Rapper's Delight

"Rapper's Delight"
Song

"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.

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" and also Queen's hit, "Another One Bites the Dust".

Grandmaster Caz (formerly DJ Casanova Fly) 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 and the rest is F-L-Y") seems to support this claim.

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).

References to this song

• Phrases from this song continue to be referenced by hip hop and R&B artists, too numerous to name, evidence of the indelible mark the song made on the hip hop consciousness.

• The lyric in this song "What you hear is not a test" was also said in ShG's hit song "Apache", as well as in Orquesta D'Soul's song "Vamos a bailar".

• 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, such as "get your white ass outta bed".

• 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 hit single "Hotel". The original lyrics consist of "Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn" and "If your girl start actin' up, then you take her friend." Cassidy makes reference to this with the line "the hotel, not the motel or the holiday inn" and "If that girl don't participate, well then I'ma 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."

• To honor what many believe to be the song that started the hip hop industry, Def Squad (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 its 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 anthem", "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.

• Rapper Afroman bases the final verse of his song "Crazy Rap" 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.

• The Teddybears incorporate elements of the chorus (bomb diddy bomb da dang da dang diggy diggy) into their electronic hit Cobrastyle

• Rapper Joe Budden samples the beat for his 2004 song "Your Body's Hot"

• the song everybody to the limit http://www.homestarrunner.com/fhqwhgads.html, on homestarrunner.com is thought to be a parody of rappers delight.

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
• 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.
• Played in the 2007 movie Kickin It Old Skool
• Played in the 2007 television show One Tree Hill in season 4, episode 21.

See also

• Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music

External links

• Silver jubilee for first rap hit — BBC article about the single on its 25th anniversary