SYLVIA ROBINSON, REST IN PEACE AND THANK YOU!

This morning we lost whom this article rightly calls “The Mother of Hip Hop”, Sylvia Robinson, a former singer and guitarist, went on to found the first hip hop label Sugar Hill Records, and with the release of the Sugar Hill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight introduced what had been at that point a inner city artform out to the masses. They said it was just a fad that would die out, but that was not to be and today it is a major part of the world culture. We will always be grateful to this woman and what she has done not just for music but to be real about it humanity overall. When they do the VH1 Hip Hop Honors this year this loss will weigh heavy on folks in the room, belive that!

Boombox

Sugar Hill Records founder Sylvia Robinson died early Thursday morning (Sept. 29) as a result of congestive heart failure. The music business executive, often credited with the title “Mother of Hip-Hop,” passed at 6:28AM EST at Meadowlands Hospital in Secaucus, N.J., at the age of 75.

Robinson, a former singer, was credited with pushing hip-hop’s first track into the mainstream spotlight. ‘Rapper’s Delight,’ the 1979 smash belonging to the Sugarhill Gang, is widely recognized as the first rap song to be released by a hip-hop group. She was also instrumental in the release of Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five‘s ‘The Message.’ She also co-founded Sugar Hill Records in 1979, alongside her husband.

On the performance front, the lauded industry leader was part of Mickey & Sylvia, an R&B team that disbanded in the ’50s but not before uniting for their song, ‘Love Is Strange.’ She went on to record solo records like 1973’s ‘Pillow Talk,’ which nabbed a No. 3 slot on the Billboard Hot 100.

Before her death, she was reportedly ill for five months.

Robinson has three sons, Joseph Robinson Jr., Leland Robinson and Rhondo Robinson, and was wife to the late Joseph Robinson Sr.