The truth about life on Sugar Hill
Sugar Hill Records that is. Former in-house drummer for the Sugar Hill label, Keith LeBlanc did an interview a couple of years ago with The Village Voice to discuss some of the under-dealings that took place at Sugar Hill Records. “I don’t think the true Sugar Hill Records story has ever been told because there’s so much skull-duggery attached to it.”
Apparently the Sugar Hill Record label was like the predecessor to Death Row. Extortion, Random Kidnappings, and Murder… Okay I’m exaggerating about the kidnappings and murders. The article talks about how certain members of the Sugar Hill Gang rap group found it necessary to utilize the services of ghostwriters. It also mentions label owner Sylvia Robinson and how she refused to properly pay her employees. The article is trip and worth a read if you can spare a few minutes.
Below is a sample of the interview which can be read in it’s entirety at The Village Voice:
The Sugar Hill Gang scored hip-hop’s first big pop hit with “Rapper’s Delight”–but were they really a rap group at all?
“All the other rappers didn’t consider the Sugar Hill Gang to be real rappers. They just got lucky. They hadn’t lived the life, they hadn’t invented anything. They took what people were already doing in New York and Sylvia got her son [Joey Robinson Jr.] to find some kids to imitate what was going on in New York. There wasn’t so much resentment towards the Sugar Hill Gang as jealousy that they got to be the first group out. I think Sugar Hill Gang is the only group that was manufactured–the others all had their own material.”
According to legend, Big Bank Hank stole the lyrics he recited on “Rapper’s Delight” from the Cold Crush’s M.C. Grandmaster Caz. Was this rap’s first documented case of stealing?
“For Big Bank Hank, they definitely had to write raps for him. I know the Furious Five helped him write at times, and [fellow Sugar Hill Gang member] Wonder Mike would help him. Sometimes Sylvia Robinson would even help write lyrics for them. It was a joke in the company–they’d make jokes in the studio under their breath. It was also kinda a joke that it was really hard to make them sound funky. Compared to the Furious Five, Spoonie Gee or Kool Moe Dee, it was night and day. To be honest with you, the only one in the Sugar Hill Gang to me that was creative was Wonder Mike. He wrote all his own stuff and was a funny guy. He could have been a comedian. He used to do this routine where he’d do an imitation of a black weather man, like how a black rapper would do the weather, cause in those days there weren’t any black people on TV.”
Naughty By Nature rapper Treach once boasted that he was “more feared than a Sugar Hill contract,” alluding to the way paperwork was skewed against artists. Did anyone who recorded for Sugar Hill ever get paid?
“Really, the best way to get money out of the Robinsons was to be related! Beyond that, the one that got the most consistent money was [in-house arranger] Jiggs Chase, cause he was arranging songs all the time. For artists, it was the Sugar Hill Gang, because when it first started they were trying to do the right thing. They made pretty good live money, at least, though I don’t think they got what their record did. Looking back, it seemed like Sugar Hill used money as a tool to manipulate people to do what they wanted. I wish I didn’t have to say that in an interview, but I can’t lie, that’s how it seemed to me. It seemed like whenever a group asked for what they were supposed to get, they got thrashed by the company, didn’t get anything released for a while, and were left to go broke. It was the old pimp game. It’s a shame, cause if Sugar Hill had done even 25% of the right thing for their artists, they’d have been the biggest rap label ever.”