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The Spanglish fan favorite from Sublime (1996) — bilingual verses everyone phonetically memorized over a dancehall bounce, too raunchy for radio and beloved precisely because of it. This was the track you turned down when your parents walked in.
The "na na na na naaa" that took over the world in 1994. Jamaican veteran Ini Kamoze's one perfect strike—a four-sample collage that hit #1 and never let go, even after he faded back.
Twin sisters from Astoria, Queens, singing over the Coolie Dance riddim's bongo loop, with a bridge lifted from Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, in the summer when every block party in America was running on dancehall. It went to No. 4 on the Hot 100 in 2004 and remains the only single of their own to crack the top 40.
Jamaican lovers-rock over the handclap-driven Diwali Riddim—the sound of spring 2003 radio. Wayne Wonder's sweet R&B float became the riddim's most perfect vessel.
The Jamaican dancehall artist who put Kingston rhythms and patois on top of American pop radio. Sean Paul turned reggae into a staple of every club and school dance for five years straight: three number-one hits (one of them a Beyoncé collab), a Grammy, the sound of the mid-2000s.
The get-caught-and-just-deny-everything anthem of 2000 — Shaggy and RikRok trading a call-and-response about brazenly denying an affair. An accidental single that became a number-one smash on both sides of the Atlantic and a karaoke staple forever after.
The dancehall-pop single from the Bad Boys soundtrack that made Jamaica's Diana King a global name in the spring of 1995: number 13 in America, number two in Britain, number one across Europe.