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| Acknowledging it was a touch commercial... |
The Hit
Swear to God, I’ve already written a full post on The Sugarhill Gang - I certainly know the story, and not just from Hip Hop Evolution, Season 1, Episode 2 - but, these are the hazards of deleting half the things you write.
At any rate…
1979’s “Rapper’s Delight” took the world by storm when it came out and recycles through pop culture with enough regularity, even if it ain’t clockwork. Which is to say, who doesn’t know this song? As for liking it…
A stand-alone Wikipedia page gives a closer history of The Sugarhill Gang’s (borrowed) breakthrough hit - e.g.., the famous bass line came from Chic’s “Good Times” with writing credits going to co-founder Bernard Edwards, how the members of Sugarhill came on stage at a Bronx “hip hop event” and started freestyling with Fab Five Freddy when Chic started playing the that single, the fact the melody was interpolated, instead of sampled, etc. If you listen to the non-single version - something I’d done before but spaced - that opens with another interpolation from “Here Comes That Sound Again,” a single by a UK disco act called Love De-Luxe.
The lyrics are famous, the song’s origins infamous…I mean, what can I tell people in this post that they wouldn’t already know from watching Hip Hop Evolution?
Long story short, it was the first hip hop hit to crack the Billboard Top 40 (it only reached No. 36 in the U.S., but it climbed into the top 3 in several international markets), Henry “Big Bank Hank” Jackson lifted the lyrics from Grandmaster Caz (aka, Casanova Fly, aka, Curtis Fisher), and, yes, it was the Sugarhill Gang’s only major hit in the U.S. market, though, both “Apache” (pretty sure that one came from elsewhere; also, o ye gods, that fucking video, ) and “8th Wonder” (still, both better songs, for me) became solid UK hits. To sum up its origin and legacy in two quotes, respectively:
“There's this idea that hip-hop has to have street credibility, yet the first big hip-hop song was an inauthentic fabrication. It's not like the guys involved were the 'real' hip-hop icons of the era, like Grandmaster Flash or Lovebug Starski. So it's a pretty impressive fabrication, lightning in a bottle.”
- Oliver Wang, author of Classic Material: The Hip-Hop Album Guide
Swear to God, I’ve already written a full post on The Sugarhill Gang - I certainly know the story, and not just from Hip Hop Evolution, Season 1, Episode 2 - but, these are the hazards of deleting half the things you write.
At any rate…
1979’s “Rapper’s Delight” took the world by storm when it came out and recycles through pop culture with enough regularity, even if it ain’t clockwork. Which is to say, who doesn’t know this song? As for liking it…
A stand-alone Wikipedia page gives a closer history of The Sugarhill Gang’s (borrowed) breakthrough hit - e.g.., the famous bass line came from Chic’s “Good Times” with writing credits going to co-founder Bernard Edwards, how the members of Sugarhill came on stage at a Bronx “hip hop event” and started freestyling with Fab Five Freddy when Chic started playing the that single, the fact the melody was interpolated, instead of sampled, etc. If you listen to the non-single version - something I’d done before but spaced - that opens with another interpolation from “Here Comes That Sound Again,” a single by a UK disco act called Love De-Luxe.
The lyrics are famous, the song’s origins infamous…I mean, what can I tell people in this post that they wouldn’t already know from watching Hip Hop Evolution?
Long story short, it was the first hip hop hit to crack the Billboard Top 40 (it only reached No. 36 in the U.S., but it climbed into the top 3 in several international markets), Henry “Big Bank Hank” Jackson lifted the lyrics from Grandmaster Caz (aka, Casanova Fly, aka, Curtis Fisher), and, yes, it was the Sugarhill Gang’s only major hit in the U.S. market, though, both “Apache” (pretty sure that one came from elsewhere; also, o ye gods, that fucking video, ) and “8th Wonder” (still, both better songs, for me) became solid UK hits. To sum up its origin and legacy in two quotes, respectively:
“There's this idea that hip-hop has to have street credibility, yet the first big hip-hop song was an inauthentic fabrication. It's not like the guys involved were the 'real' hip-hop icons of the era, like Grandmaster Flash or Lovebug Starski. So it's a pretty impressive fabrication, lightning in a bottle.”
- Oliver Wang, author of Classic Material: The Hip-Hop Album Guide
