Who owns the riddim?

Migration of tens of thousands of West Indian labourers, many Jamaican, to build the Panama Railroad from the 1850s and the Panama Canal into the early twentieth century, seeding the Afro-Caribbean communities and musical cross-pollination that later made Panama the birthplace of reggae en español.

Dominican genre named directly for Shabba Ranks's 1990 "Dem Bow": the rhythm loop from that record's Jamaican production line became the fixed pulse of a whole Santo Domingo street music. A clear case of a single Kingston rhythm seeding a national genre abroad.

The Steely & Clevie digital rhythm of 1989, known by two names for the same track: "Fish Market" as the instrumental, "Poco Man Jam" after Gregory Peck's signature cut. Built at the height of the pair's run as the most prolific rhythm-makers in dancehall, it would have been one riddim among hundreds except for what happened next -- Shabba Ranks voiced "Dem Bow" over it in 1990, a Panamanian version followed, and the pattern underneath ended up as the pulse of reggaeton. It is now the specific work at issue in Steely & Clevie's copyright case in the United States, where it is litigated under the Fish Market name.

Afro-Panamanian dancehall artist (Fernando Brown) who recorded 'Ellos Benia (Dem Bow)' in 1990-91, a Spanish adaptation of Shabba Ranks's 'Dem Bow' cut on the Dem Bow riddim; the record is a foundational document in the transfer of Jamaican dancehall into Spanish and the naming of the 'dembow' rhythm central to reggaeton (Wikipedia 'Nando Boom'; Remezcla; Wayne Marshall).

Dancehall-descended club style originating in Martinique, built on simplified versions of the rhythm patterns that ran through Jamaican dancehall from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s -- Dave Kelly's among the most-cited models -- and carried into mainland French clubs from the French West Indies. The lineage runs parallel to the better-documented case of the Dem Bow riddim reshaping into reggaeton: a Jamaican rhythmic template adopted, simplified and localised until it reads as a genre of its own. It is now the dominant Caribbean-descended club sound among younger French audiences.

The 1985 riddim, built by Wayne Smith and Noel Davey on a Casiotone preset at King Jammy's and voiced by Smith as "Under Mi Sleng Teng", that ended the era of the live band as the default of Jamaican music. Cheap, fully electronic and instantly copyable, it triggered the digital turn: hundreds of versions followed within a few years, production costs collapsed, and dancehall's tempo, texture and economics were remade around it. Nothing else in the archive divides a before from an after so cleanly.

Lloyd James, the engineer and producer who came up under King Tubby in Waterhouse and then changed the music twice over. He built and ran his own sound before turning to production, and in 1985 issued "Under Mi Sleng Teng" — the Casio-preset rhythm that ended the live-band era and opened the digital one. Through the late 1980s his Waterhouse studio was the busiest room in Jamaica, cutting for Half Pint, Admiral Bailey, Chaka Demus, Ninjaman and most of the era's voices, and his Super Power sound carried the same material into the dance.

The Spanish-language genre built on a dancehall foundation: its core drum loop descends from the rhythm of Shabba Ranks's "Dem Bow" (1990), carried through Panama and Puerto Rico into a global pop force by the 2000s. Its debt to Jamaican rhythm-makers is audible in every bar and has been publicly argued over for years.

Leonardo Renato Aulder, Afro-Panamanian artist credited as the first to record reggae in Spanish; his 1985 single 'El D.E.N.I.' (a critique of police brutality set to a Jamaican riddim) is widely regarded as the birth of reggae en Español and thus an ancestor of reggaeton (Wikipedia 'Renato Aulder'; alter/nativas Ohio State essay; Remezcla).

Afro-Panamanian artist Edgardo Franco, often called a father of reggae en Español; his late-1980s/early-1990s hits such as 'Tu Pum Pum' and 'Te Ves Buena' brought Spanish-language dancehall to a mass Latin American audience and are widely cited as key precursors to reggaeton (Wikipedia 'El General'; Remezcla; Billboard).

The lineage tracing reggaeton back to Panama, where Afro-Panamanian artists first recorded Jamaican dancehall in Spanish in the 1980s; Nando Boom's 'Ellos Benia' (a Spanish version of Shabba Ranks's 'Dem Bow', produced from Bobby Digital/Steely & Clevie's Dem Bow riddim) gave the genre its foundational 'dembow' rhythm before the music spread to Puerto Rico. Documents how the Jamaican dancehall diaspora seeded a global Latin genre (Remezcla; Wayne Marshall 'Dem Bow, Dembow, Dembo'; Bad Bunny Syllabus).

Shabba Ranks's 1990 record for Bobby "Digital" Dixon's Digital B, from the album Just Reality, voiced over the Steely & Clevie rhythm known as Fish Market or Poco Man Jam. Within Jamaica it was one hard dancehall single among many; outside it, it turned out to be the most widely copied piece of rhythm programming the island ever exported. Its lyric turns on "bow" in its Jamaican slang sense -- performing oral sex -- and the record is a scornful attack on the practice and on those who endorse it, set inside the wider refusal-to-bow boast the phrase also carries. That is the record, stated plainly; what travelled was the rhythm.

Jamaican-American producer whose 1990-91 "Pounder" rhythm -- a version of the Steely & Clevie pattern heard on "Dem Bow" -- is the record that actually reached Puerto Rico. Working out of New York, he cut Spanish-language dancehall with visiting Panamanian deejays, and the variant known as "Pounder (Dub Mix II)" is the one 1990s Puerto Rican producers looped, layered and built the reggaeton beat from. He is the least famous person in this chain and arguably the most consequential link in it: without the New York detour the Kingston rhythm may never have reached San Juan in a form anyone could sample.

Panamanian producer and artist Rodney Clarke, a central figure in the Panamanian reggae en español scene of the 1990s and the man behind "Dame Tu Cosita" -- a record cut in 1997 that sat quietly for two decades before a 2018 animated meme video turned it into one of the most-watched things on the internet. Cutty Ranks says the song is his, in translation, and has been pursuing the credit and the money since.

Puerto Rican producer Pedro Torruellas, whose cassette-only mixtapes -- the Playero series, running from the early 1990s -- are where reggaeton was assembled. He took the Jamaican-descended dembow loop arriving from Panama and New York, ran San Juan rappers over it, and sold the results by hand. Daddy Yankee is on those tapes as a teenager.

Luis Armando Lozada Cruz, the Brooklyn-born, San Juan-raised rapper generally treated as the first major artist of Puerto Rican Spanish-language rap, and the bridge figure between hip-hop en español and the dancehall-descended underground that became reggaeton.

Ramón Ayala, the San Juan artist who took reggaeton from cassette underground to global chart music, and the named lead defendant in Steely & Clevie's copyright suit. He came up on DJ Playero's tapes in the early 1990s; "Gasolina" (2004) is the record that opened the format worldwide. The suit's argument, in short, is that the rhythm he built that career on was made in Kingston in 1989.

Puerto Rican singer whose "Despacito" (2017, with Daddy Yankee) held number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for sixteen weeks and became, for a time, the most-viewed video on YouTube. It is among the specific recordings named in Steely & Clevie's complaint.

Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, the Puerto Rican artist who by the 2020s had made the dembow pattern the default pulse of global pop. His lawyers filed the motion asking the court to reconsider its July 2026 ruling in the Steely & Clevie case, arguing the plaintiffs had assembled their claimed rhythm from elements spread across three separate records rather than any one of them.

How reggaeton was actually built: not in studios with budgets but on cassettes sold hand to hand out of San Juan's public-housing caserío parties and carport marquesina dances through the early and mid 1990s. Producers looped the Jamaican-descended dembow pattern, rappers voiced over it in Spanish, and the tapes circulated outside every commercial and broadcast channel -- to the point that in 1995 Puerto Rican authorities raided record shops and confiscated stock in a public morality campaign against the music. The censorship did what censorship usually does to a street music, and the format went national soon after.

Where Jamaican dancehall first became Spanish. The Afro-Caribbean neighbourhoods descended from West Indian canal labour kept the link to Kingston alive for generations, and from the late 1970s Panama City deejays were versioning Jamaican rhythms in Spanish -- the practice that produced El General, Nando Boom, Chicho Man and Renato, and that the city's Museo del Reggae en Español now documents.

The Caribbean-side port at the Atlantic mouth of the canal, and the arrival point for much of the West Indian labour migration that built the railway and the canal. Its Afro-Antillean population is the reason Jamaican music had a Spanish-speaking home audience in Central America long before it had a Latin market.

The transfer point. New York's Jamaican and Panamanian communities lived within reach of each other and of the city's dancehall studio economy, and it is here that Panamanian deejays cut Spanish-language versions of Jamaican rhythms for producers working the New York end of the Kingston record trade -- including the "Pounder" variant that reached Puerto Rico.

Where the rhythm stopped travelling and became a genre. The dembow loop arrived in San Juan on record and on tape around 1990-91; within five years the city's caseríos and marquesinas had built an entire music on top of it, and within fifteen that music was the biggest Spanish-language pop format in the world.

The courthouse where the ownership of the reggaeton rhythm is currently being argued. Steely & Clevie's suit against Daddy Yankee and a long list of artists, producers, labels and publishers has been before U.S. District Judge André Birotte Jr. since 2021.

One of Panama’s first raggamuffin deejays, active from the late 1970s alongside El General, Nando Boom and Renato in setting Jamaican dancehall rhythms to Spanish lyrics; honoured as one of ten pioneers at Panama City’s Museo del Reggae en Español.

The 1990-91 rhythm built by Dennis "The Menace" Halliburton on the pattern heard on "Dem Bow," and the actual physical carrier of that pattern into Puerto Rico. The version credited as "Pounder (Dub Mix II)" is the one Puerto Rican producers sampled in the underground cassette years, which is why the reggaeton beat descends from Kingston by way of a New York dub mix rather than directly from the Jamaican 7-inch. Defence lawyers in the Steely & Clevie case have made a point of noting that its maker has never been sued over it.

Cutty Ranks's 1991 title track for Fashion Records, and the record at the centre of his own long-running claim. He says he wrote the song that El Chombo took into Spanish in 1997 as "Dame Tu Cosita," and that when a 2018 remix with Pitbull and Karol G turned it into one of the most-watched videos on the planet, neither the credit nor the money followed him.

Recorded in Panama in 1997, released as a single in 2018 and made globally inescapable by an animated meme video and a remix with Pitbull and Karol G on 29 August 2018. It reached No. 36 on the Billboard Hot 100 and its video has passed five billion views. Cutty Ranks says the song originates in his 1991 "The Stopper," that he wrote the original words, and that he has not been properly compensated -- a claim he was still pursuing, with new counsel, as at January 2026.

The 2004 single that carried reggaeton out of Puerto Rico and onto radio worldwide, and one of the recordings named in Steely & Clevie's complaint. Fourteen years after "Dem Bow" and fifteen after "Fish Market," the rhythm underneath it is recognisably the same one.

Sixteen weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2017, and for a period the most-watched video in the history of YouTube. Also, per the plaintiffs' filings, a descendant of a Kingston rhythm track from 1989 -- which is the whole argument of the case, compressed into one record.

The case that asks whether a riddim can be owned. Cleveland "Clevie" Browne and the heirs of Wycliffe "Steely" Johnson sued in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in 2021, claiming that the rhythm of their 1989 track "Fish Market" -- by way of Shabba Ranks's "Dem Bow" and Dennis Halliburton's "Pounder (Dub Mix II)" -- is the source of the dembow pattern under reggaeton, and that it has been copied without credit or payment in an estimated 1,800 to 2,000 recordings by well over a hundred artists, labels, publishers and distributors. Named recordings include "Gasolina" and "Despacito"; named parties have included Daddy Yankee, Luis Fonsi, Bad Bunny, J Balvin, Karol G, Wisin & Yandel, Don Omar, Rauw Alejandro, Pitbull, Drake and Justin Bieber. In May 2024 Judge André Birotte Jr. declined to dismiss the core of it, holding that the drum pattern could qualify for protection and that copying material derived from protected elements can infringe whether or not the defendant copied directly. On 6 July 2026 he denied summary judgment to both sides, finding "competing, facially credible expert opinions" on whether the elements form a protectable arrangement and sending the question of originality, access and copying to a jury. Bad Bunny's lawyers then moved for reconsideration -- their argument being that the plaintiffs have assembled a composite rhythm from seven elements spread across three different records, no one of which contains all seven. That motion was argued in Los Angeles in August 2026, with the judge saying he would need several weeks to decide.

Cutty Ranks's separate and longer-running effort to be credited and paid for "Dame Tu Cosita," which he says derives from his 1991 record "The Stopper" and which he says he wrote before El Chombo translated it into Spanish in 1997. The 2018 remix with Pitbull and Karol G reached No. 36 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the video has passed five billion views. As at January 2026 he had retained new counsel and told the Jamaica Gleaner: "I am still battling them because all now I haven't been properly compensated." He has also publicly backed Steely & Clevie's case.

The production company of Wycliffe "Steely" Johnson and Cleveland "Clevie" Browne, the rhythm section that defined digital dancehall from the late 1980s — house players at Jammy's, then label owners building riddims by the hundred, "Poco Man Jam" and "Street Sweeper" among them. Steely died in 2009; Clevie has continued the firm.

Rexton Rawlston Fernando Gordon, the deejay who took dancehall to the American mainstream and paid for it. He was the first dancehall artist to win the Grammy for Best Reggae Album, and won it twice consecutively — As Raw As Ever in 1992 and X-tra Naked in 1993 — on a major-label deal with Epic that no Jamaican deejay had held before. The gruff, bass-heavy delivery and the "Mr Loverman" crossover made him the most visible Jamaican artist in the world for a period in the early 1990s. His American standing collapsed after homophobic remarks in a 1992 British television interview, and the commercial consequences of that moment are part of the record. In 2020 Reggae Sumfest announced he would be crowned King of Dancehall at the festival.

Cutty Ranks (born Philip Thomas, 1965) is a Jamaican deejay from Kingston who, having worked as a butcher, became a pioneer of hardcore dancehall in the late 1980s and 1990s with a gruff, aggressive delivery. He broke through with tracks such as 'The Bomber' and 'A Who Seh Me Dun', and his 1991 debut album 'The Stopper' was released by Britain's Fashion Records. His records, including 'Limb by Limb', were later widely sampled in jungle, drum and bass and hip-hop.

Robert "Bobby Digital" Dixon (11 March 1961 - 22 May 2020) was a Jamaican reggae and dancehall producer who founded the Digital B label and was a defining figure of the late-1980s digital era. Emerging from an apprenticeship connected to King Jammy's operation, he produced key hits for Shabba Ranks, Cocoa Tea, Super Cat, Garnett Silk and later Sizzla and Morgan Heritage. He died in Kingston at age 59 following a kidney-related illness.

Wycliffe "Steely" Johnson (1962 - 1 September 2009) was a Jamaican keyboardist and producer who, with drummer Cleveland "Clevie" Browne, formed the dominant late-1980s and 1990s production duo Steely and Clevie. He first gained notice as a keyboardist on Sugar Minott's 1979 album Ghetto-ology and as a member of the Roots Radics before the duo became house producers at King Jammy's studio and launched their own label in 1987. Their computerised rhythms helped define the digital dancehall era through hits with Dawn Penn, Foxy Brown and many others. He died in New York at age 47 following a heart attack.

Cleveland "Clevie" Browne is a Jamaican drummer and producer, one half of the pioneering production duo Steely and Clevie with keyboardist Wycliffe "Steely" Johnson. Coming from a musical family and credited with helping pioneer drum-machine programming in reggae, he and Steely served as house producers at King Jammy's before founding their own label in 1987 and building many of the computerised riddims that defined digital dancehall. Their credits include Dawn Penn's 1994 hit "You Don't Love Me (No, No, No)" and work with acts from Gregory Peck to Foxy Brown.