Bunji Garlin

Bunji Garlin remains above all one of the Soca Kings of Trinidad and Tobago, on a par with Machel Montano in the contemporary canon. His place in the Bouyon story is not that of a Bouyon voice, he never releases under that label, but that of a cross-genre carrier whose voice amplifies the Dominican genre at two precise and strategic moments.

The first moment is "Famalay" in 2019. The title brings together Skinny Fabulous (Saint Vincent), Machel Montano (Trinidad) and Bunji Garlin (Trinidad), wins the Trinidad Road March that year, and piles up tens of millions of views across the platforms. What tips the analysis is the identity of the producer: the Dominican Dada (Krishna Lawrence), long credited as a Soca producer, and whose rhythmic machinery is in fact anchored in Bouyon. The Medium feature "The Dominican producer behind the monster Soca hit Famalay" serves as the canonical source for that re-attribution. On the scale of the global Bouyon story, this is the first documented Bouyon → Soca crossover, and it carries Bunji Garlin's voice as one of the three voices distributing it towards worldwide consumption.

The second moment is the "G.O.A.T. Bouyon Mixes" series with Major Lazer between 2022 and 2025 on the Mad Decent label. The Caribbean press headlines the episode as a "Bouyon-powered" anthem explicitly signed Mad Decent and Diplo. On the EDM scale, it is the first time a global mainstream label claims Bouyon in the nomenclature of its releases. Bunji Garlin's presence on those tracks seals the alliance between the Trinidadian Soca voice and the global EDM machinery distributing Bouyon to audiences outside the Caribbean.

A third moment, more contentious, runs through the other two. The 2021 title "Family" (Bunji × Machel × Skinny Fabulous) was credited as Soca on release. In April 2025, during a live BRUKOUT TV session, Killa (Triple Kay) publicly reveals that the initial production is a Bouyon signed Dad Lawrence, and pushes the artists to acknowledge the attribution. The episode belongs to the structuring controversies of the contemporary story, because it shows that the circulation of Bouyon towards Trinidad has sometimes happened by erasing the original label. This profile records the episode without presenting it as intentional: it is the Trinidadian soca industry, not the artist alone, that steered that credit. His voice stays at the crossing of the three major moments of Bouyon leaving the local scene, and his profile holds the place of a carrier , not a member, in the worldwide mapping.