Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

When An­tho­ny La Fleur, bet­ter known as Squeezy Rankin, was 17 years old, he com­posed a song for a man named Le­ston, from La Hor­quet­ta, who died.

“It is about a man in the com­mu­ni­ty who was a good sol­dier,” he said dur­ing an in­ter­view at Guardian Me­dia’s of­fice in Port-of-Spain on Mon­day.

La Fleur ex­plained that the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty was griev­ing for Le­ston, and the song was a way to ho­n­our his mem­o­ry.

“Every­body does call on me to sing that song and the com­mu­ni­ty know this song from ever since,” he said.

La Fleur be­lieves com­pos­ing songs with a mes­sage has al­ways been his call­ing.

“I al­ways find my­self singing them kind of songs about life, life in the ghet­to, hold­ing on. When the lev­el of hard­ship, when you have no lights, you does have to get some­thing to take you away from that and that was where the mu­sic came in,” he ex­plained.

With his 2025 of­fer­ing Jus­tice mak­ing waves on ra­dio sta­tions and on so­cial me­dia, the 2024 Freestyle Monarch is now be­ing en­cour­aged by many to en­ter the Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion.

La Fleur said as he be­came more in­volved in the mu­sic in­dus­try, he sang what grabbed peo­ple’s at­ten­tion.

“I said, you know what, you see this good boy thing, let me show them what it is to be bad,” he said.

Squeezy Rankin’ said he put the songs about so­cial is­sues on the shelf and in 1999 he made a so­ca hit and de­cid­ed to pur­sue that genre.

The Rainy Weath­er singer said he be­came dis­en­chant­ed when a pro­duc­er told him that the pub­lic was not ready for his com­po­si­tions.

“I was the jaw-drop­ping artiste, I was the man where women liked to say ‘oh God he out­ta tim­ing’ and men say­ing ‘yes he bad’... I go­ing dance­hall show and mash up the place,” he said.

Over the years, La Fleur again shift­ed his style of mu­sic.

He said be­ing a fa­ther of three chil­dren was the cat­a­lyst.

“I cyah have a 15-year-old daugh­ter and go­ing on stage and go­ing and say aye big up the gal them and all them deroga­to­ry re­marks I used to make be­fore, to me that in­ap­pro­pri­ate,” he shared.

This is why for Car­ni­val 2025, he re­leased Jus­tice, which is about a moth­er griev­ing for her crim­i­nal son who was killed.

“The moth­er say­ing she wants jus­tice be­cause of what hap­pened to she child but if you lis­ten to the song good, the com­mu­ni­ty has been cry­ing for jus­tice from this per­son all the time, this is some­thing that does hap­pen. I have lit­er­al­ly seen it on many oc­ca­sions ... plen­ty of we liv­ing in de­nial in we com­mu­ni­ties,” he said.

Since its re­lease on De­cem­ber 31, 2024, the mu­sic video has gained 25,000 views, with many com­mend­ing him for us­ing his tal­ent to high­light what’s hap­pen­ing in so­ci­ety.

So­ca artistes Machel Mon­tano and Ian “Bun­ji Gar­lin” Al­varez both took to so­cial me­dia to high­light the song. Ra­dio sta­tion own­er Antony “Chi­nese Laun­dry” Chow Lin On did the same.

“This is ab­solute fire bro, no one saw this an­gle com­ing,” Bun­ji Gar­lin wrote in his post.