Andru Anthony - Contributed

Andru Anthony is not content to sing about male-female relationships, he is also intent on defining them. So his upcoming 16-track album is called 'RelationShift', but he plans to precede it with his dictionary which, similar to the album's title, adjusts the final syllable of 'relationship' to make different word and meaning.

Anthony explains that in the dictionary, Relationshift: Interpretation Dictionary for Relationships, he speaks to 'relationgift', 'relationlift', 'relationsick' and 'relationflip', among the 10 terms that he defines. Added to the album and dictionary is the book RelationShift. Of the three, the dictionary is due first in September, the album - the last of the three slated for release - is coming out "any time before Christmas".

Before this, Anthony has had something of a long-distance musical relationship with Jamaica. He tells THE STAR that he left Jamaica many years ago, lived in Curacao and St Maarten in the Caribbean, then England, and now lives in New York. He notes that every time he has relocated "it's a music move".

The first of those moves came in Curacao, where Anthony visited after doing his first recording, Oh Mass Charlie, for Alton Minott. It was the trip to the Dutch Caribbean, though, which brought him success, as he recorded Gusta Paca ('This Little Girl Loves Money') with the band Goldie Locks. Anthony explains that "they were singing in a language called Papiamento and I translated it in English".

Anthony said it was a hit and he started travelling. Aruba, St Maarten, parts of Europe, Japan and several states in the US were among his stops.

personal tales

Now, though, he seems intent on coming home musically and is banking on Move on With My Life, from the RelationShift album, to do much of the transportation. He says while on the album "all of them (the songs) are true stories", his personal tales go up to about number eight, with "other people's stories after that".

"I make journals and I go back," he said, explaining how he keeps track of the source material.

Also on the album are Move On, Trust Me, She's No Angel and Yard Man She Need. And he needs 'yard', as finding success outside Jamaica initially "is not something I planned. There was not enough opportunity in Jamaica. I had to take a break".

However, he says "I tell them Jamaica is the root and the other places are the branches. If you don't do it in Jamaica, you don't do it anywhere".

An engineer by training, Anthony is looking forward to a London trip in September. There is still, however, that all-important Jamaican performance which Anthony says will happen "as soon as they call us".