World of Jamaican Music

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An illustrated map of the creators of Jamaican music and how they are connected.

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Anthony B

Artist. Dancehall, revival

Active
1992-present
Sunrise
March 31, 1976, Clarks Town, Jamaica
Also known as
The Original Fireman

Anthony B was born Keith Anthony Blair on March 31, 1976, in Clarks Town, Trelawny. He was raised in a Seventh-day Adventist household and turned to Rastafari in his teens, joining the Bobo Ashanti order, whose turban and robes he wears in performance.

He began recording in the mid-1990s and broke through with "Fire Pon Rome" (1996), which named serving Jamaican politicians and was widely refused airplay. The album Real Revolutionary (1996), produced by Richard "Bello" Bell for Star Trail, followed the same year, with Universal Struggle in 1997.

His delivery alternates between singing and deejaying, the mode usually called singjay, and his subjects are Rastafari, African repatriation, political corruption, and poverty. Later albums include Seven Seals (1999) and That's Life (2001).

Anthony B has recorded prolifically since, working with a wide range of producers, and tours internationally. Among the Bobo chanters he was the more melodic: on 2 Strong, the album he split with Sizzla, the Rough Guide finds him impressing on "The Joy" and "Higher Heights" and matching Sizzla's ferocity, and it traces the whole "more fire" vogue in reggae lyrics to "Fire Pon Rome," a song that, it says, Peter Tosh could have written. On stage he is an athletic performer, chanting his lyrics between high kicks and leaps; reviewing a 2012 Los Angeles show, Jan Salzman heard power and strength in his cover of Tosh's "Rastafari."

Last updated November 1, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Wikipedia, citing Colin Larkin, The Virgin Encyclopedia of Reggae (1998), 17, says his mother was a Seventh-day Adventist and his grandmother a Revivalist, and that he became a Rastafarian as a teenager, a decision his family did not welcome: "Anthony B," Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_B. His own biography, reproduced on Reggaeville, mentions both "Revivalism and the Seventh Day Adventist church": "Biography: Anthony B," Reggaeville, accessed October 1, 2026, https://www.reggaeville.com/artist-details/anthony-b/about/. Barrow and Dalton name him among "the best known adherents to the Bobo dread faith" and describe the Bobo performers' tightly rolled turbans and "flowing robes": Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 372-73.
  2. Barrow and Dalton say he recorded first for the Wizard label, with his friend Little Devon, and then for Richard Bell's Star Trail: Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 373. Wikipedia, citing Jason Ankeny's Allmusic biography, dates his debut single, "The Living Is Hard" on Wizard, to 1993, and his Reggaeville biography says he left his hometown in 1992: "Anthony B," Wikipedia; "Biography: Anthony B," Reggaeville.
  3. Barrow and Dalton write that he premiered the song at the Sting festival late in 1995, calling fire on "all the main Jamaican political party leaders," and that the 1996 Star Trail single was "an enormous Jamaican hit despite being banned from the airwaves": Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 373.
  4. Barrow and Dalton describe Real Revolutionary (Star Trail in Jamaica, Greensleeves in the UK) as his debut album and Universal Struggle as "the set that followed": Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 373. On the years, "Anthony B," Wikipedia.
  5. Barrow and Dalton call him a "deejay/chanter" who "mixes chanting and deejaying": Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 373, 342.
  6. On Seven Seals, eighteen tracks from Star Trail issued by VP Records, Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 373. On the years, "Anthony B," Wikipedia.
  7. Barrow and Dalton write that he "largely remained loyal to the Bell camp" while recording for Fat Eyes, Black Scorpio, Xterminator, Jazzy Creation, and others, and that "half a decade later the militant chanter was still working much the same lyrical vein": Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 373.
  8. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 140, 373-74.
  9. Jan Salzman, "Anthony B in Los Angeles," United Reggae, January 20, 2012, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n861/012012/anthony-b-in-los-angeles.

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