Interview Anthony B
Do you tour in Africa often? Where have you been and what is the reception like there? Well going to Africa I feel like Michael Jackson you know? I have been to Gambia, Senegal, Kenya, South Africa. I am going back to Kenya on the 11th of August. Do you consider yourself a lover versus a fighter? On songs like „Where to Turn“ on the new album you sound like you are searching. Ya I am lover and I am never a fighter, my fight is for freedom and the collective consciousness. This is a story of the human intelligence, cause we have to fight against mass-deception more than against mass destruction. It is the mass deception. The deception is rooted in the consciousness, deception that gives you riches and wealth. What is the song „Defend My Own“ about? Is there a story associated with the lyrics? It is a very Garvey-centered storyline. We have to defend our own. I have never seen luck in the black race, cause we grow up in Jamaica. Where we used to grow there is a shop image that they made in the image of a man with a rope around his neck and its called Mr. Credit. He was this before we were born so we don‘t grow up to know luck and Mr. Credit. We grow up to know hard work and results. So that is what we are trying to tell the youths cause a lot of the youths today, there‘s a lot of them committing suicide cause there is nothing, they are losing hope. But guess what? You cannot lose hope in yourself, you have to lose hope in the system, in religion, in any other outside forces. If it never works, no one is looking for pain that they get, so they cannot be disappointed. ‘Cause you have to look at yourself as a king, trying to defend the throne, a black man, but you have to go and defend your own. You can‘t sit down and say ‚oh, it is going to come.‘ Don‘t expect to see no riches coming from the sky or diamonds fall, too, going and read through our own history. Every kingdom and every empire, has been fought for, has never been kept and covered, it has been fought for.
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The song „Cry Blood“ from the album, was that released as a single? It is a very familiar tune, beautiful yet said. That is just the way music is, you know. That is the first thing they teach you in music, sometimes you hear something and you think ‚have I heard this before?‘ That‘s how a song is and it kind of can make its way. What is your biggest wish for Jamaica? Restoration of human consciousness. Jamaicans have to know themselves as Jamaican, and that is as far as PNP and JLP and Labourite and Showers and Uptown and Downtown. That‘s what we want to see: Jamaicans restore themselves and see themselves that being Jamaican is being part of the struggle. Cause the same thing destroying Africa, tribalism. Same thing as politicalism in the Western hemisphere and in America it is the so-called gangsta life, mafia life. It‘s the same separation. Restoration of the human consciousness, that is what we are fighting for, that is what I would like to see. That is why we sing conscious music. You can enter the collective consciousness. It is part of your brain, a it have the bad self, a it have the good self, a it a the loving self, the joyful self, and it gets bad and beat up and then the destructive self is going to come out, and the rebellious self, and the survival instincts and you feel like you forever a fight. What did you experience when you ‘turn Rasta’ as a youth? Well it a rebellion you know, as it is inna di world today. Today they create psychology that so that if you are not in the realms, if you are not in this circle that we create that has this as a psychology like you are stupid, mad, crazy, insane. There is a name for you, so it is the same thing. It starts clouding the family, cause the family create a circle, which them say, ‚All right you gonna be a doctor or a lawyer a judge.‘ They did not show you the hardship of it or the limited resources that they could provide for you to fulfill these dreams. So once you start to walk out of the line of that dream, you get a name just like