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Eddie RockerZ Best of VP Records

Ninety tracks from the label that brought Jamaican music to the world by the simple method of never stopping. VP Records is a family business that became an institution.

Vincent and Patricia

VP Records takes its name from Vincent and Patricia Chin, who ran Randy's Record Mart and Studio 17 in Kingston — one of the most important recording spaces in Jamaican history — before emigrating to New York in the late 1970s and founding VP in Queens.

What they built is the largest independent reggae and dancehall label in the world, and the primary route by which Jamaican music reaches international audiences. The Strictly the Best compilation series, running since 1990, is effectively the genre's annual report.

This selection concentrates on the late-1980s and 1990s dancehall era — the period when digital riddims replaced live bands and the music became faster, harder and enormously influential on hip-hop.

What to listen for

Ini Kamoze's "Hot Stepper" is the biggest crossover here — a number one in America, and a record whose Salvador Dalí-adjacent strangeness still has not worn off.

Shabba Ranks' "Wicked In Bed" and "Pirate's Anthem" with Cocoa Tea and Home T represent the artist who did most to take dancehall international, winning two Grammys in the process.

Buju Banton appears three times. He is one of the genre's most important figures and also its most complicated — an early homophobic record has followed him for thirty years, and his later work turned firmly toward roots and conscious material.

Dennis Brown's "Hit & Run" is the roots elder in the room — Bob Marley called him his favourite singer, and the description "Crown Prince of Reggae" was not marketing.

Cutty Ranks' "A Who Seh Ne Dun" and Ninjaman's "Test The High Power" are the hardest deejay records here, and Barrington Levy and Cutty Ranks' "Dancehall Rock" bridges the eras.

Sanchez's "Loneliness" and Wayne Wonder's "Reunion" are the lovers rock side, and Papa San and Yellowman bring the humour.

Go deeper

The Strictly the Best series is the obvious entry point — over seventy volumes, and a reliable annual snapshot.

Dennis Brown's Words of Wisdom and Barrington Levy's Here I Come are two albums worth owning.

And the Studio 17 tapes — the Chin family's Kingston archive — are one of the great recovered treasures of Jamaican music, and the story of their rediscovery is worth reading.

Why the label matters: VP did not just sell Jamaican music abroad, it built the pipeline that made the export possible — pressing, distributing and compiling at a scale no single producer could manage. Half the reggae and dancehall that reached listeners outside the island travelled through that machine.

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