Before Sylvia Robinson ever heard a rap record, she'd already had two number-one hits in two different decades. This episode tells the story of the record executive who put hip-hop on the radio for the first time, and the record most tangled up in disputes over who actually deserved credit for making it.
It covers Robinson's own career as a singer and producer going back to the 1950s, the struggling label she built Sugar Hill Records out of, the pizza-shop discovery that became the Sugarhill Gang, and the legal fight with Chic over an unlicensed bassline that ended with almost everyone who actually wrote and performed \"Rapper's Delight\" left off the official songwriting credits. It's a story about who gets remembered as a founder, and who doesn't, themes this show returns to often.
Sources include contemporaneous music press, Sugar Hill Records' business history, and interviews with the Sugarhill Gang's surviving members and Sylvia Robinson's family.
Next episode: the back-to-school party that started it all, six years before this record existed.
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