Rappers Delight is 30 Years Old

HIP-HOP AT 30: The Roots of Hip-Hop: Sugar Hill Records (by Lewis Dene) It was October 1979. The disco bubble within which American pop culture had floated for the past three years had just recently burst, as bubbles usually do, in abrupt fashion. Music industry insiders were dropped on their heads without the slightest clue of what to do next. Suddenly, something entirely new hit that nation’s airwaves. At first, the listener might have been under the impression that they were listening to Chic’s ‘Good Times’, a recent number one record by one of disco’s top acts. But over the ‘Good Times’ rhythm track, instead of the icy melody of Chic’s original, three men spoke exuberantly in rhyme. By the end of the record’s very first line, a new era’s arrival had been announced: “I said hip-hop…”
 
Hip-hop. It had been around for several years having first surfaced in the crime-ridden neighbourhoods of the South Bronx. Gifted teenagers with plenty of imagination but little cash began to forge a new style from spare parts. Hip-hop was a product of pure streetwise ingenuity; extracting rhythms and melodies from existing records and mixing them up with searing poetry chronicling life in the ‘hood, hip-hop spilled out of the ghetto. The arrival of ‘Rapper’s Delight’ by the Sugarhill Gang, however, ensured that hip-hop would remain a secret no longer. From the housing projects hip-hop poured onto the streets and subways, taking root in Bronx clubs like the Savoy Manor Ballroom, Ecstasy Garage, Club 371, the Disco Fever, and T-Connection. From there it spread downtown to the Renaissance Ballroom, Hotel Diplomat, the Roxy and Fun House. It migrated to Los Angeles, where a whole West Coast hip-hop scene developed, sporting its own musical idiosyncrasies, its own wild style. Through television shows like BET’s Rap City and Yo! MTV Raps and a succession of Hollywood movies, hip-hop gained millions of new fans across America, in places far removed from the genre’s Bronx roots. It spread to Europe, Asia, Africa, and nearly every continent on Earth, gaining more cultural significance as the years rolled by. Today it is one of the most potent and successful musical forms of the 21st Century outselling every musical genre on the planet.

In 1979 Jeffrey ‘Jazzy Jeff’ Myree thought he was at the forefront of the hip-hop game. He and his Bronx-based group, the Funky 4 + 1, were popular on the party circuit and making extra money selling homemade tapes. Then he heard ‘Rapper’s Delight’. “We were shocked that somebody had made a record,” says Jazzy Jeff (not to be confused with the Jazzy Jeff who later formed a team with Will Smith a.k.a. the Fresh Prince). “That didn’t even seem possible to us.” A good-natured, near 17-minute long party song, ‘Rapper’s Delight’ wasn’t the first rap single; the Fatback Band’s ‘King Tim III (Personality Jock)’ preceded it by a few weeks. But it became rap’s first hit - reaching No.34 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and No.3 in the UK - as well reputedly becoming the best-selling 12-inch single ever. Initially, ‘Rapper’s Delight’ was released only as a 12-inch single with a plain red label; the distinctive candy-striped Sugar Hill logo, snaking over the New York skyline, was still on the drawing board. “Sylvia brought this to me,” says Joe Robinson, “a 15-minute record on a 12-inch disc. No 15-minute record had ever got played on the radio, so I said ‘what am I gonna do with this?’ But all I had to do was get one play anywhere and it broke. Radio was difficult at first, but you only needed one play. First time I’ve ever seen anything like that happen.” “We just couldn’t keep up with the demand for the record,” continued Joey Robinson Jr. “We were selling an average of 50-60,000 copies per day and went platinum by the end of the month. The biggest day I had was 96,000 units. We were topping charts in every country on the face of the planet.” Throughout the early-eighties Sugar Hill churned out singles in the same vein, becoming the most prominent label of hip-hop’s infancy. But it also experimented with other forms - from ‘The Message’, a gritty slice of inner-city life from Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, to ‘Check It Out’ by ventriloquist Wayne Garland and his rapping dummy, Charlie. The importance of the label on the birth and development of a new musical genre is highlighted by one of the genre’s greatest protagonists, ex-Furious Five member Melvin ‘Melle Mel’ Glover: “It’s important because it shows where the music came from, and that it’s the same thing people are doing now. People try to pigeonhole what we were doing back then as ‘old skool’ but if you listen to it, you see it’s just music.” Sugar Hill tracks had the same basic formula as modern rap - clever, boastful rhymes and funky dance music - but there were differences too. The music was live rather than sampled: a smooth, supercharged house band backed most Sugar Hill artists – Positive Force recreating Chic’s ‘Good Times’ as the basis for ‘Rapper’s Delight’. And though there are doses of realism in cautionary tunes like ‘The Message’ and ‘White Lines’, Sugar Hill never glamorised crime. “Everything I did was positive rap”, says Sylvia Robinson, who founded the label with her husband Joe, naming it after a section of Harlem that had once been home to numerous black artists, musicians and athletes. “We didn’t try to create violence”. Most gangsta-rappers, from Snoop Doggy Dogg and N.W.A. to the late Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., have made the same claim. But Sugar Hill artists always made their moral intentions clear; gangsta-rappers of the nineties prefer grey areas, stepping into the shoes of belligerent, hedonistic characters in their raps and saving most of their positive-minded statements for interviews. And with the notorious music impresario Morris Levy as an investor in the new label, it was clear they were also a force not to be fooled with. “The difference between Sugar Hill’s music and what’s happening now is that (the rap industry) grew, and the street got more involved”, continues Jazzy Jeff. “All our songs were about fantasy: Our lyrics were done like a fairytale. It was about wanting to have a big car, be on TV and hear ourselves on the radio and in magazines. Now, you’ve got rappers that have been in trouble - that have been in jail - and they’re rapping about their lives. We were right out of junior high school; we didn’t know about drugs. Now (rap is) coming from kids that are really living that way: carrying guns and selling drugs.” In 1979, Robinson could not have had any idea of how rap would evolve. All she knew was she heard something she liked, and “the kids” seemed to like it too. By the time she stumbled onto rap, she was a 43-year-old music industry veteran. In the fifties, she was half of the duo Mickey & Sylvia, whose ‘Love Is Strange’ hit the top 20. In 1973, recording on her own, she made the top 10 with the erotic seduction of ‘Pillow Talk’; by the late-seventies she was writing songs and producing records for R&B acts like the Moments and Shirley & Company. Sylvia wasn’t particularly interested in discovering anything, she says. But when her niece threw a birthday party for her at the New York disco, Harlem World, Robinson heard something she couldn’t resist. “As I was sitting there the DJ was playing music and talking over the mic, and the kids were going crazy,” she recalls, “all of a sudden, something said to me, ‘Put something like that on a record and it will be the biggest thing.’ I didn’t even know you called it rap.” Back in Englewood, she put out feelers through her teenage son, Joey Robinson Jr., that she was looking for rappers to sign. Her first discovery was Henry ‘Big Bank Hank’ Jackson, who was working as a bouncer at Disco Fever, as well as managing the Mighty Force MCs, a Bronx-based hip-hop group. While moonlighting at Crispy Crust pizzeria on Palisade Avenue he would perform raps originated by the Mighty Force MCs and the Cold Crush Brothers. Sylvia had heard of Jackson through her son and drove over with him to find out if the rapper would like to cut a disc. “Jackson left the pizza parlour with his apron on and the flour all over him and jumped in the car,” Robinson says. While he was auditioning, rapping along to the music on Joey’s eight-track tape machine in the parked car, Guy ‘Master Gee’ O’Brien, of the group Phase Two, strolled by and asked to audition too. Robinson, who had set out looking for just one rapper, decided to put them together. Later that day, Michael ‘Wonder Mike’ Wright, another Englewood teenager, auditioned at her house. “I improvised something off the top of my head”, he recalls, “I incorporated her furnishings, her dog… everything.” The newly formed duo became a trio: the Sugarhill Gang. The group’s first effort was ‘Rapper’s Delight’ which combined the rhythm arrangement of Chic’s ‘Good Times’ with sweetly innocent rhymes borrowed from the Mighty Force and Cold Crush: “Check it out, I’m the C-A-S-An-The-O-V-A and the rest is F-L-Y” – the enunciation of C-A-S-A-N-O-V-A had been lifted from a routine by Grandmaster Caz, who was less than thrilled at its appropriation. “He didn’t even change it to ‘Big Bank Hank’, he just said the rhyme the way it was in the book (which Caz had loaned him)… the rhyme about Superman and Lois lane, that’s my rhyme too… People knew me for my rhymes. People said ‘I heard you on the radio.’ That ain’t me. ‘No, but I heard your rhymes.’ I Know, it’s not me though. ‘Well, I know you’re getting paid.’ Yeah, well… It’s fucked me up ever since.”

Despite being a whopping 17-minutes long, Hank maintains that ‘Rapper’s Delight’ was totally improvised after the first few words and recorded in a single take. “One take, no mistake, didn’t stop or stutter. A 17-minute record done in 17-minutes and 50-seconds. When you’re hungry, you want to do something right.”

To understand why three guys rapping over ‘Good Times’ had such an impact, one must try to remember where America was, musically speaking, in the fall of 1979. The country had just spent two years ridding the crest of the disco wave, which had begun to form in 1974 and gained considerable steam with the release of Saturday Night Fever three years later. By the summer of ‘79 disco ruled. In any given week, at least half of the US top 10 were disco records. One after another they hit the radio, until the airwaves were saturated and the backlash had begun.

‘Disco Sucks’ T-shirts and bumper stickers were everywhere, and in Chicago, a radio DJ named Steve Dahl grabbed headlines by exploding thousands of disco records in the outfield of Comiskey Park at an ugly anti-disco rally attended by a largely white crowd. The same week ‘Good Times’ debuted in the national top 10, six of the other spots were occupied by disco records. By the time it hit the number one there were just three, and when it dropped out there were none. The press wasted no time declaring the disco era officially dead.

Coincidentally as ‘Good Times’ finally dropped out of the top 40, it’s alter ego, ‘Rapper’s Delight’, replaced it. After ‘Rapper’s Delight’ blew up Sugar Hill, quick to maintain the impetuous began signing acts. In 1980 Bronx DJ Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five pacted with the label and issued perhaps one of the most groundbreaking records of the era in ‘The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel’. A cut up record the likes of which had never been heard before, and that to this day still remains one the most influential records ever committed to vinyl. Flash exposed the world to transformer scratching and breakbeat mixing, and with the aid of the Furious Five, the crowd was rocked by the most ingenious wordology. Also utilising the rhythm to Chic’s ‘Good Times’ along with elements from Queen’s ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, Blondie’s ‘Rapture’, the Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Eighth Wonder’, Spoonie Gee’s ‘Monster Jam’ and Flash’s own ‘Birthday Party’; the pot-pourri was a synergy made in heaven.

As with Flash, Trouble Funk also found a home with Sugar Hill Records, and whilst they would later go onto become the fathers of go-go, their roots were firmly sown in rap. In 1982 the Washington collective exposed the DC sound to the masses via ‘Hey Fellas’, ‘Pump Me Up’ and ‘Drop The Bomb’ which encapsulated perfectly the heavy bongo-laden percussive sound of the city. Early rap pioneer Spoonie Gee, who had previously recorded for Enjoy, signed on the dotted line and delivered a brace of quality party jams including ‘Spoon’nin Rap’, ‘Spoonie Is Back’ and teaming with the Sequence, ‘Monster Jam’. The femme fatale trio, Sequence, comprising Angie B, Cheryl the Pearl and Blondie, originally started life in Columbia, South Carolina, before linking with Robinson’s label for ‘Funk You Up’. Their pairing with Spoonie Gee was another Robinson masterstroke.

Like Motown and Stax before them, Sugar Hill kept their ears to the street, predicted what was coming, and put it on wax before their competitors. The label’s talent scouts scoured nightclubs and jams in search of the era’s most popular breaks; they listened to word of mouth and discovered which MCs listed on flyers had skills and needed deals. Some artists arrived at Sugar Hill harder than they left, but most became international stars. In a male-dominated industry, Sylvia was a woman able to make things happen. When an artist was on a rival label, she aggressively pursued them until they finally signed. Once signed, decisions were made: what break would the house band cover? What theme would the act rap about? Most of the time the combination of artist, theme, and track imbued releases with an energy, innovation, and relevance still evident today. The Treacherous Three’s take on Allen Toussaint’s ‘Yes We Can-Can’ (T3 member Kool Moe Dee kick-started his solo career with the oft-sampled ‘Turn It Up’) or the Sugarhill Gang’s freestyle version of ‘Apache’ neatly employed the best of contemporary street appeal over classic grooves.

1982 saw Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five deliver what would become the blueprint for ghetto life and would single handily change the shape of rap. Exposing the harsh realities of eighties America ‘The Message’ put pay to the feel-good, name-chanting formula upon which rap’s foundations had been laid. ‘Rapper’s Delight’ had proved that rap could sell, but ‘The Message’ proved that it could do more than just entertain. With its surreal synth hook, vivid images (“I can’t walk through the park, ‘cause it’s crazy after dark/Keep my hand on my gun, ‘cause they got me on the run”) and memorable refrain (“Don’t push me, ‘cause I’m close to the edge/I’m tryin’ not to lose my head”), it was an instant classic. ‘The Message’ advanced the vocal innovations of early rap and combined them with the socio-political ambitions of the black rockers who had been popular a decade earlier. ‘The Message’ was a kind of sequel to Stevie Wonder’s 1971 rock hit ‘Living For The City’ - both were cautionary tales of getting caught up in the temptations of big-city life; both end with a fadeout confrontation between homeboys and cops. The song, written primarily by Sugar Hill Records house band percussionist Duke Bootee, would never have been recorded without Robinson’s enthusiasm, says Melle Mel. “We didn’t want to do it; our thing was party tracks and stuff like that. But Mrs Robinson wanted us to do it.” Her instincts were right; ‘The Message’ became a global hit.

By now the rap form was gaining in seriousness, variety and complexity. Afrika Bambaataa’s ‘Planet Rock,’ a sonic collage of beats, pop culture references, and rap exhortation, sold half a million copies and by the middle of the decade a new sound was beginning to be heard on beat-boxes throughout the districts of New York. Called ‘electro’, Sugar Hill were quick to see the potential of this new medium that had already been championed upon by their rivals, Tommy Boy and Profile Records. Flash & the Furious Five had already hinted at its potential in ‘Scorpio’, but it was their cautionary tale ‘White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)’ that again propelled the label to the forefront of hip-hop. An ironic record bearing in mind at the time of its release Flash was a freebase cocaine addict, and the demon drug had already wiped out several first-generation old-skoolers including Spoonie Gee. “A million magic crystals painted pure and white/A multi-million dollars, almost overnight/Twice as sweet as sugar, twice as bitter as salt, and if you get hooked baby it’s nobody else’s fault - so don’t do it!” With electro came the formation of the West Street Mob – a trio comprising Sylvia and Joe’s son, Joey Robinson Jr. – they instantly scored with a string of hits including the b-boy classics ‘Mosquito’ and ‘Break Dance-Electric Boogie’.

But success didn’t last long; within a few years, the label’s momentum slowed down to a crawl. Flash left for an undistinguished solo career in 1984; the Furious Five continued to record without him but with little success. Whilst the Sugarhill Gang failed to repeat their early achievements with a string of poorly received singles. The new wave of rap was coming - most prominently through acts like Run-DMC, LL Cool J, EPMD and Public Enemy with their stripped-down sound and lean, hungry vocal style; Sugar Hill artists just weren’t able to change with the times. They were also squabbling among themselves and with the record company. “I got tired,” says Robinson. “When something isn’t fun, I lose interest. When it’s business, I can’t deal with it.” Melle Mel says that the label’s warm, family-like atmosphere was offset by a “dog-eat-dog” edge, with artists competing against each other for the label’s support. And so, by 1986, a mere seven years after ‘Rapper’s Delight’, Sugar Hill had become more or less inactive.

Today, the violence Melle Mel and the Furious Five denounced in their music has become the norm. Where rappers once called hoodlums ‘punks’ and rightfully chastised them for preying on their own kind, ‘gangsta rappers’ rule the charts. Where groups once warned about the evils of drug use, today rappers glut the market with drug-related albums. Where artists once sought to move the crowd, today no one dances. “When hip-hop first came out, we had a lot of people thinking it would just be a fad,” concludes Joey Robinson Jr. “I guess we proved them wrong.”

So where are we now, and what of the future? Is all that glitters just gold teeth? In an article for the New York newspaper Village Voice, Greg Tate argues that the commercialisation of the genre is a negative and pervasive phenomenon, writing that: “what we call hip-hop is now inseparable from what we call the hip-hop industry, in which the nouveau riche and the super-rich employers get richer”. Ironically, this commercialisation coincides with a decline in record sales and increased pressure from critics of the genre. As the hip-hop turns 30, a deeper analysis of the music’s impact is taking place. It has been viewed as a cultural sensation that changed the music industry around the world, but some believe commercialisation and mass production have given it a darker side. Tate has described its recent manifestations as a marriage of “New World African ingenuity and that trick of the devil known as global-hyper capitalism”, arguing it has joined the “mainstream that had once excluded its originators.” While hip-hop's values may have changed over time, the music continues to offer its followers and originators a shared identity that’s instantly recognisable and much imitated around the world.

Where hip-hop pioneers once tagged their signatures on subway cars and street corners today Jay-Z has his initials on bed linen, and the vernacular's seductive powers have even driven cosmetics giant Estée Lauder to propose a union with the House of P.Diddy. Hip-hop's effervescent and novel place in the global economy is further proof of that good old Marxian axiom that under the abstracting powers of capitalism, “all that is solid melts into air” (or the Ethernet, as the case might be today). So that hip-hop floats through the virtual marketplace of branded icons as another consumable ghost, parasitically feeding off the host of the real world's people — urbanised and institutionalised — whom it will claim till its dying day and all to ‘represent’. So does the future of hip-hop rest in the hands of Corporate America? Just as long as we don’t see a Coca Cola Records label or Crest Toothpaste Presents Eminem’s latest album, then perhaps this is not such a bad thing. After all, hip-hop has always been a tale of survival and in these trying times for the music industry it is definitely survival of the fittest. Once their lyrical rhymes rocked the party, now Will Smith, LL Cool J, Queen Latifah, Ice T, Mof Def et al are huge Hollywood box office attractions. We’re at a time when Jay-Z can headline a died-hard rock festival like Glastonbury, and one of hip-hop’s biggest stars is a white guy named Marshall Mathers. Yes, a lot’s happened in 30 years… just look who’s living in the White House if you need further proof.