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ENTITY · DRINK / BRAND

White overproof rum

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Cane spirit at around 63% ABV, drunk neat or with water, and the standard against which every other drink in a Jamaican dance is measured. It is the drink of the yard, the wake and the corner shop as much as the dance, which is what makes it different in kind from the sponsored brands: nobody had to market it into the culture.

Its presence in the music is proportionate. The Overproof riddim of 2011, built by JA Productions around Justus Arison and the late Patrick "Roach" Samuels, took the name as shorthand for the same idea — strength, no dilution, no apology.

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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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