By the time Sugar Hill Gang’s "Rapper’s Delight" hit radio in 1979, early adopters of burgeoning hip-hop culture dismissed it as novelty — an easy cash grab capitalizing on organic artistry they lived and created. The culture's originators were youngsters who saw graffiti and breakdancing be both vilified and celebrated, all within a decade. But "Rappers’ Delight," not only charted but was for many a first peek into a new culture that was developing in poor parts of New York.
A lifetime transpired between the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. The Incredible Bongo Band’s 1972 track "Apache," for example, was an early anthem of pioneering b-boys and b-girls, but a mere few years later became the anchor sample for Sugarhill Gang’s 1981 comeback single of the same name. Much of what was released in the early part of the decade scaffolded the genre’s musical onslaught.
Lyrical content provided by the Watts Prophets, Gil Scott Heron, and the Last Poets had positioned socially-minded spoken word as a tool to shed light on conditions plaguing disadvantaged neighborhoods, racial politics, and more. There’s a direct corollary between their worldviews, spoken with grace and quiet ferocity, to songs like "The Message" (by Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five) almost a decade later.
The foreground to the ‘70s was rich with instances of proto-rap, but even a decade prior, Pigmeat Markham recorded an aesthetically traceable precursor to the ‘70s sound with "Here Comes The Judge," a curio replete with dialogue skits, breakbeats, and rap verses. Released on Chess Records in 1968, it’s closely akin to Fatback Band's "Personality Jock," a one-off funk tune that preceded many at the time.
The production and music from these early hip-hop artists was relentlessly avant-garde. Joe Bataan’s 1979 upbeat Latin-influenced disco single, "Rap-O-Clap-O" set an early example of mixing genres and became rap’s debut in the European market. Three years later, Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock" fused rap with German electro.
By very late 1979, Kurtis Blow’s "Christmas Rappin’" enters the picture, a song that starts off not unlike a children’s song with "Twas the night before Christmas." Not only was it huge but was another example of rap’s boundless sound and potential.
These early recordings gave way to Kurtis Blow's breakthrough single "The Breaks" in 1980, which propelled Blow into early-rap superstardom as the first artist to sign to a major label — though, in hindsight, this was perhaps more of a breakthrough for the medium than the signee. Along with films and growing radio presence, hip-hop became the predominant source of new ideas at the beginning of the ‘80s.
Releases from the 1970s demonstrate the many ways that hip-hop would be much more than a fleeting fad. Although it was eventually exploited and commercialized in the coming years, the late ‘70s produced some of the culture’s most essential music, providing a meaningful framework for its explosive development in the ‘80s. What occurred in the late ‘70s, however, were indispensable releases that furthered the culture; here are some very important ones.
Fatback Band - "Personality Jock" (1979)
Although not a "rap" record per se, Fatback Band’s "Personality Jock" in 1979 preceded Sugar Hill Gang’s "Rapper’s Delight" by about seven months. While no doubt a funk record, which was Fatback’s reputation, there's an undeniable end segment which is early rapping on record. At the song’s end, the funk gives way to King Tim III — sounding like a sixth member of the Furious Five — who steals the show.
Years later, in a 2016 interview for Nerdtorious, Bill Curtis, Fatback’s nucleus and bandleader, remembered "Personality Jock’s" impact: "There was rapping in the Bronx and the cats there had been doing it for a while. So Fatback certainly didn’t invent rap or anything. I was just interested in it and I guess years later we were one of the first to record it… but it was already becoming all around us by then. It’s very hard to say who is the first but they credit Fatback as the first so I’m proud of that."
Kurtis Blow - "Christmas Rappin" (1979)
Kurtis was rap’s first, perfect ambassador — clean cut and jheri-curled, he was a wholesome standout for the culture. Due in part to his early successes like "The Breaks," rap's first gold record, Blow was selling out stadiums in Japan by the '80s. Released during the holiday season in 1979, "Christmas Rappin" was an audacious attempt at a newfound yuletide anthem. The industry took notice: Blow's debut single signaled rap’s potential as a monetary gamechanger, and cemented Blow as one of its shimmering prodigies.
In an interview with Wax Poetics, Blow described how the record came about: "Writers from Billboard magazine came to Hotel Diplomat one night when I was performing with [Grandmaster] Flash and they wanted to do a record with me. They wanted to pay for the studio time, promotion, flights, all of that. We went in and cut Christmas Rap." The single was massive, the first to [be] released by a major label, preceding RUN-D.M.C.’s "Christmas in Hollis," selling an estimated 400,000 copies once released.
Funky Four Plus One More - "Rappin' and Rocking The House" (1979)
Bronx-bred Funky Four Plus One More were not only one of larger, solely rap groups at the time, they were also the first to prominently feature a woman. Sha Rock, who proudly proclaims herself as the first female rapper, concisely says this on the track: "We're two DJs and five MCs. Four other fellas plus one is me!" For perspective, this was a whole five years before the mighty Roxanne Shanté even emerged.
At 9-plus minutes, "Rappin' and Rocking" was the first time group dynamics were on full display with interchanging rhyme schemes. Some of the techniques from rap's first mixed-gender crew became standard practice for groups that followed– Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five among them. While the song never made a commercial splash, it nevertheless propelled the group (and hip-hop) into the limelight. The Funky Four Plus One More became the first rap act to perform on national television in 1981, as the musical guest on "Saturday Night Live," which Deborah Harry hosted.
Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five - "Superrappin’" (1979)
So much advancement in early DJ culture wouldn’t have occurred without Grandmaster Flash, a true innovator who built a mixer that enabled all future DJs to experiment with two turntables.
Flash’s very first official release, a 12-minute cut called "Supperrappin’," was a watershed moment for one of hip-hop’s true technical innovators who had a talented personnel of five beneath him. With long instrumental breaks and lots of in-and-out group rapping, the single couched serious societal stress into its exuberant verses.. It also signaled the arrival of Melle Mel, who would go down as possibly the most revered MC of this early era of which the likes of Chuck D, Rakim, and DMC still cite as utmost influential.
Sugarhill Gang - "Rapper’s Delight" (1979)
Sylvia Robinson (of Mickey & Sylvia fame) had a legendary third act, one that would forever alter hip-hop’s trajectory. "Rapper's Delight" is the monumental record that broke rap into the mainstream. Robinson, perhaps hip-hop’s most important producer of this early era, corralled locals ("Big Bank Hank" Jackson, "Wonder Mike" Wright, and "Master Gee" O'Brien) who were open to putting their rhymes onto record — something that, in some ways, was considered taboo at the time — with the mindset that hip-hop was a living document.
Robinson nevertheless tasked her in-house band play Chic’s "Good Times" on loop after loop— but it didn’t take long, supposedly "Rapper's Delight" is one of those capstone songs that was recorded in a single take, propelling her label, Sugar Hill Records, founded by her and her husband Joe, into the mainstream. It peaked at No. 4 on the Hot Soul Singles chart in 1979, and lodged itself on international charts in the UK, Netherlands, and Spain. As the '70s ended, and as history would prove, there was no other song that can lay claim to the immense impact "Rapper's Delight" had on ushering in rap’s ‘80s era.