{"id":11436,"date":"2025-10-10T11:10:35","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T11:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/?p=11436"},"modified":"2025-10-10T11:10:49","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T11:10:49","slug":"wesrok-in-grammy-contention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/?p=11436","title":{"rendered":"Wesrok in Grammy Contention"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While most of his friends were into roots-reggae or dancehall, Wesrok listened to American country singers such as Kenny Rogers and Charley Pride. Five years ago, he launched his music career and has since released catchy country-reggae songs like <strong><em>\u2018Ride Cowboy Ride\u2019<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>That track, released last June, has been named in a provisional list for Best Country Solo Performance at the 2026 Grammy Awards. Approximately 132 artists are up for consideration including major stars, Dolly Parton, Jason Aldean and Brad Paisley.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>\u2018Ride Cowboy Ride\u2019 <\/em><\/strong>was recorded at the acclaimed Beaird Studio in Nashville, Tennessee, the mecca of country music. While he is a long shot to make the final cut, which will be announced on November 7, Wesrok already feels like a winner.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor me, it&#8217;s a big deal, because country music is huge. For someone from the Caribbean, Jamaica to be exact to be recognized, is a win for me already,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Like Charley Pride, one of his heroes, Wesrok is a trailblazer. As a black man, Pride broke into the white-dominated country market in the 1960s after years of playing baseball in the Negro Leagues.<\/p>\n<p>Wesrok, who is of East Indian heritage, started his music career after many years in the Jamaican police force. In addition to releasing easy-listening country-reggae songs like <strong><em>\u2018Poor Country Boy\u2019<\/em><\/strong> and <strong><em>\u2018Born as A Winner\u2019<\/em><\/strong>, he has collaborated with dancehall acts such as Busy Signal and performed at Reggae Sumfest.<\/p>\n<p>The 68th Grammy Awards are scheduled for February 1 at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcrypto.com%2F&amp;data=05%7C02%7C%7C13503f249c1b45acebf308de069e1bc6%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638955473293389688%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=JvJAIG2aF4iBncQ2MCSZQB%2BTGu9scbA7wQKOV6UMTIA%3D&amp;reserved=0\">Crypto.com<\/a>\u00a0Arena in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While most of his friends were into roots-reggae or dancehall, Wesrok listened to American country singers such as Kenny Rogers and Charley Pride. Five years ago, he launched his music career and has since released catchy country-reggae songs like \u2018Ride Cowboy Ride\u2019. That track, released last June, has been named in a provisional list for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":11433,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11437,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11436\/revisions\/11437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}