With Rihanna's Umbrella and Sean Kingston's Beautiful Girls vying for chart supremacy over the past month, pop music has received a sizable infusion of Caribbean flavor this summer. Also in the mix is Kat DeLuna's Whine Up, featuring dance-hall star Elephant Man, which has cracked the top 40.

"Caribbean music has always been popular, but there are some new twists on the classic sound that have emerged," says Keith Naftaly of
Epic Records, which will be releasing albums by newcomers Kingston and DeLuna in the next few weeks.

Barbados native Rihanna has become an international superstar since emerging two years ago with the reggae-fueled hit Pon de Replay.
Umbrella features Jay-Z and has been No. 1 on the national radio airplay chart for four weeks. Her sound has become progressively more
pop-styled; new single Shut Up and Drive veers toward rock.

The Miami-born, Jamaican-bred Kingston draws on his reggae roots (his grandfather is producer Jack Ruby, his uncle dance-hall star Buju
Banton), vintage doo-wop (Ben E. King's Stand by Me) and hip-hop in his lilting Beautiful Girls, which is No. 2. His self-titled album arrives today.

Meanwhile, DeLuna, who was born in the Bronx but raised in the Dominican Republic, spices the pulsating Whine Up with the Dominican's
bachata sound. The song has generated a dance craze with its high-energy video, as YouTube and MySpace fans have put their own
versions online. The second single from the bilingual star's album, 9 Lives— due Aug. 7 — is a merengue-tinged ballad, Am I Dreaming.

Sean Ross of Edison Media Research says there has been a growing acceptance of island music in a variety of genres over the past
decade. He points to the music of reggae star Bob Marley, who died in 1981, which has had great catalog sales and become more broadly
popular than it was during his lifetime.

"There seems to be a willingness by pop listeners to accept 'reggae' as one broad, well-liked category, whether it's UB40 or Sean Paul,"
Ross says.

Record companies have taken notice and no longer seem willing to leave things to chance.

"Reggae and soca records used to work their way to radio over the course of months or years," Ross says. "It was inevitable that the major labels would figure out Caribbean music's appeal and start trying to cultivate their own."