"The British Link-Up Crew: Consumption Masquerading as Masculinity in the Dancehall" — Donna P. Hope

Donna P. Hope's 2004 article in Interventions, and the sharpest available account of why spending became a performance in the dancehall.

Its argument, in her title: consumption masquerading as masculinity. Where the ordinary markers of male status — schooling, a white-collar career, socio-economic background — are out of reach, public display of economic wealth becomes the route to standing instead. Brand-name clothes, jewellery, cars, bodily care down to the barbershop and the bleaching cream, all of it performed in a room where it will be seen and, increasingly, filmed. She quotes the videographer Jack Sowah in May 2001: nowadays the men run down the video more than the women, because it is the hypeness.

She is careful about two things this archive should copy. She does not claim the identity is uniform, and she sets the crew's reputed involvement in illegal activity aside as not her subject while noting plainly that in the Jamaican inner cities significant masculine power is bestowed on men reputed to be engaged in it.

It is also the direct ancestor of the archive's record on the money pull-up. Once standing is bought rather than earned, the currency of the dance has already changed; the rewind is just the last thing to be priced.