That Jamaican cultural production has been recognized by mainstream America is evidenced by the fact that even the New York Times jumped on the dancehall bandwagon. A fashion spread in the Sunday Magazine of 30 May 2004 written by Steve Garbarino presented dancehall and reggae artists wearing Gucci and Versace in settings like Coronation Market and other locations in Kingston's tougher downtown neighborhoods. The emphasis throughout the piece was on 'keeping it street', on the chaos, authenticity, and rootsy sexuality embodied through a politics of cool that was generated, ironically, by wearing high-priced designers in low-income areas. The 'realness' of the street, here, was rooted in violence, or rather in the ever-existing possibility of violence at street dances in West Kingston. While fashion was the centrepiece of the article, music was its vehicle. Popular dancehall artiste Sean Paul (who crosses over to the American audience in part because of his lighter complexion and his ability to speak a more standard version of English than many darker-skinned DJs) was quoted as saying 'Music is the voice of Jamaican people [...] We think about it hour to hour, year to year' (Garbarino, 2004, p. 53). Yogie, another dancehall DJ, concurred, stating, 'Music dictates how our whole society lives [...] In Jamaica, everyone knows all the artists. Your bus driver could be a record producer here' (Ibid.).  
In the Times piece, well-worn tropes about blackness, music, and exotic sexuality were rehearsed, but what was especially notable was how the article (re-)produced regionally delineated hierarchies of blackness, authenticity, and what Obika Gray has called 'badman-ism' (Gray, 2001). These are hierarchies that are also implicitly engaged by black American popular cultural productions such as the hip-hop movie Belly, released in 1998 by Lionsgate/Fox Studios and directed by Hype Williams, best known for his string of popular hip-hop videos in the mid-1990s. Belly is the story of best friends Tommy and Sincere (played