It would be an understatement to say that reggae matriarch Patricia ‘Miss Pat’ Chin has seen and accomplished a great deal in her life.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1937, she helped build a reggae empire in her homeland (the Randy’s Record Mart store and Studio 17; where the careers of artists ranging from Bob Marley & the Wailers to Augustus Pablo and Toots & The Maytals were started and nurtured) alongside her late husband, Vincent ‘Randy’ Chin.

After nurturing one of her children, reggae music, alongside her actual progeny throughout the ’70s, she uprooted her business and family to emigrate to New York in 1978, landing in Queens, where she still lives today. At that point, another challenging and fascinating journey – the history of VP Records, “the world’s
largest reggae label” (New York Daily News – Jared McCallister) – began.

VP was – and is – a family-owned and operated business and an important and inspiring American immigrant success story. VP’s first release was in 1979, and the history of the label, which built a new wave of reggae legends from scratch, including Beenie Man, Bounty Killer, Lady Saw, and Sean Paul, can be heard and seen in the acclaimed deluxe 2019 VP box set, Down In Jamaica: 40 Years of VP Records.

“Randy (Chin) was the first person who was setting up something for the people to survive (in the ‘60s), so they were the best people in the record business. They were simply the best, and Miss Pat was the brains.” LEE ‘SCRATCH’ PERRY

Forty-two years later, Miss Pat is still going as strong as ever in her 83rd year on the planet. She is a proud grandmother and great-grandmother who continues to work every day to live out her dreams.

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