The Sugarhill Gang in Bloomington, MN

Although
the Sugarhill Gang
didn't invent
hip-hop
, they were the first
rap
act to have a huge international hit. Released in 1979,
"Rapper's Delight"
was millions of listeners' first exposure to
-- before that, very few people outside of New York even knew what
was.
The Sugarhill Gang
were also among the first
acts to record a full-length LP; when this self-titled debut album came out in 1980, the vast majority of
old-school
MCs were only providing 12" singles. So
is a historically important album even though it is a bit uneven. While
and
"Rapper's Reprise"
(which features
the Sequence
,
's first all-female group) are excellent, most of the material is merely decent. And the ironic thing is that half of the songs aren't even
.
"Bad News Don't Bother Me"
"Here I Am,"
both of which find
singing instead of rapping, are romantic
R&B
slow jams -- and
"Sugarhill Groove"
is a sleek
disco
-
funk
number that hints at
Roy Ayers
. So this LP can hardly be called the work of
purists; in 1980,
Sugarhill Records
leader
Sylvia Robinson
(herself a veteran
singer) evidently felt that putting out an all-
album would be risky. But, while
isn't a masterpiece, it's still an album that
historians will find interesting. ~ Alex Henderson