She founded the record label that launched Caribbean stars including Sean Paul – and despite poverty and tragedy along the way, Patrician ‘Miss Pat’ Chin still works in the VP office after 60 years
There can’t be that many 82-year-old dancehall and reggae svengalis. But Patricia “Miss Pat” Chin, who founded the VP Records shop, distributor and label in
New York 40 years ago with her late husband, Vincent “Randy” Chin, (VP stands for Vincent and Pat) is still going strong, 60 years into a remarkable career. With VP, Chin has nurtured the careers of superstars including Maxi Priest, Bounty Killer, Lady Saw, Beenie Man, Ini Kamoze and Sean Paul, all of whom feature on a new 97-track anniversary box set.
When we talk by phone, Miss Pat exudes that fantastic mixture of proclamatory formality and earthy observation peculiar to Caribbean people of her generation, and a life lived around world-changing
music comes into view. She was born in Greenwich Farm, Kingston – her mother was Chinese and her father Indian – and she remembers that music was omnipresent in their household. “We didn’t have much entertainment,” she says. “If someone had a television, it would be just a tiny black-and-white Rediffusion. We didn’t then have a culture called reggae, but we were blessed to have R&B imported from America.” Then at 18, “I chose the music business,” she says. “Or the music business chose me. The music business was my husband.”