re not already familiar, Blaiz Fayah emerged as a Dancehall revelation in 2018 with his hit ‘Best Gyal’, taken from the album ‘Level Up’. Between 2020 and 2023, he released the ‘Mad Ting’ series, three albums featuring collaborations with beatmakers like DJ Glad and Mafio House, with whom he has consistently delivered hits. Through this series, Blaiz Fayah showcased his diverse influences, blending elements of Dancehall, Kompa, Moombahton, Reggae, Shatta, and Zouk into his music.

Simultaneously, he has collaborated with Basshall Records, delivering some of the Dutch label biggest hits, including ‘Bad’, ‘Pon Di Ting’, ‘Pilot’, ‘Basshall Session #3’, and more recently, ‘Badman Party’. Alongside Kybba, head of Basshall Records, Blaiz Fayah has become a driving force behind the Shatta wave sweeping the international scene.

‘Shatta Ting’ features collaborations with top-tier Martinican beatmakers such as DJ Glad, Mafio House, Gyzmo, Natoxie, Mikado, Bmad, as well as Kybba, Tribal Kush, and Limitlezz from the Basshall Records roster. Over the years, Blaiz Fayah has built a strong artistic connection with these accomplished producers, whose composition forms the foundation of each of his tracks.

‘Shatta Ting’ also includes two standout collaborations: the “bad queen” Maureen on ‘Money Pull Up’, and the rising star of the new generation of Martinican artists, Le Jèm’ss, on ‘Whole A Dem’. It was actually with a track by Le Jèm’ss that Blaiz Fayah launched his own label, Mad Ting Records, in late 2024.

To accompany the release of ‘Shatta Ting’, Blaiz Fayah will embark on an international tour with his musicians and dancers, performing in France, Europe, Canada, Latin America, and East Africa. The tour will culminate in a special gig at the iconic Olympia Hall in Paris on January 31, 2026, promising a brand-new show, fresh arrangements, and plenty of surprises!

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Acclaimed US singer-songwriter Juliet Lloyd to tour the UK for the first time this summer.

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Shortly after releasing her sophomore album in 2007, US-based singer-songwriter Juliet Lloyd walked away from music completely for more than 10 years, feeling burned out and unhappy with her career progression like so many other independent artists. After going through a divorce in 2019 and in the midst of a global pandemic, she found herself pulled back toward the siren call of songwriting and again making the leap to pursue it full time. Her latest album ‘Carnival’, released in 2024, is in many ways the culmination of those decisions, and the reintroduction of an artist who now has the wisdom of experience.

There’s an unmistakable urgency you can feel when a song is written and performed from a place of complete honesty. That feeling permeates ‘Carnival’. “I’ve always been envious of writers who say they write songs because they have to, because they had these things they just had to get out of themselves,” Juliet says. “I had never really felt that way until this album. I’ve become someone who writes because they have to.”

Stylistically, ‘Carnival’ draws on a range of influences from Laurel Canyon-era singer/songwriters, to Lilith Fair rockers, to confessional country/folk balladeers, to indie pop. The central theme of the record and that of its title track is not being too precious about any one experience or decision. Take them for what they are, live in the moment, and move on when they’re done. It acknowledges also that memory can be subjective, and ambiguous—was an experience ultimately a good thing or a bad thing? And whose memory can you rely on to determine the answer to that question?

‘Carnival’ doesn’t just deal with the complexities of ending relationships, it also deals with all the feelings that come with moving on. The album’snine songs feature evocative storytelling that reveals a simple truth: when the carnival inevitably leaves town, you’re left with an empty parking lot. And how you remember, it is a choice. As Juliet sings in the title track, “If only there was a way you could bottle up that feeling / and you’d drink it in / when the days are short and you long.”

Across her 20+ year career, Juliet has been admittedly stylistically non-monogamous. Her first full-length album, ‘All Dressed Up’, was released in 2005 and was heavily jazz-influenced- a label that she rejected at the time. “I am a piano player and a woman, so I was immediately compared to Norah Jones—and I bristled at that,” Juliet says. “Listening back now, I can totally see that it was true, and it of course wasn’t a bad thing.” Her follow-up release ‘Leave the Light On,’ came out two years later and featured a slick piano-pop production that led to five of its songs being placed on reality TV shows on MTV and VH1. Coming back after her 10-year break from writing and recording, Juliet released ‘High Road’, a collection of five Americana/soul-tinged songs produced by Jim Ebert (Meredith Brooks, Shai) that earned her widespread recognition and songwriting awards both in her home region of DC as well as nationally.

Now with her first ever UK tour scheduled for July 2025, Juliet has also dropped a completely brand-new single ‘Wild Again’, which like ‘Carnival’, was written with and produced by Todd Wright (Lucy Woodward, Butch Walker, Toby Lightman). ‘Wild Again’, however, charts yet another new step in Juliet’s journey.

Carnival’, is full of deeply personal songs that are drawn from my real-life experiences and relationships. Coming out of that album cycle, I was feeling a little exhausted by my own navel-gazing and I was craving inspiration elsewhere. So, a lot of the songs I’m writing now are an evolution of sorts – focused more on external stimuli and finding the personal stories and humanity in that. Wild Again is a perfect example of this,” she explains.

The idea for ‘Wild Again’ was born out of a NY Times podcast Juliet listened to about the real-life efforts to return the whale that played Willy in the iconic movie ‘Free Willy’ back into the wild.

“It’s an insane, heartbreaking story that asks all kinds of thorny questions about human responsibility and humility and what’s the “right” thing to do and is that the same as the “kind” thing to do. There was a line that one of the trainers said in the podcast, explaining that they were trying to “train him to be wild again.” The complete absurdity of that statement hit me in the moment, and I immediately started jotting down lyrical ideas”, Juliet says.

Catch Juliet Lloyd on her UK tour this July:

1st July: The Folklore Rooms / Brighton
2nd July: The Hyde Tavern / Winchester
3rd July: Hen and Chicken / Bristol (CRH Music promotions)
4th July: Artisan Tap Hartshill / Stoke-on-Trent

5th July: Waggon & Horses, Nottingham

6th July: Cafe#9 / Sheffield
7th July: Hyde Park Book Club / Leeds
10th July: FortyFive Vinyl Café / York
11th July: The Muddy Puddle / London
13th July: The Wrotham Arms / Broadstairs

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