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ENTITY · DRINK / BRAND

Street Vybz / STR8 Vybz Rum

Probable

Vybz Kartel's own rum, and the point at which the relationship between dancehall and liquor turns over completely.

Every other brand in this collection paid its way toward the music: Magnum was commissioned for the dancehall, Guinness sponsored the clash, Red Stripe bought the Sumfest stage. Street Vybz Rum ran the other way. It launched around 2009 as the deejay's own product, promoted in his own records, and it stopped in 2011 in a dispute with his business partner before resuming the following year.

It returned at scale in November 2024 as STR8 Vybz Rum, produced in Trinidad by Angostura, with four blends named after his records — Fever, Electric, Ramping Shop and Unstoppable — and launches across the Caribbean through 2025. The artist is no longer the billboard for someone else's bottle; he is the bottle.

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At a glance

Confidence
Probable
Sources
Jamaica Observer; Jamaica Star; Caribbean trade press.
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Connections

In stories

Story · Well supportedThe bar in the dance: how liquor built, named and paid for the music

A brewery, a rum house and a tonic wine have shaped Jamaican music as surely as any studio — and what the dance drinks has changed twice, from a crate at a man's foot to bottles held up in the video light.

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Compiled and researched by The Jamaica Music Atlas music desk. The sources that informed it are credited above.

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