With a voice as familiar and attention-grabbing as his, it’s hard to imagine Kendell Eugene not being the biggest personality in every room he sets foot in. But as Dazzle Magazine has learned in conversation with the multi-talented artiste, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Coming off of a birthday celebration on March 24, he felt at ease reminiscing on his growth as a journalist and most of all, a human being.
“The person you know as Scady Dot P isn’t always who I was. It’s more of a persona I’ve developed in the media. The name came from my days as a member of the George Charles Secondary School dance group, ‘Sliders’. The Dot P came about when Jay Z released his S. CARTERS shoe line. In my wild world I imagined having my own shoe line someday and I would’ve called it Dot P’s.
“I’m actually a very shy person. Yeah, I’m the life of the party but I also have to be very comfortable with the people I’m around. At home, I’d be the quiet one playing NBA 2K or Assassin’s Creed on my PS4. Some nights I try my hand at the turntables, mixing difference sounds and scratch patterns … or sometimes I read a book.”
Scady is also an editor of Yo! Magazine arguably St. Lucia’s most popular and successful youth magazine and thevoiceslu.com the online version of the local newspaper, so his appetite for reading should come as no surprise.
“I really can’t stop stressing the importance of reading,” says Scady. He recalled his journey into the print media.
“I ended up in print unexpectedly, to be honest. I met Toni Nicholas while working at the music store and he told me about a ‘YO! Magazine’ that the Voice was starting and asked if I’d like to contribute to it. I sent in short articles over a three-year period … none of which I ever saw in there, come to think of it (lol). Eventually, I expressed an interest in working there full time but they weren’t hiring anyone just yet.”
Despite this initial setback, Scady proved to have much stronger tenacity than most.
“One day Toni called and asked if I was still interested in working at YO! I said, yes. He said I’d be interviewed the following week for the position. Keep in mind, I had no prior experience with print apart from what I’d been sending them. Thankfully they were mostly concerned with what I’d be bringing to the table as a contributor.
Despite being an avid reader, none of this came easy to him. “Needless to say, my interview was successful and I started a week later. From then on the learning process for print journalism began for me. A year or two later I found out that I was going to be the YO! editor. This really took me by surprise because here I am, only a reporter going around taking pictures, and writing on what I experienced. However, because the magazine revolved around entertainment, that helped me develop a knack for it. But when I learned my editor would be leaving and I’d be the one heading the department, it scared me.
“To prepare myself I read a lot of Teen Vogue, The Force, Vibe Magazine, mostly to learn how they structured their magazines and did their editorials, and then I took it from there. Mike Rogers from The Wave was a very big influence on me in both radio and print. He impressed upon me the importance of reading.”
Scady successfully completed a few courses at UWI Open Campus and earned his Diploma in Media Communications and Journalism from Monroe College. He admits this helped him with his editing and broadened his education.
“It’s going well, we’re still up and running, still fighting the battle with online news. The whole situation is just crazy, that’s the best way to define it,” he added.
Even with his success in radio, he isn’t hesitant about dishing out praise and thanking those who helped him along the way, including the Wave’s Mike Rogers.
“If Mike hadn’t given me a startup at The Wave I’d have been a lost soul on the radio. Even now, working with Franny every morning is a blessing. She brings out the best in me. I started off on RCI about 12 years ago and it was there Jerry George really pushed me to continue, even though I didn’t feel inclined to.”
It seems strange that Kendell would even need this push to continue something that he’d go on to be so versed in, especially listening to him tell about his days growing up in Goodlands, Castries.
“When I was younger I used to listen to the radio and try to figure out how a voice could come out of it, and saying to myself I want to be that voice. So it was always something I wanted to do. Alongside working at a music store and owning my very own radio station. I have done two of the three so far!”
Scady has high praise for his print and broadcast team (Dwayne, Ace and the Blazin Fraternity) and all those who had a positive impact on his professional life.
“Trust is crucial. For example at YO!, if you miss a deadline you’re throwing off the entire newspaper. So you need someone you can trust to hold the fort in your absence because putting out 24 pages weekly is no easy task, especially as you need to put out fresh content. I’m really happy to see all the young people taking their own initiative and doing what they love from music to dance, pageantry and spoken word, because that gives us content and we give them exposure. Finding the perfect support system is very hard but thankfully I’ve got that at YO!. Individuals like Rae Anthony, Mr. Gordon. They’re all a part of this”
How has he been able to come up with brilliant ideas to keep the magazine going all those years? Scady says he reads a lot and keeps up with current trends.
“Right now the craze is photography. With thousands of photographers in St. Lucia, it seems like everyone has a DSLR camera. So whatever is current, I ride on that wave and bring it into the magazine in the form of ‘Views’. Also, I put away a lot of stuff that I write for later, which could end up seeming like a really great idea because of what’s happening at the moment.”
Along the way, Scady has had to deal with criticisms of the YO! Magazine, or people asking “Why is he talking so much during the song?”
“You can’t please everyone. Some of the criticisms I got when I became editor of YO! was that we have too little local content on the cover. But for the four months I was in charge, I had only St. Lucians on the cover. They were angry that I had Cecile on the cover once. So for the next seven months I decided to localize the entire thing. At that point I had secondary school students giving me my business because I was straying from what they were interested in. You can never please everybody.”
Clearly he does a lot, but what drives him daily is surprisingly simple.
“I love what I do. It is not really a job for me. When it becomes a job, you need to find a way to challenge yourself because it means you’re getting bored or comfortable. I loved music, so working at a music store was great for me. Once I started detesting going to work I had to find out why and the way out was to leave. I haven’t felt that at the newspaper or the radio. Of course, there are days I wake up and dread going to work but that’s just a fleeting moment. By the time I get to the studio and turn on the mic, all the negative feelings are gone and I just get in the zone. Then the part of me that people know as Kendell comes to life.”
A winner of an Outstanding Professional in Youth Development award and two media awards, Scady is currently working towards an MA in Mass Communications. We wish him loads of success in his endeavours!
