Grandmaster flash and the furious five rappers
She was the one who convinced them DJs to play a 15-minute rap record. “Aunt Sylvia had Sugar Hill Records, but my mom is the one who got the song hooked. Ward’s daughter, Shanell “Lady Luck” Jones, who was signed to Def Jam in the late ’90s, remembers her mother’s invaluable contributions well. It’s been so many years, so they’re not going to put me in jail now,” Ward jokes.) (“Let’s just say, there was a lot of payola going on then. Her tenacity went a long way - so, admittedly, did some extra money. Ward, however, traveled the country, called around, and got as much face time as she could with as many DJs as possible. It wasn’t easy getting any songs on the radio, but at that time, the DJs who served as the gatekeepers at their respective stations, didn’t see it for rap songs, and found it absurd that Sugar Hill Records was trying to make the push. It wasn’t easy getting “Rapper’s Delight,” Sugarhill Gang’s monumental 1979 first single, on the radio.
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Wonder Mike went next, and then Master Gee, who happened to be walking by with a friend who coincidentally knew Sylvia, went next inside the Robinsons’ car. The couple were told that they should check with Big Bank Hank, who worked at a local pizza shop at the time he told them he could rap and auditioned on the spot. Sugarhill Gang started when Sylvia and Joe Robinson began asking men they encountered in various locations, sometimes on the street, if they could rap. “That’s why she bought the three guys together.” She came there and started listening to how they were rapping over the music and made the decision to put it on wax,” remembers Donna Ward, Robinson’s niece and former promotions director for Sugar Hill Records. One time, my sister had a birthday party at Harlem World for my aunt Sylvia. We used to go out to different clubs and that’s all they did. “What the MCs were doing then was just rapping over music. However, Slyvia Robinson recognized that rap was fast becoming a viable art form and sped up the inevitable. So many of the moves and deals that shaped the cultural zeitgeist in hip-hop at the time were parlayed in person, where artists represented and advocated for themselves.
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In a 2014 interview with DJ Vlad, Grandmaster Caz noted how very few people had managers, pre-Sugar Hill Records, counting Grandmaster Flash and the Funky 4 + 1 among the rare exceptions. At the time just before Sugar Hill Records launched, rappers mostly stuck to performing in clubs like Harlem World and Disco Fever, in the Bronx, and at neighborhood block parties around the city. When the late singer-songwriter Slyvia Robinson and her late husband, businessman Joseph Robinson Sr., founded Sugar Hill Records in 1979, in Englewood, New Jersey, they changed the trajectory of hip-hop. However, while New York has the historical distinction of being the birthplace of hip-hop, New Jersey’s influence on New York, and subsequently the entire culture, has to do with business. Their close proximity allows for easy cultural exchanges, with people migrating from one region to another, or artists looking to expand their fan bases by traveling to different locales in the tristate area for shows and networking. When it comes to hip-hop, New York and New Jersey are in an entanglement. Photo-Illustration: Vulture and Erik Pendzich/Shutterstock “New York gets all the props, but don’t get it twisted, the Bricks is just as thorough.”