Major Lazer just handed one of the Caribbean's fastest rising genres a new platform, releasing bouyon remixes of its single G.O.A.T. featuring Trinidadian soca star Bunji Garlin and the group's newest vocalist, America Foster.
Bouyon started as a mix of folk rhythm and digital production on the island of Dominica, and it has spent the past two years spreading well past its home base. Machel Montano, Skillibeng and Mr. Killa have all folded the sound into their own records, and Billboard traced that rise in a June 2025 feature on the genre's history, tracing its roots back to Dominica's WCK Band and its founders in the mid 1970s.
Major Lazer Builds on a Song Already Built for Carnival
G.O.A.T. first surfaced in November on GYALGEBRA, the group's first full mixtape in five years and the project that formally introduced Foster as its in house vocalist, a role the crew calls its First Lady. The mixtape's nine tracks moved across dancehall, drill and shatta before landing on bouyon, and two songs from the project, Gangsta and Bruck Down, have already charted on Germany's Urban R&B and Hip Hop chart. The new EP, titled G.O.A.T. (Bouyon Mixes), keeps that original version and adds two reworks from Trinidad's Precision Productions and Dominica's Dadamanufakture, both of whom push harder into bouyon's syncopated drum patterns and faster tempo than the mixtape cut did. Barbadian DJ Andre "Puffy" Parris, a Red Bull 3Style world champion and one of the region's most followed selectors, played the remixes on a livestream ahead of the official release, and demand from other DJs is what pushed Mad Decent to put both versions on streaming platforms.
Major Lazer's Miami Ties Run Through the Whole Release
Two of the group's three members, Walshy Fire and Ape Drums, are based in Miami, and GYALGEBRA itself was recorded between Jamaica, where Major Lazer formed in 2008, and Miami, according to the Jamaica Observer. The group carried that momentum into the new year, closing out the Ultra Music Festival main stage on opening night in March, a booking that put a bouyon inflected set in front of one of the largest electronic music crowds in the country. Foster, who joined Major Lazer after Diplo discovered her freestyling in London in 2024, described her approach to the project in terms of instinct. "There's a combination to it," she told Clash Magazine. "Manifestation, dedication, and knowing yourself." Bunji Garlin, a longtime fixture of Trinidad's soca scene with decades of carnival records behind him, joins Foster on the track, giving G.O.A.T. three distinct entry points between the original, the Precision mix and the Dadamanufakture mix for radio, clubs and fete season alike. The group's calendar stays full through mid year, with festival dates already booked at Coachella in April and Bonnaroo in June, alongside a run of soca and carnival appearances across the region.
Bouyon's rise has not come without friction. Some Dominican artists and fans have pushed back online against outside acts adopting the sound without crediting the musicians who built it on the island, a debate that predates this release and will likely outlast it. That tension tends to surface whenever a regional genre crosses into global pop, and it puts real weight on how credit and opportunity get distributed as the sound keeps traveling. Whether G.O.A.T. (Bouyon Mixes) becomes a lasting entry point for bouyon on international playlists or a passing marker of one carnival season, the release adds another data point to a genre that started with a handful of musical families in Dominica and is now landing on festival stages far from home.
