New Jersey
Story, bloodline and 9 names
Across the river, and it got to the record first. In 1979 Sylvia Robinson sat three unknowns down in front of a band replaying Chic's Good Times, and Rapper's Delight carried a Bronx party music nobody had pressed to vinyl onto the pop charts and out to the world. Sugar Hill went on to put out The Message. A decade later Jersey's second wave — Latifah, Naughty by Nature, the Fugees — proved the state was never a suburb of the New York sound.
- 1973The Bronx
- 1979New Jersey
Sylvia Robinson had been hearing about the Bronx parties for a year when she went looking for rappers to put on a record — and found one behind the counter of an Englewood pizzeria, rhyming out of a Cold Crush Brother's notebook.
Assembled in an afternoon; cut the first rap record most of the world ever heard.
Ran Sugar Hill, built the Sugarhill Gang, and got Flash's crew to cut "The Message".
Played Sugar Hill's breaks live while everyone else sampled them.