From nearly 80 entries, 19-year-old Bermuda College student Jonae Smith was last weekend voted the winner of the 2007 Roc the Mic competition with her song ‘3 Strikes’.

Next week, as part of her prize, she will be heading to New York to have it recorded at the Roc the Mic studio, which is co-owned by recording artist and hip-hop mogul Jay-Z, and where Bermudian Shane Woodley is the chief engineer.

Miss Smith is an avid poetry writer, and has been singing since she was seven years old, but this was the first time she entered a contest with both original words and music, and she is naturally thrilled to have swept he field at the first attempt.

Close collaboration with Shawn Simmons, who wrote the music, proved to be the winning combination, though the teenager admits that, since the music was written first, fitting her words to it was the most difficult part.

In all, the duo spent approximately five hours over two weeks getting it right, and today Miss Smith is both proud of and excited with her success.

Along with all but one of her fellow contestants, she was at Power 95 radio station on Sunday waiting for the countdown, and admits that everyone was very nervous as they held hands waiting for the results.

Apparently known for saying, ‘Two strikes out, you’d better watch it’, Miss Smith says this became the title of her winning song when Mr. Simmons overheard her saying it to her boyfriend.

“The song talks about strike one, then strike two but you’re not out yet. Now you only have one strike left so be careful. It’s like a warning,” she says.

When it comes to her poetry, Miss Smith says words usually “pop” into her head, and sometimes she even wakes up in the night and writes them down; but she had to really think about the words for her song because they had to fit the rhythm of the music.

“That was a hard thing to do. I had to sit and figure out where to put everything. It was really tough.”

Currently studying for her associate degree in social work at Bermuda College, the young singer-songwriter says her win has inspired her to do more writing, but she won’t be giving up her goal of becoming a social worker.

“I always said if I ever got a chance to do a singing course I would take the opportunity, but I would never go looking for it,” she said. “I have been singing since I was seven, but I never wanted to have a singing career because I see how hard it is, and how some people never make it, so I will do social work because my passion is helping children who are not as fortunate as me.”

Upon completion of her Associate Degree at the Bermuda College, Miss Smith plans to go abroad to study for her Bachelor’s degree in social work. Meanwhile, she plans to keep on singing, and has been invited to sing at the kitefest at Horseshoe Bay on Friday.

In addition to having her song recorded in New York, and receiving regular rotation airplay of it on Power 95, Miss Smith also won a high-end cell phone from Cellular One, the company which set up the systems for the public to text their votes.

The ‘Roc the Mic’ competition was organised by Jonathan (JT) Talbot, owner of J-Rock Communications, along the lines of ‘American Idol’, and aired on ZBM Radio’s ‘Power 95’ on Sundays. The other four finalists, and their place in descending order, were: Wesley Hall (second), Jasmine Hendrickson, Mitchelle Trott and Kaylah Dowling.

[bul] Anyone wishing to hear Sunday’s awards show in full can visit website www.thaunderground.net where it will play for the next two to three weeks.