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Riddla: the Marie-Galante storyteller crossing gwoka, rap and bouyon

Published October 20, 2026

Riddla is a Guadeloupean singer and comedian, from Marie-Galante, who grew up in the Lauricisque district, nicknamed “Zooside”. In a career of more than twenty years, he has crossed the hip-hop gwoka of his first album “C.Pagna la” in 2003, the satirical hit “Ti-Bidon”, an award in the Soca/Bouyon category at the 2014 Hit Lokal Awards for “Twitté’y”, and then the 2024 album “Ki Sòs Ou Vlé?”, where his bouyon songs sit alongside rap, reggae, dancehall and zouk. This profile follows that documented path, from the ka drums of Akiyo to the Dominica bouyon DJ mixes that programme “Mi Mas La” and “Mi Boss La”.

Who Riddla is: Marie-Galante, Lauricisque, an artist of several trades

The biography published for the Festival Talents Guadeloupe presents Riddla as a singer and comedian from Marie-Galante, the island dependency of Guadeloupe, who grew up in the Lauricisque district, more commonly called “Zooside”. Those two anchors matter in his writing: Marie-Galante for the origin, Lauricisque for the district that raised him. The same biography also describes him as a dancer, and the Karukerament review of his 2024 album adds the trades of rapper, author and voice-over artist to that of actor. Riddla therefore fits no single box, and his musical path is about to confirm exactly that.

Karukerament, in its review of “Ki Sòs Ou Vlé?”, presents him as a modern-day storyteller from Guadeloupe, with a career spanning more than twenty years, and judges him, and this is the signed opinion of the review, the most versatile artist of his generation. This profile keeps that line as an attributed opinion, not as an official title. But the published facts make it readable: few Guadeloupean artists have signed, in one career, a hip-hop gwoka album with masters of the ka, a satirical news hit, an award in a soca bouyon category and a twenty-two track album that moves from trap to gospel.

His audience is not limited to Guadeloupe. The tracklists of bouyon mixes from Dominica, such as DJ Judgement Road to Carnival and DJ Close Connections Soca Passport, programme Riddla in the middle of Dominican artists, with “Mi Mas La” in collaboration with Mas Ka Kle. A Guadeloupean artist who sings in Creole, French and English, depending on the song, thus finds his place in the Dominican bouyon circuit as much as on the stages of his own archipelago. That double belonging is the thread of this profile: Gwada by origin and by training, Riddla is also a name in bouyon as the DJs play it.

One distinction finally matters: some databases mix his name with that of an Afrobeat artist based in Nottingham, in the United Kingdom. None of that namesake songs are used here. Every song, award and album in this profile comes from Guadeloupean, Antillean or Caribbean sources speaking about the same artist: the one from Marie-Galante, on Yasala Corp. and then on Grand-mère Baptiste prod, the structure credited on “Bodé” in 2019 and on “Pwen Sansib” in 2022.The audience map published by Viberate for Riddla points the same way, and this profile cites it as a platform snapshot, not as a census: France accounts there for the largest share of the measured audience, ahead of Guadeloupe and then Martinique. That order tells the real geography of Guadeloupean music, the archipelago, the mainland diaspora and the sister island, and it explains why an award voted by the overseas public, a video travelling on YouTube and a presence in Dominican mixes can count as much, for such an artist, as a radio release.

2003: C.Pagna la, where hip-hop meets gwoka

In 2003, Riddla released his first album, “C.Pagna la”. The Festival Talents Guadeloupe biography describes it as an album rich in musical styles and as a meeting between two generations that do not usually mix: a blend of hip-hop and gwoka, with the participation of great gwoka names such as Esnard Boisdur and Jean-Pierre Coquerel, of the group Akiyo. Akiyo is no backdrop: it is one of the founding groups of modern gwoka and of Guadeloupe street carnival. Starting a discography, on album, alongside its musicians sets Riddla mark from the outset: rap rooted in the ka, not imported as it comes.

That starting point illuminates everything after it. Gwoka, the music of the ka drums, of call and response, carries a social chronicle function in Guadeloupe: it tells the district, the work, the injustice and the party. The storyteller Karukerament praises in 2024 is already there, in seed, in that 2003 first album. The form will change often, from dancehall to bouyon, from zouk to trap, but the function stays: telling Guadeloupean life in its own words, humour and references, for an audience that recognises itself in them.

The immediate sequel, still according to the same biography, runs through “Piba”, described as raggazonzon and carnival-like. The carnival word is no detail for a Guadeloupean artist trained near Akiyo: carnival is the original stage of gwoka as of bouyon, the moment when the music comes down into the street and satirical chronicles travel fastest. It is exactly on that ground that Riddla will sign his first public breakthrough, at the start of the 2010s.

Ti-Bidon and Twitté’y: the satirical hit and the 2014 soca bouyon award

The Festival Talents Guadeloupe biography calls “Ti-Bidon” an essential and unexpected satirical news hit, stating that it counted more than 500,000 YouTube views in only seven days at the time of its release. That figure is the figure of that published biography, and this profile cites it as such, without rounding it or projecting it onto today counters. Shazam documents the song release as a single on February 4, 2014, on Yasala Corp., with Riddla as performer and songwriter and Sylvain Siarras as composer. The news hit is a genre of its own in the Antilles: a song that seizes a current topic, turns it into satire and becomes, for a few days, the soundtrack of every conversation.

The same year, 2014, brings the institutional consecration, and it is won on bouyon ground. The published Hit Lokal Awards record, the awards that honour clips by overseas French artists, gives the Soca/Bouyon category of the second edition, in 2014, to Riddla for “Twitté’y”. The year before, the same category had been won by Bilix. This award is the central piece of Riddla bouyon file: it rests neither on self-proclamation nor on a review, but on a public winners list, voted by the public under the published rules of those awards, and it places a rapper from Marie-Galante at the top of the category that mixes soca and bouyon.

Those two 2014 facts answer each other. On one side, the viral satire that makes Riddla a voice the whole archipelago hears. On the other, the award certifying that his party register, the bouyon and soca one, stands comparison with the specialists of the genre. For a site devoted to bouyon, the lesson matters: in Guadeloupe, bouyon is not only imported from Dominica, it is also practised, awarded and claimed by artists who came from rap and gwoka. Our bouyon Gwada page tells that Guadeloupean scene as a whole, and Riddla holds a senior place in it, active since 2003.The frame of that award deserves a precision, because it strengthens its value. The Hit Lokal Awards reference article presents the ceremony, created in 2012, as the first to reward the overseas French cultural scene, with a vote carried out one hundred percent by the public, in one round, at one vote per day by SMS or internet. Nominees are preselected from the clips of overseas artists shown on YouTube, the ten most popular videos in each category being scored by an academy made of past winners, association members and partner media. The 2014 edition was held on February 19, 2014 at the Théâtre Adyar. Winning the Soca/Bouyon category in that frame is therefore not receiving an honorary title: it is coming out on top of a public vote, after selection by views and by peers.

Bodé, Pwen Sansib and the work of the singles

After 2014, Riddla published record reads as credited singles, and their sheets tell a story of production continuity. “Bodé (La chanson des bons vivants)” was released as a single on May 1, 2019 on Grand-mère baptiste prod, according to Shazam, which credits stanislas samuel as composer and Boulogne Wesley as songwriter. The subtitle, the song of the good livers, announces the tone: a celebration of the art of living, far from news satire, showing the other side of Riddla writing, the side of conviviality and the shared party.

“Pwen Sansib” extends that line with a complete sheet published by NRJ Antilles: author Riddlaman, performer Riddla, composer Ransom Beats, mixing and mastering by Mister Francky, the video directed by Riddla himself, camera by Lordfilmsprod, editing by Yarma Videos, and a Grand-mère Baptiste prod production dated 2022. That an artist directs his own video is no small point in this file: it confirms the complete artist profile, singer, author and comedian, able to hold the image as he holds the pen, and it belongs to the same reduced team economy this site observes across bouyon.

Music tracking databases add other songs to this path, which this profile cites with care: Viberate lists among his known songs “Uk Warriors”, “Jack Sparrow #Descend4me”, “Lage ko’w”, “So Excellent”, “Dekole - DKL”, “Le deejay est bon”, “BWI” and “Hol’ It Up”. They are not taken into the verified recordings list of this page, which only keeps songs documented by a release sheet, a winners list, an album review or a published DJ mix tracklist. That rule protects the reader: every song named in this page schema can be found in a precise source, cited at the head of this file.

Ki Sòs Ou Vlé? in 2024: the menu album, twenty-two songs, and its bouyon tracks

In July 2024 came “Ki Sòs Ou Vlé?”, presented by Karukerament as his second full album, running to twenty-two tracks. The title, which asks which sauce you want, is taken by the review as a menu: the listener chooses the sauce. The menu covers, according to the same review, rap, bouyon, reggae, dancehall and zouk, and even Caribbean pop and gospel, with samples and gimmicks borrowed from Caribbean, French and international hits. After a first album in 2003, this record by a man in his forties, the review writes, reflects the maturity of a Guadeloupean man able to point at the inconsistencies of society without a moralising tone or nostalgia.

For the bouyon reader, three songs on the menu count first: “Bravoléfi - Bendova”, “Bénévolat” and “Fais La Belle”, which the review explicitly classes as the album bouyon and soca party tracks. It adds that those bouyon songs sound like the English speaking Caribbean, with the right amount of Creole, French and English in the lyrics to compete with traditional bouyon artists. That is a precise description of Riddla position: a Guadeloupean who enters bouyon through mixed language and a sense of party, without copying the Dominican accent, and who is accepted there by Dominican DJs themselves, as their tracklists show.

The album also holds the piece that links Riddla directly to a Dominican pillar: “Holy Wata”, where, according to Karukerament, he collaborates with TK International, the Triple K Band, on another version of the hit “Whistle While You Work”. TK International is one of the bands that popularised bouyon soca after its beginnings, and its presence beside Riddla on the same song materialises the Gwada and Dominica bridge this site documents throughout. The rest of the menu unfolds the storyteller: everyday chronicles such as “Enjoy”, “Pa Vin Fan Chyé Jod La” and “Chodo Gato”, songs of courage such as “Ganyé”, “Devant” and “A La Maison”, a father reggae lullaby in “Bonne Nuit”, and love as the running thread, from “Only You” to “Semblant”. Karukerament concludes, as a review opinion, that it is the best Guadeloupean album of 2024.

Reading this album inside a bouyon path therefore means reading it whole. Riddla does not come to bouyon as a one single tourist: he enters it with twenty years of stage, a category award from 2014 and a collaboration with TK International. But his bouyon stays one sauce among others on his menu, and that storyteller freedom, able to move from bouyon to the gwoka of his beginnings and to the trap of “Lari Réyèl”, is what makes him singular in this artist catalogue.The review also details the collaborations on the menu, and they draw a network: “Ganyé” brings together Awno Josué, Naayel, Miila, Malika Theresine and the Blue Melody School, “KDO” invites DJ Tony Blanck, “Katchoupine” invites Warped, “Body Contact” Mahalia M. and “Obsession” Sodaade. It lingers on “Emoji Flamme”, the introduction, whose production reminds the reviewer of a major second generation K-pop group, on “Chodo Gato”, which it reads as a Kassav’ style recipe, danceable music, a message on the high cost of living and a Guadeloupean culinary symbol sung in Haitian Creole, and on “Semblant”, a single released long before the album, whose zouk love pauses and spins it praises. Those details matter to the archive: they show an album thought out as a complete work, down to its cover, and not as a simple compilation of singles.

Mi Mas La, Mi Boss La, C’est La I.A: Riddla in today mixes

The most recent proof of Riddla place in bouyon comes neither from a winners list nor from a review, but from DJ tracklists. DJ Judgement Road to Carnival mix, which brings Dominica and Trinbago together, programmes “Mi Mas La” by Riddla with Mas Ka Kle, between Asa Bantan and Trinidad carnival songs. DJ Close Connections Soca Passport, a mix of the best sounds from Dominica, Saint Lucia, Martinique and Saint Kitts, programmes the same “Mi Mas La”. When two selectors place a Guadeloupean song in the middle of the Dominican repertoire, they say, better than any press release, where that song really circulates.

Carnival 2024 adds a second song to that circulation: the tracklist of the DJ T-Sia Shatta, Bouyon and Soca mix programmes “Mi Boss La (Quoicoubèh)” by Riddla and DJ Luchshiy. Viberate, for its part, ranks “Mi Mas La” and “Mi Boss La” among Riddla most streamed songs, which matches the tracklists: these are indeed his two reference bouyon songs for DJs and platforms. Finally, the tracklist of Digga D Sewo Jam 2026, a tribute mix to Dominica, programmes a recent song, “C’est La I.A”, a sign that Riddla circulation in the bouyon circuit continues on his newest releases.

What should be made of this path, seen from Roseau as from Pointe-à-Pitre? Riddla shows that bouyon, born in Dominica and started in its soca form by Dada in 2003 according to the testimony of Sean “Smokiller” Francis published on this site, has become a shared language of the Caribbean party, which a storyteller from Marie-Galante can speak with his own accent, humour and gwoka references. He replaces neither the Dominican bands nor the Roseau singers: he proves that their music spread, and that Guadeloupe, which adopted it from the jump up years, also puts its own authors into it. To hear that bridge, start with “Mi Mas La”, then with the bouyon songs of “Ki Sòs Ou Vlé?”, and continue with our bouyon playlist and our bouyon Guadeloupe page.

Frequently asked questions

Where is Riddla from and where did he grow up?

According to the biography published for the Festival Talents Guadeloupe, Riddla is a singer and comedian from Marie-Galante, in Guadeloupe, and he grew up in the Lauricisque district, more commonly called “Zooside”. He has been active since his first album, “C.Pagna la”, released in 2003.

Did Riddla really win a bouyon award, coming from rap?

Yes, and it is the fact the rap profiles do not tell. The Hit Lokal Awards winners list gives the Soca/Bouyon category of the second edition, in 2014, to Riddla for “Twitté’y”. The same year, his “Ti-Bidon”, released as a single on February 4, 2014 on Yasala Corp., is described by his biography as a satirical hit with more than 500,000 YouTube views in seven days.

What is the link between Riddla and TK International?

According to the Karukerament review of the album “Ki Sòs Ou Vlé?”, Riddla collaborates with TK International, Dominica Triple K Band, on “Holy Wata”, presented as another version of the hit “Whistle While You Work”. It is a direct collaboration between a Guadeloupean artist and one of the pillar bands of Dominican bouyon.

Which Riddla bouyon songs should I hear first?

“Mi Mas La”, with Mas Ka Kle, programmed by the Dominican mixes Road to Carnival and Soca Passport, and “Mi Boss La (Quoicoubèh)”, with DJ Luchshiy, programmed at Carnival 2024. On the 2024 album “Ki Sòs Ou Vlé?”, the Karukerament review classes “Bravoléfi - Bendova”, “Bénévolat” and “Fais La Belle” as his bouyon and soca party tracks.

What is Ki Sòs Ou Vlé?

It is Riddla second full album, released in July 2024 according to the Karukerament review, with twenty-two tracks. It crosses rap, bouyon, reggae, dancehall, zouk, Caribbean pop and gospel, with everyday chronicles, songs about love and a father reggae lullaby, “Bonne Nuit”. The review judges it, as an opinion, the best Guadeloupean album of 2024.

How did Riddla start, in 2003?

With a meeting album: “C.Pagna la”, a blend of hip-hop and gwoka with the participation of great gwoka names such as Esnard Boisdur and Jean-Pierre Coquerel, of the group Akiyo, according to his Festival Talents Guadeloupe biography. That start roots his rap in the ka drums, before dancehall, zouk and bouyon. Read also our bouyon Gwada page.

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