Rapper's Delight

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"Rapper's Delight"

Single by The Sugarhill Gang
from the album The Sugarhill Gang
Released	October 1979
Format	12"
Recorded	Sugar Hill Studios
Genre	Hip hop
Length	14:37
Label	Sugar Hill Records
Chart positions
#3 (United Kingdom) #4 (USA, R&B charts) #36 (Pop charts)
The Sugarhill Gang singles chronology
	"Rapper's Delight"
Alternate covers

French 7-Inch single cover

"Rapper's Delight" is a 1979 single by American hip hop trio The Sugarhill Gang; it was one of the first hip hop hit singles.

1 History
2 Predecessors
3 References to this song
4 In the media
5 External links

[edit] History

"Rapper's Delight" hit #36 on the U.S. pop charts, #4 on the U.S. R&B charts, and #3 on the UK singles chart. In 1979 it became the first hip-hop single to go gold. The following year, the song was the anchor of the group's first album The Sugarhill Gang. In spite of a few more minor hits, The Sugarhill Gang quickly faded into obscurity.

It was the first Top 40 song to be available only as a 12-inch extended version — no 7", 45-RPM record was made.

The song inspired Blondie's 1980 hit, "Rapture", which is considered by some to be the second major hip hop hit after "Rapper’s Delight".

Grandmaster Caz from the Cold Crush Brothers claims that Sugarhill Gang member Big Bank Hank used his rhymes on "Rapper's Delight". The verse in which Big Bank Hank raps Caz's name ("I’m the C-A-S-AN the O-V-A") seems to support this claim.

[edit] Predecessors

Like many songs from the time, "Rapper's Delight" was performed over the breakdown section of a disco hit (played by the group Positive Force), in this case CHIC's "Good Times."

Although "Good Times" is reported as being replayed by Positive Force, there is some debate among hip hop historians. The strings and piano sections on "Rapper's Delight" sound so close to the original recording that some suggest portions of the track are in fact samples taken from the CHIC track. Since the recording of "Rapper's Delight" predates the advent of the sampler this would have to have happened either by editing the studio tape or by having a DJ cut them into the track.

Since the very birth of hip hop was the DJ's art (scratching and cutting), it is likely the band (represented in the form of Sylvia Robinson, the label's founder and a woman well known for her business savvy at all stages of her career) were simply contesting usage of the recording to avoid paying a fee to Atlantic Records (while remunerating Rodgers and Edwards through their publishing entities with a reported $500,000 cash).

[edit] References to this song

The lyric in this song "What you hear is not a test" was also said in ShG's hit song "Apache".

In an episode of For Your Love, Mel (James Lesure) is stunned to learn that Malena (Holly Robinson) does not know all the lyrics to "Rapper's Delight", telling his brother and friends that he would never have married her if he had realized this beforehand.

In the "My Old Friend's New Friend" episode of Scrubs, J.D. gives Turk a Sugarhill Gang alarm clock as a wedding gift. When it goes off, the rappers appear on top of the clock, performing "Rapper's Delight" with slightly different lyrics.

Phrases in this song are referenced by numerous hip hop and R&B artists, as an homage to the first commercially successful rap track. Artists include Run DMC, TLC, Kid Rock, Wyclef Jean, Lil' Kim, The Beastie Boys, Afroman, R. Kelly, Limp Bizkit and Remo Conscious.

Ani DiFranco refers to a phrase in the song "Firedoor", as included on early editions of her Living In Clip double-live album.

The Tesco Vee song "Crapper's Delight" is a parody of "Rapper's Delight".

The titular character of the film Kangaroo Jack sings the intro during Charlie's unconscious dreaming. The only difference between this and the original is Jack sings "My name is Jackie Leggs and I'd like to say 'Hello!'"

An 87-year-old woman, Ellen Albertini Dow, flawlessly raps the lyrics in the Adam Sandler movie, The Wedding Singer.

The "old school rappers" on the Saturday Night Live sketch "Rap Street" sing a nonsensical spoof of "Rapper's Delight", enthusiastically belting out "Rap rap, ribbity rap rap, rip rop ribbity do!"

Cassidy quotes this song in his first big single "Hotel": "Ho-tel, mo-tel, Holiday Inn (say wha'?). I said if your girl start actin' up, then you take her friend."

Several British rappers remade the song in 2005. The seven-minute long song includes the original beat with rising English rappers such as Kano and Rodney P paying homage to the original.

Country artist Neal McCoy performs part of "Rapper's Delight" in his song "Hillbilly Rap."

NWA references phrases of the song in their 1991 tune "Find 'em, F*ck 'em, and Flee."

Strong Bad uses "Rapper's Delight" as a basis for the song "fhqwagads".

To honor the song that many believe started the hip hop genre, Erick Sermon, Redman, and Keith Murray covered the song in 1998.

The Spanish summer hit "Aserejé" (2002) (released as "The Ketchup Song" in many other countries), sung by Las Ketchup, was the subject of a copyright dispute for it's perceived similarities to "Rapper's Delight". "Aserejé" tells the story of a pimp-like "afro-gipsy, rastafari" character named Diego who walks into a crowded nightclub at midnight, and the DJ, as he sees Diego walk in, plays the "twelve-o'clock anthemn", "the song he desires most", which happens to be Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight". Its first verse: "I say the hip hop, the hippie...", prononuced phonetically in Spanish, the way it would sound to someone who does not understand English, becomes the song's chorus. Although technically meaningless and sometimes referred to as gibberish, the chorus is a phonetic pronunciation of the first verse in its entirety: "Aserejé, já, de jé, de jebe tu de jebere sebiounouba, majabi an de bugui an de buididipí". It was later regarded as containing encoded satanic messages, since its title "Aserejé" sounds like "Un ser hereje", Spanish for "A heretical being".

The song was used in the final stages of an imaginative Honda television commercial, The Cog, in 2003.

On December 1, 2004, BBC 1Xtra celebrated the 25th anniversary of its entry into the British charts by broadcasting a revised recording of "Rapper's Delight" performed by several English rappers.

In the 2006 song "Why we thugs" by Ice Cube, he says "Thank God for Sugarhill"

Afroman bases the end of his song "Crazy Rap/Colt 45" on the end of Rapper's Delight.

In Making The Band 2, P. Diddy had his newly-formed band, Da Band, recite this song as well as "Juicy", a hit single from the Notorious B.I.G.

[edit] In the media

In 1999, National Public Radio included this song in the "NPR 100", in which NPR's music editors sought to compile the one hundred most important American musical works of the 20th century.
Played in the 1979 movie The Demon.
Resung in the 1998 movie The Wedding Singer.
Played in the 1999 video game Thrasher: Skate and Destroy
Played in the 2003 movie Kangaroo Jack.
Played in the 2004 video game Tony Hawk's Underground 2.
Played in the 2004 television show Scrubs season 4, episode 1.
Played in the 2004 Honda Accord commercial The Cog.
Played in the 2005 video game True Crime: New York City.
Played in the 2005 video game Pump It Up Exceed SE.
Played in the 2007 video game Dance Dance Revolution Universe.