Anthony Ray was born on August 12, 1963 in Auburn, Washington. He was a fan of hip hop and started rapping in the early 1980s.\n', '

Growing up Ray\'s mother worked as a licensed practical nurse (LPN) at the King County Jail making 6 or 7 dollars an hour. While living in the Bryant Manor apartments on 19th Ave and East Yesler Way, Anthony Ray started school at Roosevelt High School, near the University District, when the Seattle Public School District was in the throes of what would be a 21-year experiment to integrate the school system. Students were bused from their neighborhoods to schools at the other end of the city. From 1978, when the busing program started, to 1999, when it was shelved, minorities carried the burden of busing, piling onto buses from the South End and the Central Area that were headed for predominantly white schools in the North End.\n', '

Ray said he knew that some North End residents didn’t want black kids bused into their neighborhoods. But for him, the experience offered respite from the projects. “I’ve heard things like, ‘Forced integration is not good,’ ‘I want my kid to be able to go to school in our community; that’s why we moved here’ – all those things I totally understand,” he said. “But from my perspective, I didn’t have the luxury of living in a neighborhood where a good school was. We didn’t make that kind of money. So from my perspective, it was the best thing that could have happened to me.” A music teacher at Eckstein Middle School introduced Ray to the possibility of a music career. Before becoming a rapper, Ray at an early age was interested in electronics and CB radio, one of his early jobs was working at a pinball arcade servicing machines, during that time he as well started to fix keyboards and other musical equipment. He still works with electronics as a hobby. \n', '

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