With a moving plea to support the island’s troubled hospital, last year’s St. Croix Calypso Monarch Cedric “Spade” Brookes buried nine tested competitors Thursday night at Island Center to take the crown for a second year in a row.
The 10 calypsonians faced off in two rounds, singing and dancing to two original compositions, which, in time honored calypso tradition, frequently took on the high and mighty, the political scandals and the problems in the community, with often biting humor.
Spade’s first song, titled unambiguously "Support Our Hospital," takes aim at the chaos and financial trouble at St. Croix’s Gov. Juan F. Luis Hospital, not to skewer with humorous barbs, but to extol the listener to appreciate the gravity of the problem and try to help.
Spade wore medical scrubs and pretended to give a shot, while people stood behind him with "We Are JFLH" and "Support JFLH" signs as the number began. Spade told the audience in song that he planned to write something hilarious with barbed jokes about politicians or extolling the joys of "dirty bacchanal," "but the humiliation and all the confusion going on at Juan Luis Hospital has me tired," he sang.
"Should I sing the song I can or should I sing a good one people will like," Spade continued, before outlining the history of financial problems at JFL and the terrible consequences if the hospital continues to decline. 
A personal experience drove home how crucial the hospital is for everyone, Spade said after his win.
"I had a heart attack Jan. 3 of 2012 and went to the hospital in an ambulance," he said. "Within an hour I was good to go. But the doctor said if it had been another half an hour before I was treated, I probably wouldn’t have made it. The hospital and Dr. Griffith kept me alive," he said.
"I wanted to write a negative, humorous song but I could not. People need to understand what dire straits the hospital is in. What would we do if the hospital closed its doors? Really, what would we do? I support my hospital. That is the only one we have," he said.
Spade credited his wife Sharon Brookes, saying "she is my senior advisor and coordinator. She’s the one who made this happen."
His second song, “De Letter,” poked fun at senators voting to pass a nonbinding resolution of no confidence in the governor.
Spade also won for best political commentary and tied for best social commentary with Samuel “Mighty Pat” Ferdinand. Spade said he has won nine St. Croix and three St. Thomas crowns over his career so far.
The Mighty Pat, who has many titles under his belt as well, was first runner-up with a humorous song called "By Pass Me," making a pun of the new Christiansted road and all the problems, from taxes to utility bills, he’d like to bypass him. And a somber second entry was titled “If a Dead Man Can Talk," about all the young men gunned down, with no one brought to justice, from unsolved murders in the territory to the national news stories about Trayvon Martin in Florida.
"This world we are living in is so filled with sorrow and sin," Mighty Pat sang, as Gerard "Luz" James III of James Funeral Home and several assistants wheeled in a flower-bedecked coffin, standing somberly with a funerary air.
"An innocent man, innocent man. He didn’t do nothing. But pop pop pop, somebody killed him," he sang. "Who killed this man, nobody don’t know. Nobody don’t know. That is the way the song goes."
The Mighty Pat has won at least 14 calypso crowns throughout the Caribbean.
Temisha “Caribbean Queen” Libert won second runner up, though had there been a prize simply for best singing voice, it would be hard to imagine her not taking it all. Libert came out dressed as Wonder Woman for her first number, "To the Rescue," about how she wants to come to the Virgin Islands’ rescue and we all need to come to its rescue.
Her second number, "No Confidence," poked fun at the V.I. Legislature for passing a nonbinding resolution of no confidence in the governor, reading an explanation from the Source that the resolution is symbolic only, and singing about numerous less than crucial recent legislative acts, such as resolutions in favor of the Julie mango and declaring bush tea the territorial beverage.
Libert was Miss St. Croix in 2011 and is the 2013 Miss Travel in Style "I’m Every Woman Queen." She won the 2009 Virgin Islands Idol competition, according to her bio provided by the Crucian Carnival organization. As a calypsonian, Libert said she wants "to encourage other young people to embrace our culture, lend a helping hand in seeking change."
As always, Daren "MC Bogle" Stevens kept the audience in stitches with slightly off-color jokes and impromptu gags, and all the performers were backed by St. Croix’s own Xpress band, joined by several backup singers and a horn section calling itself International Horns.
