Rap Pioneer Sylvia Robinson Dead at 75

Sugar Hill Records founder, Sylvia Robinson.

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Sylvia Robinson, the producer of the Sugar Hill Gang's pioneering hip-hop single "Rapper's Delight," died this morning at the age of 75 from congestive heart failure. Robinson, a singer, musician, producer and label executive at Sugar Hill Records, began her career as half of the duo Mickey and Sylvia in the late Fifties, scoring a hit on her own in 1973 with "Pillow Talk."

Photos: Random Notes
Robinson masterminded "Rapper's Delight," the first-ever commercially successful hip-hop single, in 1979. In 1982, she produced another hip-hop classic, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "The Message." That song, widely credited with bringing social consciousness to hip-hop music, was the first rap song ever added to the National Archive.

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

Song Stories

“Baby Got Back”

Sir Mix-a-Lot | 1992

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter