STORY · CLASH
Dancehall's New York engine
Well supported
A Jamaica, Queens record shop, a Sunday-night radio slot and a Queens concert hall built dancehall's American home base.
From Randy's-turned-VP Records to Bobby Konders and Jabba's Hot 97 show to Amazura's stage-show floor, New York became dancehall's most durable outpost beyond Jamaica itself.
From Orange Street to Jamaica Avenue
Kingston's VP Records began as Randy's, Vincent and Patricia Chin's Orange Street record shop, before the Chins emigrated and rebuilt the business in New York, settling in Jamaica, Queens in 1979. The move planted a Jamaican record-industry root directly inside the city with the largest Caribbean immigrant population outside the Caribbean itself, and VP grew into the diaspora's dominant reggae and dancehall label.
By the 1990s, Bobby Konders had built Massive B into one of New York's defining sound systems and labels; in 1999 he brought it to commercial radio with a Sunday-night reggae and dancehall slot on Hot 97, later co-hosted with Jabba. For years it was the only Jamaican-music program on mainstream US commercial radio in the tri-state area, breaking Vybz Kartel, Mavado and Busy Signal to a mass American audience the way JBC and RJR once broke artists across Jamaica.
The club circuit followed the same arc from underground to institution: venues across Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens hosted dances through the 1980s and 1990s before Amazura in Jamaica, Queens, became, by the late 1990s, the borough's biggest stage-show room, hosting Stone Love anniversary shows, Buju Banton and international sound clashes under one roof.
A record shop, a radio slot and a concert hall — dancehall's New York infrastructure was built one institution at a time.
The axis later stretched south: Jabba co-founded Miami's Best of the Best show, and VP Records opened a second US retail and distribution point in Miramar, Florida. The same New York-Miami corridor produced Sean Kingston, the Miami-raised singer who has described himself as a grandson of sound-system pioneer Jack Ruby — a reminder that the diaspora's American engine runs on the same family lines as the island's own sound-system history.