Bridgetown, Barbados. November 15, 2007. The Hit Island camp releases Hit Island Volume 1, the highly-anticipated compilation by the Christ Church-based studio.

The album features many of Barbados’ up-and-coming artistes, including Barbados Music Award winners Buggy and Billy Kincaid, Shontelle Layne (who has recently been signed to Universal), and newcomer Vizion, who is nominated in the category of Best New Artist at the 2008 Barbados Music Awards. It isn’t often that a compilation is released where just about every track is worth the listen, but Hit Island Volume 1 has managed to hit the mark with the 17 tracks selected for inclusion.  The album spans hip-hop, reggae, R&B and varying degrees of cross-genre hybridisations which provides listeners with enough variety to fully appreciate the broad spectrum of Bajan music.

The album appropriately leads off with the mammoth track Bajan Story -- perhaps an insightful and witty description of the music discourse which the album offers to listeners. The album also includes Bajan favourites We Live On (Billy Kincaid f/ Gabby), 246 Girl (Trezay f/ Felipe and Shontelle), Lullaby (Toni Norville f/ Spragga Benz) Champions (Billy Kincaid f/ Barry Chandler), and Girl I Need You (Vizion). 

As if this weren’t enough, the album also breaks a number of newer tracks, including Die (H-Town), I Do (Lexi Davis f/ Ayana John), Bajan Green (Blade). The mix of genres on the album’s tracks, and the balance between veteran performers and relative newcomers is indicative of Hit Island’s innovation in the musical arena. Hit Island has been steadily gaining visibility in the local industry, not only as a recording studio, but as a developer of talent among underground artistes, particularly in the hip-hop and reggae arenas.

The Hit Island 16-Shot competition, one of the more innovative and interactive music-centred radio competitions, is one of the studio’s initiatives which has helped develop underground Barbadian entertainers. For two consecutive years the competition challenged local hip-hop and reggae artistes to devise de hardest, illest verse on just 16-bars of an original Hit Island beat.  The eventual winners (Billy Kincaid in year 1, and Ayana John in year 2) were chosen by radio audiences over a period of one week.

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Commenting on the release of Hit Island Volume 1, Hit Island’s KB Sharp reported to CiRCUIT magazine that he is ‘very satisfied’ to have completed an album with so many well-known songs and artists in the hip-hop, R&B and reggae genres in Barbados. KB Sharp also noted that two of the songs on the album (Girl I Need You by Vizion and Guns N Roses by Ayana John) had accompanying music videos, and demonstrated a commitment by members of the Hit Island camp to investing in the development of their musical careers.

 Hit Island has other musical projects in the pipeline. KB Sharp revealed that the studio is working on the releases of albums from Buggy and Ayanna John. And of course, future compilations Hit Island compilations are also expected to be released. For more information on Hit Island, check out http://www.hitisland.com/