Mastaa T’s ‘Tea Tea’: Bajan dancehall hit spreads across region

NARIS­SA FRAS­ER

It’s a dif­fer­ent type of Ba­jan in­va­sion — not so­ca, but dance­hall. Torell “Mas­taa T” Wor­rell had no idea what be­gan as a quick freestyle in the stu­dio would spread across the re­gion like wild­fire. In fact, it even be­came the most-lis­tened-to song on Ap­ple Mu­sic in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Here’s the sto­ry be­hind his lat­est sin­gle, Tea Tea, one of the hottest dance­hall tracks for 2026.

The 23-year-old singer hails from May­nards in the parish of St Pe­ter, Bar­ba­dos. He told Guardian Me­dia he al­ways had a love for mu­sic, re­call­ing that he would freestyle of­ten. “But I start­ed tak­ing it se­ri­ous­ly around 2020,” he said. He de­scribes his style as a fu­sion of dance­hall, trap and hip-hop — gen­res he has lis­tened to heav­i­ly over the years.

He has since re­leased many songs, in­clud­ing Why Should I, Trap Lan­guage, Fairy Tale Love and Noo Cat Fish­ing, among oth­ers. But Tea Tea, pro­duced by Tah­jay “HC Records” Haynes, is his biggest song yet. And it wasn’t planned.

“I just heard the beat while we were in the stu­dio and said I’m go­ing to work on this one for sure.” But he laugh­ing­ly ad­mit­ted, “He ac­tu­al­ly sent me the beat be­fore but I told him I didn’t like it be­cause it was too boun­cy. I didn’t re­alise it was the same beat.” But once he heard it again in the stu­dio, he “was re­al­ly feel­ing it.”

He im­me­di­ate­ly knew he want­ed to make a “gyal chune” and be­gan freestyling. “And then I just kept adding more parts. We made it in that one stu­dio ses­sion.”

On the track, he ex­press­es his love and ap­pre­ci­a­tion for dif­fer­ent types of women — “bad”, good, slim, thick.

He sings, “Girl, yuh body on fleek, body unique. Every sin­gle day, you get stalk on IG (In­sta­gram).” He lets the woman know men “break their necks” to stare at her when they’re out and about, lat­er adding she’s sweet like Supli­gen. “If I give you this num­ber, call me, shorty,” he fur­ther teas­es.

Wor­rell said he doesn’t “make stuff up” when it comes to his lyrics, but sings about re­al-life ex­pe­ri­ences. “So I said, let me just sing about what I love. It’s about dif­fer­ent types of women and just mak­ing them feel com­fort­able be­cause I cater for all. That was the goal — to make women of all shapes and sizes feel good and con­fi­dent.”

But in ad­di­tion to the fun and clever lyrics, many have al­so been rav­ing about the beat.

Haynes, 26, said he has been pro­duc­ing mu­sic for the past six years, but it be­came a pro­fes­sion around 2023. He has tried his hand at rap, so­ca and now dance­hall. He re­called mak­ing the beat for Tea Tea some­time in Jan­u­ary.

“Every­thing hap­pened re­al­ly quick­ly. I made the beat, let’s say, Wednes­day and he record­ed on the Fri­day.” Asked if he had any idea what type of song he want­ed to hear on it, Haynes ad­mit­ted, “I had no vibe in mind. I was ac­tu­al­ly plan­ning to put (the beat) on­line for any­one to be able to lease it… then he (Wor­rell) heard it.”

He said the singer was orig­i­nal­ly freestyling a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent song, but he (Haynes) asked if he want­ed a beat to go along with that. “So then I played the beat and he start­ed vib­ing and the song end­ed up chang­ing to some­thing else in an hour.”

They ini­tial­ly planned to hold back the track for a bit and re­lease it lat­er on, but opt­ed to drop it the same day as two oth­ers. And the tim­ing could not have been more per­fect.

Re­leased on Valen­tine’s Day, the song went on to be the num­ber one most-lis­tened-to track on Ap­ple Mu­sic in Bar­ba­dos and T&T. It is al­so trend­ing on Ap­ple Mu­sic in Grena­da, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, the British Vir­gin Is­lands, the Cay­man Is­lands and An­guil­la. On top of this, it re­ceived sig­nif­i­cant air­play dur­ing Ja­maica’s re­cent Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions. It is now near­ing two mil­lion views on YouTube.

Asked if they ex­pect­ed it to do so well across the re­gion, both men said they were stunned. “I nev­er ex­pect­ed it,” Wor­rell said. “I re­al­ly want to give thanks to my T&T fam­i­ly — the whole of T&T — be­cause you all re­al­ly showed me that what I’m do­ing, I got to con­tin­ue do­ing it.” He added, “I make mu­sic be­cause I have a love for it, but when things like this hap­pen, it tells me there are dif­fer­ent sets of peo­ple tap­ping in­to my work. That was a very big ac­com­plish­ment for me.”

Haynes said his phone was blow­ing up with mes­sages from friends and col­leagues. Of all the songs he has done, he has re­ceived the most feed­back on this one. “I usu­al­ly just watch the Ba­jan charts but then I start­ed check­ing oth­er coun­tries. It re­al­ly sur­prised me.” He said he feels proud and that the en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence has been very in­spi­ra­tional. “It just shows me that if you keep work­ing, and work­ing well, you’ll even­tu­al­ly get out there. This has ac­tu­al­ly pushed me to make more mu­sic.”

T&T DJ and pro­duc­er Ballin Jams even did a “zess” remix of the pop­u­lar track.

While he is usu­al­ly sharp with his word­play, Wor­rell said he was not sure he could sum up how he feels in one word. “I think even ‘thank­ful’ would be an un­der­state­ment. I’m more than thank­ful. The fact that peo­ple are recog­nis­ing some­one from this small rock, Bar­ba­dos, can al­so make good dance­hall mu­sic…”

Tea Tea is avail­able across all dig­i­tal stream­ing plat­forms.