Sugarhill Gang

Hip Hop has fought an internal war since its inception as recorded music. A war about authenticity. About who or what best represents the music's soul. About the struggle between Hip Hop's original " to hell with you" DNA and the pop and inherently human imperative to spread a thing as wide as possible. About who's real and who's a sellout two terms, tellingly, that have more or less gone missing from the contemporary Hip Hop lexicon. The Roots of this tension go back to the music's beginnings on wax, with Sylvia Robinson's signing of The Sugarhill Gang and the release of "Rappers Delight." It's Hip Hop lore that at this point that the trio who made up the Sugarhill Gang Big Bank Hank, Wonder Mike, and Master Gee were viewed as outsiders by the pioneering practitioners in the Bronx. Big Bank Hank, in particular, has his own unique spot in Hip Hop infamy for regurgitating Grandmaster Caz's rhymes on " Rappers Delight." The song sat poorly with pioneers, like Scorpio of The Furious Five, who said he hated "Rappers Delight" the first time he heard it, wondering at the outsiders who were so blatantly cashing in on the blood, sweat, and tears of something created by him and his fellow Bronx pioneers.