Aba A Luke

An­tho­ny La Fleur, known in the en­ter­tain­ment world as Squeezy Rankin, is T&T's an­swer to Ja­maica's hard-hit­ting, out­spo­ken dance­hall acts like Mava­do and Vy­bz Kar­tel. He's nev­er been afraid to say or sing about what's on his mind, and while some may re­fer to him as con­tro­ver­sial, his core au­di­ence en­joy the fact that he's al­ways re­al. In an in­ter­view re­cent­ly La Fleur spoke about his back­ground and the rig­ors of his youth.

Mu­sic was al­ways there

For the first 11 years of his life, La Fleur said he lived in Mor­vant, Laven­tille. He lat­er re-lo­cat­ed to La Hor­quet­ta where he cur­rent­ly re­sides. When asked what pro­pelled his de­sire to en­ter the world of mu­sic, he said, "hon­est­ly speak­ing, I don't know you know."

Like a lot of young peo­ple from his era, La Fleur says he re­calls mem­o­ris­ing the lyrics of songs he would hear on the ra­dio, a lot of it dance­hall and rap. "Some­times you know, you in a po­si­tion and that is all you could do then....sing a song to re­al­ly take your mind off cer­tain things as a child," he said. He says mu­sic has and will al­ways be his life. It's been that one out­let that has been there for him, through the good and bad times, and rem­i­nisc­ing on his youth and the strug­gles he en­dured to be a part of to­day's lo­cal mu­sic cir­cuit, La Fleur's voice ex­pressed a sense of sat­is­fac­tion.

More than just smut­ty lyrics

Over the years, he's re­leased a num­ber of songs, among them Rainy Weath­er, Nah Play We Tune and Con­fes­sions. Most of his hits have been sex­u­al in na­ture. How­ev­er, he says de­spite the fact that he has pro­duced and re­leased songs with sub­stan­tive con­tent, the smut­ty con­tent al­ways seems to get the bet­ter re­cep­tion among ra­dio DJ's. Not that he's com­plain­ing. He on­ly wish­es that more of his com­po­si­tions that deal with top­ics of hu­man im­por­tance, will get the at­ten­tion of those who have the pow­er to feed the mass­es with mu­sic. He says his abil­i­ty to com­pose mu­sic about is­sues of hu­man in­ter­est ini­tial­ly stems from his youth. In La Hor­quet­ta, he re­mem­bers meet­ing two broth­ers who would chant on any­thing they saw and ex­pe­ri­enced in their com­mu­ni­ty. He ad­mits that chant­i­ng, the abil­i­ty to rhyme on spot on any top­ic, was some­thing that re­al­ly wasn't so much a nov­el­ty at that time, as most youths he knew had the abil­i­ty back then.

Re­sist­ing the temp­ta­tion

La Fleur emerged on­to the mu­sic scene in the days of freestyle clash­es on cor­ners and blocks. In La Hor­quet­ta it was a com­mon oc­cur­rence, one that helped him to be what he is to­day. The jour­ney, how­ev­er, wasn't with­out its fair share of ob­sta­cles. He says his youth­ful days ex­posed him to fi­nan­cial woes, parental sep­a­ra­tion, is­sues that for a teenag­er grow­ing up in the La Hor­quet­ta com­mu­ni­ty could have led to him down the wrong path. "Even if it had any­body for me to talk to, I wouldn't talk to them. I nev­er want­ed any­body to know what was go­ing on with me," he said. He says writ­ing mu­sic then be­came a de­ter­rent that pre­vent­ed him from turn­ing to a life of crime. He says he would just sit by him­self and sing, ad­mit­ting that while there were mo­ments of temp­ta­tion, at the end of the day mu­sic was there for him. "Every­body and every­thing else could turn against you, but that would nev­er turn against you," he said, re­fer­ring to his mu­sic.