Skinny Fabulous
Gamal “Skinny Fabulous” Doyle, five-time St Vincent soca monarch, on the importance of a catchy song, the short lifespan of a hit, and what makes Vincy mas unique — as told to Tracy Assing

I grew up in Lodge Village. All my roots are from the Leeward coast of St Vincent, Chateaubelair. Most of my significant childhood memories are from there, given that every chance my mom had, that’s where we went, to be with family. After I left secondary school, I did community college. Then I went to the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. I did media and communications. I graduated in 2010.

In between, I worked at a call centre as a supervisor, trying to sell credit cards. Then I worked at a radio station, NBC, which is the St Vincent National Broadcasting Corporation.

I was an announcer, so I had a one-to-six shift: read the news, prepared the sports package, all of that. The show was called “One to Six in the Mix with Skinny Fabulous”. But that’s not where the nickname started. My friends used to actually call me “Tin Beef”. The joke behind it is that I was very skinny at the time. I am still very skinny.

So the name Skinny Fabulous is because I am a magga man.

I started out with dancehall. Even before I went to Jamaica as a student, I went there to try to link with some of the producers. Back then I worked with a group called Daseca: Craig and David Harrisingh and Serani. I pegged my dreams on that Jamaican trip, and it didn’t really work out — because you quickly get that slap of reality. If you are not a Jamaican it is extremely hard for you to get that dancehall respect.

Skinny Fabulous

But when I came back to St Vincent I thought maybe the best approach was to fuse my lil’ love for dancehall into a genre that would be readily accepted by my geographical space, which is Vincy, Trinidad, that whole circuit. So I started doing soca, but very rough, very aggressive soca. Which I still kinda do, but I am a toned-down soca artiste now compared to the rough, edgy Skinny Fabulous I once was.

The first year, what I would consider my “buss” year [2008], I don’t think I have felt that level of excitement within myself again. I haven’t gotten a repeat of that. That was the first year that I won the St Vincent Soca Monarch title, with a song called “Head Bad”.

In terms of my popularity in Trinidad and in the region, perhaps 2013 is one of the better years. But for me, in terms of my accomplishments, I think nothing can beat that first year that I got a hit song, that I was able to travel the region and the US and parts of Europe.

For the eleven professional years that I’ve been doing music, I’ve written all of my own material. I only recently started writing for others. I spend a lot of time in the studio. That’s what persons don’t realise. To come up with one song, that one hit song is probably a product of many other songs that weren’t so successful. And some persons get lucky and they go in and do one song, and that one song catch.