Born Keith Anthony Blair on March 31, 1976 in the rural sugar farming
community of Clarkstown located in the northwestern Jamaican parish
of Trelawny, Anthony B grew up in a deeply religious family. Singing
hymns in church (as well as giving impromptu performances on the roadside
in his community) helped Anthony refine his vocal skills. “My
mother was an Adventist and my grandmother was a Revivalist, so I’d
have to go to church both Saturday and Sunday,” he recalls. Anthony
however, chose his own spiritual path, adopting the Rastafarian way
of life as a teenager, a decision that caused dissension among his family
members. “As a youth growing up, my grandmother say dem Rasta
is a blackheart people and they said I had to leave if I didn’t
trim (cut his dreadlocks). I wasn’t going to change so I went
to live with my aunt and uncle in Portmore (a suburb of Jamaica’s
capital city Kingston).”
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