Patricia Chin: The Woman Running The Largest Independent Dancehall And Reggae Label.

Written by JESSICA LIPSKY GRAMMYS

Reggae singer Tanto Metro and VP founder Patricia Chin in 2004. Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images

At 83 years old, Patricia Chin, aka Miss Pat, has seen quite an evolution of the music that grew from her native Jamaica. For over 40 years, Chin has run VP Records—the legendary shop, distributor and label dedicated to dancehall and reggae. Miss Pat and her late husband Vincent “Randy” Chin founded VP in Queens, New York in 1979 after fleeing political violence in Kingston. Today, VP Records is the world’s largest independent label, distributor, and publisher of reggae and dancehall music, with more than 25,000 song titles—and has the rare designation of being woman-owned and run. (In 2015, Miss Pat became the first woman to win the American Association of Independent Music’s Lifetime Achievement award.) VP has seen generations of reggae come of age and played a crucial role in the development of the genre in New York and beyond.

While Miss Pat and Randy initially tried to push roots reggae to their New York audience, the sound of dancehall took hold because of its similarity to hip-hop. Over the years, VP has helped launch the careers of reggae and dancehall superstars such as Lady Saw, Maxi Priest, Bounty Killer, and Beenie Man. Yet Chin’s roots are even deeper. Back in Kingston, Miss Pat and Randy operated the popular record store Randy’s Records, distribution company and recording studio beginning in the late ‘50s. Chin held sessions with Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer and many other prominent musicians at the intersection of ska, rocksteady and reggae. She also pioneered the compilation album in an otherwise singles-focused market.

In her memoir Miss Pat: My Reggae Music Journey, Chin details VP’s story as well as her tales of growing up Chinese and Indian in Jamaica where she dealt with discrimination in the music business and many personal woes. In Miss Pat, hip-hop founding father DJ Kool Herc makes a comparison that puts Chin’s influence into perspective: “What Berry Gordy was to Motown, Patricia Chin is to VP Records and the reggae industry.”

Read the article The Women Essential To Reggae And Dancehall here.