The digital riddims that ran the dance

2011 dancehall riddim from Adidjahiem Records and Adde Productions that became a seasonal dancehall standard, driven by Vybz Kartel's title cut "Summertime" and Popcaan's "Raving," alongside Shawn Storm and Gaza Slim.

Dave Kelly is a Jamaican producer and engineer, widely regarded as one of the architects of 1990s dancehall, who honed his craft at Donovan Germain's Penthouse before launching his own Madhouse Records with partner Janet Davidson in 1991. He built many of the era's defining rhythm tracks, including the Pepper Seed, Bogle, Joyride and Showtime riddims, which carried hits for Buju Banton, Beenie Man, Terror Fabulous, Spragga Benz and others. His records topped both local and international reggae charts throughout the decade.

Donovan Bennett, born 24 September 1978, worked as Don Corleon from a Kingston studio that made the polished one-drop the international sound of 2000s reggae. His riddims arrived as named, self-contained releases — Drop Leaf, Seasons, Istanbul, High Altitude — each carrying a dozen or more voices, and the archive's other records point back at him more often than at almost any producer of his generation. High Altitude travelled furthest: Rihanna's "Break It Off", cut with Sean Paul, put the rhythm on international pop radio in 2006. The method was Duke Reid's and Coxsone's, unchanged in principle after forty years — build the track first, sell it to the singers second — but the surface was clean, digital and mixed for headphones rather than for a lawn.

Sizzla's cut on the 2001-2002 Martial Arts riddim from Kings of Kings Records was among the biggest tunes on a rhythm that also carried Capleton's "Badness" and Bounty Killer, Wayne Marshall and Richie Stephens's "Ladies Loving Fine," issued on Greensleeves' Rhythm Album series.

Deejay Gregory Peck's 1990 cut for producers Steely and Clevie gave its name to one of the defining riddims of dancehall's turn-of-the-1990s digital era, later reworked with cuts from Cutty Ranks, Capleton and Shabba Ranks.

Moses Anthony Davis, born 22 August 1973 in the Waterhouse district of Kingston, began deejaying as a child and has been a fixture of dancehall for four decades — long enough that his claim to the title King of the Dancehall is contested mainly by people who were not yet recording when he started. His run through the late 1990s and 2000s took the music onto international radio: "Who Am I", then "Girls Dem Sugar" with the American singer Mýa, and the album Art and Life, which won the Grammy for Best Reggae Album in 2001. His long rivalry with Bounty Killer, joined at Sting in 1993 and carried through the decade, is one of the defining feuds of the era and is catalogued separately here.

Beenie Man's "Miss L.A.P." (L.A.P. = "Lovely Awesome Person") voiced producer Tony Kelly's 2001 Buy Out riddim, one of the era's most-versioned dancehall rhythms, also carrying cuts from Sean Paul and T.O.K.

Madhouse riddim produced by Dave Kelly and released in 2005, part of the label's run of stripped-back, keyboard-driven dancehall rhythms; carried cuts by Beenie Man and Spice.

O'Neil Norman Bryan, born 11 September 1975, the deejay whose records did more than anyone's to make the 2000s dancehall era a dance era. He came up in Scare Dem Crew — formed in Seaview Gardens as the Seaview Family and renamed after Bounty Killer's hit "Big Guns Scare Dem" — before going solo in the late 1990s. What followed was a run of records built around specific dances, with the instruction in the lyric and the tempo shaped around the step, which is the tradition the Street dance grouping in this archive documents. His energy, his voice and his willingness to build a song around a move made him the most exportable dancehall artist of the period.

Elephant Man's early-2000s cuts "Egyptian Dance" and "Egyptian (Version)" rode producer Don Corleon's Egyptian riddim, part of a run of uptempo, horn-sampling rhythms that made Corleon one of dancehall's most in-demand producers of the 2000s.

Miguel Orlando Collins, born in St Mary on 17 April 1976 to devout Rastafarian parents, apprenticed on the Caveman Hi-Fi sound system and began recording in 1995. Bobby Digital Dixon cut singles with him; Philip "Fatis" Burrell's Xterminator label released the debut Burning Up the same year and gave him the setting the breakthrough came from. Praise Ye Jah (1996) and Black Woman & Child (1997) made him, with Luciano and Capleton, the voice of the late-1990s culture wave that pulled dancehall back toward Rastafari after a decade of slackness. He follows the Bobo Ashanti order, and the sheer volume is part of the record — 56 solo albums by 2018, released partly through his own Kalonji label. Anti-LGBT lyrics in some of his recordings have led to a UK entry ban in 2004, a cancelled German visa in 2008 and repeated European cancellations since.

Dancehall producer (Tony 'CD' Kelly) who worked at Penthouse and Shocking Vibes before his own hits, most famously the 1998 Bookshelf riddim voiced by Beenie Man, Mr Vegas, Lady Saw and Sean Paul.