Random Record - Sugarhill gang (s/t) - 1980

Back in the early days of the podcast, I once thought I might run out of records to cover. I laugh at my naïveté because the last time I checked, I have enough content to last me well into the 2040s, provided the post-apocalyptic hellscape doesn't get us first. One of the reasons I wanted to branch out into a companion blog was to shine a spotlight on some of the newer items in my collection. Since I load everything into Discogs (I love a database), and Discogs has a "random" function, from time to time, I let Discogs tell me what to play. Today's selection is The Sugarhill Gang's self-titled debut, considered to be the first hip hop album. I bought my copy for $9.99 at Strictly Discs in Madison, WI about two months ago.

As a middle-aged white lady from Wisconsin, you'd be correct in assuming that I don't have a great deal of hip hop in my collection. Rapper's Delight (on this album) and Vice, by Grandmaster Melle Mel (from the Miami Vice soundtrack) were my introductions to the genre. But when I came across this in the bins, I thought this was a great opportunity to have an important record in my collection. The legendary songwriter and producer, Sylvia Robinson, thought that an album with all hip hop tracks wouldn't sell as well, so I was surprised that there are some soul ballads and mellow disco grooves along with the more expected uptempo tracks. But as I've said ad nauseam on the podcast, genres are bullshit, so the ebb and flow of energy didn't throw me, and sonically, it feels consistently late 70s/early 80s. I can see, however, particularly if you were anticipating an album of tracks like Rapper's Delight, it might be disappointing. I like the variety, myself. Of the non-hip hop songs, Passion Play has a great groove and might be my overall favorite on the album, even as I bought it on the strength of the hit single, the aforementioned Rapper's Delight, which is an interpolation of Chic's Good Times (which I will cover in a future episode). It also opened up the Pandora's Box of attribution that would follow, although to be fair to The Sugarhill Gang (and Sylvia Robinson), they did credit Chic on the label. And authorship in popular music had often been previously squishy, particularly in blues, folk, and country spaces.