After some 20 odd years in the soca industry, Darryl Henry, a.k.a. Farmer Nappy is on the brink of releasing his first solo album. ‘Pure Niceness’ the title track is due to be released on Friday 1 st October, and is the ultimate tribute to a long line of popular memorable hits, created at the pinnacle of Xtatik years. Henry enjoys his musical lifestyle with the popular soca band, reveling in finding his true calling with cohesive melodies that are as strong as his brotherly bond with Xtatik lead singer Machel Montano.

But it only starts there. This multi-talented, multi-faceted artiste is also an instrumentalist and songwriter and has already proven to be an artist worthy of national recognition with a sweltering portfolio. Starting off by playing percussion at the tender age of seven with Pranasonic Express (as Xtatik was first known), Henry evolved by writing and co-writing several hits on the band’s ’97 album Big Truck including the title track, as well as ‘Tayee Ayee’, ‘Crowded’, ‘Music Farm’ and ‘No Carnival’. In ’98 Henry won the award for “Best Song Writer”, co-writing Road March of the year ‘Footsteps’ with Montano, which was sung by the late Wayne Rodriguez. The track also won the accolade of ‘Best Song of the Year’. From the same ‘Toro Toro’ album – he co-wrote ‘Vendors’, ‘Pump the Iron’, and ‘Working Dog’. 1999 saw the onset of ‘UFO which Henry also co-wrote with Montano, the popular dancehall artiste Beenie Man, and Darryl Eugene. Along with other popular tracks, Nappy lent his spectacular penmanship and production experience to ‘Low Riders’ and ‘Big Phat Fish’. To his credit, in 2000, Henry co-produced and co-wrote the ever popular ‘Water Flowing’ and was a finalist in the 2001 Soca Monarch with the track ‘Last Singer’, while in the summer of 2001 – Nappy kept it moving with his first video of ‘Junkyard’.

There are twelve tracks on the ‘Pure Niceness’ album, including a remake of the 1981 golden hit “Lorraine” done by Explainer, with the veteran himself making a special appearance on the track. With a little help from KMC’s Party Alliance, Salt Prunes Riddim, Nappy’s ‘Who’s That Sexy Girl’ cries out for someone to turn up the volume and get crazy. His ‘Pure Niceness’ debut is basically a block-party on CD. There are steamy ballads like ‘Jah Concert’, and plenty more probable club smashes like ‘Trini Rag, Trini Flag’ and ‘J’ouvert Muddy Morning’. As Nappy tells it, he spent his early childhood and teen years taking in magnitudes of music from several different genres. “We used to listen to popular Radio Djs at the time, like Rennie B and Gerald Agostini. Lady (Elizabeth Montano) always played a lot of music,” says Henry. “We’d be listening to Kool and The Gang and go into New Edition, etc. remember those days?” he reminisces with a laugh. “We’d play Madonna and everything!” The musical influence that Lady had impressed upon their young minds was a great gift in hindsight. Growing up in such a harmonious environment that effortlessly mingled various sounds, Nappy began to draw from that impact when composing his own music, and claims a lot of his inspiration comes from old school hip-hop dance flavors.

Subsequently, as Nappy’s raw talent matured, his musical interests expanded as is epitomized by the total togetherness of this album. The remaining four tracks written by Henry and Kambon Rigualt, promises to be as entertaining as his rather overwhelming portfolio. This project ‘Pure Niceness’ was produced at Ed Gordon’s studio with Executive Producers Xtatik Ltd., Rufrex special thanks to his fans for their continued support Henry claims only Pure Niceness and Pure Sweetnes for 2005.

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