As Hip-Hop’s First Godmother, She Helped Build The Billion-Dollar Industry
Black History Year
PushBlack
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 23 December 2024
⏱️ 3 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Against all odds, Sylvia Robinson transformed her setbacks into the world's first hip-hop record and ignited a global movement. Without her, hip-hop may not be what it is today. Here’s how she laid the foundation for hip-hop to go worldwide.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Why are businesses like HelloVet choosing Apple products and services? |
| 0:04.8 | So we started the business two years ago. |
| 0:07.2 | We had a few people who were used to PCs and this was their first foray into Macs. |
| 0:12.5 | But it's been super smooth getting everyone onto those devices and everyone seems really, really happy. |
| 0:18.0 | Find out how Mac can help you run and grow your business at Apple.com forward slash |
| 0:23.6 | HelloVet. |
| 0:26.1 | Against all, Sylvia Robinson transformed her setbacks into the world's first hip-hop record |
| 0:33.2 | and ignited a global movement. |
| 0:36.6 | Without her, hip-hop may not be what it is today. Here's how she |
| 0:41.1 | laid the foundation for hip hop to go worldwide. This is Two-Minute Black History, what you didn't |
| 0:48.6 | learn in school. Sylvia and her son Joey were on a nighttime mission, |
| 0:57.0 | driving around Englewood, New Jersey, searching for the world's first rap group. |
| 1:03.0 | They stopped at a pizza shop where they met Big Bank Hank Jackson. |
| 1:08.0 | That's when the Sugar Hill gang was born. Sylvia Robinson was a hit singer and |
| 1:15.1 | songwriter in the 60s and 70s. When Al Green rejected her song, Pillow Talk, because it was too |
| 1:22.1 | sexually provocative. She recorded it herself. In 1973, it broke records and is now remembered as one of the first songs where a black woman sang with sexual competence. |
| 1:35.3 | After her record label went bankrupt in the late 1970s, Robinson continued her career in music, but never got the credit she deserved. |
| 1:52.0 | But she refused to be defeated and resolved to make the Sugar Hill Gang before anyone had even heard of rap. In 1979, the Sugar Hill Gang would release Rappers Delight, the world's first hip-hop record. |
| 2:00.0 | It sold over a million copies, pushing hip-hop mainstream. |
| 2:03.6 | Robinson had birthed an industry, and she would bring in other acts like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five to hip-hop greatness. |
| 2:12.6 | Black creativity has the power to change the world. |
| 2:18.2 | We can never predict exactly how or when creativity will manifest itself in us. |
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