CUSTOMISED dub plates, high sounds of dancehall music blaring and high school students out in their numbers could only mean one thing; the Digicel Showdown High School Disc Jockey Competition second round is in full gear.

Each week the competitors are coming bigger and better to showcase their skills at D’Entrance. This week, St George’s College and Haile Selassie High School faced off for a spot in the semi-final round of the competition.

The competition was again closely contested as each school came to showcase their best skills. The competition got under way with its usual five categories: the warm-up, early juggling section, task round, second juggling round, and tune-for-tune showdown.

In the warm-up round each team played selections from the 90s and played mostly music from Jamaican reggae artistes such as Beres Hammond and Bob Marley.

The early juggling category was where the competition really picked up pace and the teams started to go head for head for top scores.

Both teams displayed a good variety in the song selections used for the second category and stayed true to the type of music that the category required.

The task round required the teams to play songs that were collaborations between two or more artistes. This category saw music from I-Octane, Aidonia, and D’Angel rocking the venue. The second juggling category was high energy and much more.

Haile Selassie played original dub plates from dancehall artistes I-Octane, Bounty Killer and Chi Ching-Ching showing support for their team in the competition.

These went over well with the audience and helped to intensify their performance.

Not to be outdone, St George’s came with their own dub plates from other dancehall artistes showing support for them.

Leaving the high intensity juggling section on a wave, the audience was excited for the ultimate round — the tune-for-tune showdown to begin.

This section never disappoints, and this week it was bigger and better. The teams had their dub plates and gimmicks to entertain the audience and intimidate their competitors, and the crowd loved every minute of it.

While this week’s judges Fire Ras, Dr Dre and ZJ Smurf, tallied the scores to decide the winner the audience was treated to phone card giveaways from Digicel, and the contestants presented with goodie baskets courtesy of Holiday Snacks.

The guest artistes for this week were Renny and dancehall artiste D’Angel.

This week’s deliberations took some time and the anticipation of the judges’ decision had the students on edge as they could not see a clear winner. The judges announced their decision, that Haile Selassie High School was the winner for this week’s competition.

Haile Selassie High now advances to the semi-final round of the competition.

— Shanique Hayden