VP matriarch’s love for music breaks glass ceiling

The name VP Records is almost synonymous with hit-making reggae and dancehall music today, but it wasn’t always that way.

Interestingly, the name, which smacks of the longer abbreviation VIP (Very Important Person), came about from the simplicity of joining the two first names of a married couple. Vincent and Patricia.

The Patricia, is Patricia Chin, and when she founded VP Records with her husband, it was really a progression from a record store.

Miss Pat left Jamaica in the late 1970s for the United States after initially raising her children here. At the time, her husband’s name was well known among music enthusiasts on the island.

You see, Vincent Chin, is the same person as Randy Chin, owner of the very famous Randy’s Records, a music outlet where the latest and hottest records could be found.

In 1979, while still in New York, Miss Pat and Randy created VP Records in a bid to help artistes to spread their wings further afield than the island of their birth.

It worked.

VP Records is still, today, one of the biggest record labels in the world, and certainly the most notable producers and distributors of Jamaican music, reggae, dancehall, ska, mento.

1979 to 2021 marks 42 years. To put those 42 years in context though, VP Records has outlived dozens of record labels that have come, achieved varying levels of success, but failed to endure.

That enduring quality, Miss Pat, says, comes from her organisation’s ability to adapt.

Sometimes it was hard.

“My husband and I didn’t go to any business school, but as the music evolve, we tried to evolve with it. We have seen the music move from vinyl, 7-inch and LPs, to CD, digital, and streaming,” Miss Pat had said in an interview with The Gleaner.

There were many difficult moments as the buying of ‘one-one-record’ burgeoned in Jamaica during those early years.

But more difficult than that, was having to leave Jamaica in 1977.

At the time, the country was undergoing significant political upheaval with differing ideologies taking their battles to the streets, resulting in the bloody 1980 elections, the most bitter in the country’s 59-year history.

“Because of the riots, we had to pull down our shutters three or four times a day. We had to think about our life,” explained Miss Pat.

Then figuring out life in a brand-new country, especially when your business was tied up in the history of an island many miles away, proved challenging.

“It was very hard when we came here (the US) in 1977. We had to figure out where to put up shop, where to send the kids to school, and also get accustomed to the food and the climate. But fortunately, there was a lovely Jewish lady who taught us everything, from drinking black coffee to how to dress for the cold. She worked with us for 15 years.”

But VP Records kept at it, becoming the biggest seller of Caribbean music in the world by the 1980s.

The 1990s brought more change for VP Records. They would go from selling records produced in Jamaica, to producing them and utilising the connections they had developed over the years to create, advertising and distribution channels. They were now a record label.

Now they weren’t selling music produced by Coxsone, Leggo, Joe Gibbs, or Beverley’s. They were now selling, VP-produced music.

And they did well at it, recording names like Shabba Ranks, Super Cat, Beres Hammond, Luciano, Sizzla, Sean Paul, and Beenie Man.

In 2003 Randy Chin passed but VP’s growth never slowed under the leadership of Miss Pat, who by 2008, was so successful, she was able to buy Greensleeves Records and Publishing, her organisation’s biggest competitors.

Now 83 years old, you may be surprised that Miss Pat still goes into work every day, enjoying her job to this day. Sure the day-to-day operations now fall to sons Chris and Randy Chin, but Miss Pat’s work is still not done.

Not done, is for her though, as the achievements over the years, surely suggest she can take a load off.  

Miss Pat has had to deal with counteracting a male-dominated field, putting Jamaican popular music all over the United States and England, as well as establishing the Vincent and Patricia Foundation, which engages in community work aimed at increasing the general awareness of Jamaican music and culture through access to music education, performances and music literacy.

And best believe, the affable Miss Pat, knows she has done well.

“I feel blessed to see that reggae music has taken over the world.”