Rapper’s Delight: 30 Years Later

The World

The Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” hit the disco and pop charts 30 years ago this week, transforming hip hop from live street perfomance to a mainstream moneymaker. We look at the impact of thirty years of “Rapper’s Delight” on music and culture with Mark Anthony Neal, professor of black pop culture at Duke University and Paul Miller (better known as DJ Spooky). And for a firsthand account of the phenomenon that was the Sugar Hill Gang we talk to Keith Shocklee of The Bomb Squad, and a producer for Public Enemy.

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