VP Records

The Chin family label and distributor, grown out of Randy's Record Mart on North Parade in Kingston and rebuilt in Queens, New York after the family emigrated in the late 1970s. VP became the largest independent reggae and dancehall operation in the world, and for decades the primary route by which Jamaican records reached an international audience — its Strictly the Best compilations functioning as a running record of what the dance was playing.

Discogs dates the family's move from Jamaica to 1977 and puts the first shop at 170-03 Jamaica Avenue, then 170-21, which sits two years earlier than the 1979 founding most sources give; a move and a company are not the same event, and the archive records both rather than choosing. Billboard named VP its reggae label of the year in 1999.

The Greensleeves purchase took the group past 25,000 titles, and it runs fourteen imprints of its own, among them Riddim Driven, Dub Rockers, VP Classics and Randy's Records, the last carrying the Kingston shop's name back into the catalogue.