Two years ago, Grammy-winning Trinidadian-American songwriter Angela Hunte underwent heart surgery, temporarily derailing a multi-decade career defined by commercial singing and songwriting success. It prompted a deep search for her life and legacy, rekindling her desire to make her mark on the global entertainment industry and catalyzing her evolution as a multidisciplinary artist.
Two years between the surgery and the launch of her new CD Mango (issued in July and reviewed in the September issue of Caribbean Beat) was like a rebirth. “I began to discover my life in a way that I had never done before. It was the beginning of the truth, the unfolding of emotions”, she declares. She decided she had to do things differently.
Born in Brooklyn to Trinidadian parents; raised in Barataria, Trinidad; and now a working wife and mother living in Miami, Hunte exists in two worlds efficiently and effectively—without taking on the garb of a Naipaulian “impersonator.”
“Everywhere I go, I carry my flag with me,” she told him Trinidad Express. Literally, she’s worn a Trinidad & Tobago flag pin on her dresses at award shows, close to her heart — including at the 2011 Grammys, where she won best rap song for “Empire State of Mind.”
For him, it is also a symbol of Trini pride. “Even though I wasn’t born there, I grew up there,” she says. “It is my heritage. It’s the blood that runs through my veins and I’m very, very proud.”
The duality of being Caribbean and American has allowed Hunte, over time, the ability to move easily between here and there, culture and commerce. This word culture has many meanings – but for Caribbean people, it means a sense of self, a sense of heritage.
“We have to bring the culture to the people, because they want it,” she told popular US radio host Ebro earlier in 2024. “When I’m making music for myself, it’s such a different process than when I’m in room with other people who do it for them.”
“Drums call me all the time, tunes dance around me when I’m walking down the street,” she continues. “I had no idea how to put it together, bring all these sounds together from everywhere, but I knew culture was going to play a big part in it.”
MSupport from major music players overseas laid the foundation for her knowledge of the music ecosystem. Hunte began her music career writing and performing in the R&B girl group 7669, releasing an album on Motown Records in 1994. Label head Jheryl Busby told her that her future lay in songwriting—not as a backhanded compliment, but like a prophetic observation.
Busby, along with super-producer Salaam Remi of Amy Winehouse and Nas fame – like Hunte, a child of the Trinidadian and Caribbean diaspora – guided her early music career, positioning her to take advantage of songwriting opportunities and publication in the United Kingdom and Sweden. .
Writing, singing and producing electronic dance and pop hits there in the 2000s led to more opportunities in the United States, with credits on songs by Britney Spears, Diddy and Melanie Fiona, among others, and led to her writing ” Empire State of Mind” – the New York anthem and RIAA diamond-certified one-billion-stream hit single – for Jay-Z and Alicia Keys in 2009.
After that, she added Grammy and Oscar winning rocker Melissa Etheridge, Miley Cyrus and Snoop Dogg (Snoop Lion at the time) to her client list. And the shifting pillars and nearly insurmountable obstacles of the American music industry were challenges for which her island upbringing prepared her.
This word culture has many meanings – but for Caribbean people, it means a sense of self, a sense of heritage
Hunte claims that she is a “genreless writer, but a global performer”. Her two albums, RAW (2017) and Mango (2024)—the latter featuring collaborations with Wyclef Jean, Fay-Ann Lyons, Yemi Alade, Tarrus Riley, and Christian Alicea—reflects a Caribbean aesthetic. The first is a reggae album, while Mango takes the beats of many Afro-diasporic genres – dancehall, soca, zouk, reggaeton, hip-hop.
“You never see anyone unhappy eating a mango,” she says. “And if you show someone a pomerak, a tamarind, they might ask, ‘What’s that?’ But if you show them a mango, everybody knows what it is. It’s global. The music on this album is global. It’s not just a genre… The sustainability of a mango — if you’re hungry, you know if you eat a mango, you’ll be fine. Sustainability is one of those things that represents Caribbean culture and life to me. If I could call my music a fruit , that would be.”
Her forays into carnival music – the singles “Party Done” (2015) with Machel Montano, “Like So” and “Mon Bon Ami” (2016) – showed that she was willing to innovate and bring her knowledge to the stage world of pop music. to move Caribbean music to a more mainstream position.
“I’m a hybrid,” she explains. “I will always continue to bring my love for all forms of music from Trinidad & Tobago and the Caribbean. I will never stop no matter what.”
But after the overwhelming response to Party Done, the reaction from promoters and audiences to her work the following year was more subdued. Undeterred, she took on the challenge of expanding her appeal to markets beyond the islands – including the United States, the world’s largest music market.
“My relationship with Trinidad & Tobago is not love-hate, but like love-love – because love can also be very dangerous,” she says. “If things were easy, then we’d all be doing it. Nothing will be easy.”
Rresilience and determination are two of Hunte’s defining characteristics. “As Caribbean people, we have this thing: whatever we do, we’re going to do it and we’re going to do it well,” she says. It also fueled a desire to let her voice and vision be heard and seen in international markets – just as she had during her previous career as a singer.
Her reputation as a casting director in the mid-to-late 1990s for prominent music videos by Billboard Hot 100 artists, and as an award-winning designer for many artists, led to opportunities to direct and an understanding of the film industry.
“I’m setting out to be different from a lot of other female directors out there,” she says of her latest career moves in film. “I don’t think I would have included my culture if I had done that [when] I was younger. I’m so glad I’m doing it now because I’m a lot more experienced and have a better sense of who I am and what I want to talk about.”
Here again was the importance of early mentorship, this time from noted video and film director Lionel C Martin, as she directs a documentary about a steel generation from the Meyer Levin School for the Performing Arts – her alma mater in Brooklyn.
The film looks at the children of Caribbean parents in Flatbush, how Caribbean attitudes to parenting differ from black American parents, and the role played by music and steel performance – as a social tool to keep children out of trouble and as a meaningful way of keeping Caribbean heritage alive in these communities. It is working on distributing the film festival in 2025.
Her already varied career has brought her fame outside of music, as she also stars in an Emmy-nominated short documentary on New York City Tourism + Conventions, Local NYC Legends: Angela Hunte in Flatbush, in which she guides viewers through Caribbean culture, food and life in New York.
She understands the difference between Caribbean life, Caribbean-American life, and American life; the choices parents make to avoid the dangers of living in big cities; and how a diasporic life is an endless opportunity to be an ambassador, a pioneer and a “girl from Barataria” who did good and wants to give back.
