“Rapper’s Delight” changed the face of American music culture when it became the first hip hop song to breach the Billboard Top 40.

On Jan. 5 , 1980 , the Sugarhill Gang ’s “ Rapper ’s Delight ” became the first hip record hop vocal to break into theBillboardTop 40 . With that , hip hops ’s rill as a commercial-grade phenomenon formally kicked off .

The New Jersey trio ’s tune learn what was a New York - centric medicine sense experience — in particular inthe Bronx and Harlem — and brought it to the mass , who had otherwise been listening to Billboard favorite like the Eagles , ABBA and Stevie Wonder . None of this would have happened , however , were it not for the work of New Jersey businesswomanSylvia Robinson , who she set out to put hip joint hops on the map .

After Robinson saw a springy hip record hop show in 1979 , she sent her son Joey to levy some disk jockey and MCs for a studio recording . He came back with his friend Big Bank Hank and two Manhattan MHz named Master Gee and Wonder Mike . Sylvia dubbed them the Sugarhill Gang free-base off of the Sugar Hill country of Harlem , threw on the back track of the disco hit “ Good Times ” and let Big Bank Hank and the boys take over .

“ I say a hip , hop , the hippie , the hippie … ” did n’t break into fame without controversy , however : Big Bank Hankripped his lyrics straight out of his former friend Grandmaster Caz ’s notebook computer .

“ [ Hank ] ask me if he could adopt my rhyme volume , so I just threw it on the table , ” Caz wrote . “ I was rather nonchalant about it , I ’m not thinking anything is gon na add up from it . And if it did by happenstance , then all right well , hey , he come from us , so if there ’s any drip - down , it ’ll dribble down to us . Who consider it was gon na become an external hit ? And as far as judge to protect myself , we did n’t know about lawyer and publishing and writer and mechanically skillful royal line or nothing like that . We were n’t part of the euphony diligence . ”

Even though Caz did n’t receive a dime for his piece of work , he did n’t litigate over “ Rapper ’s Delight . ”

“ I never hold out to anybody and demanded , ‘ You owe me money , this is mine ’ or anything like that . I never thought how deeply ‘ Rapper ’s Delight ’ would come up into play by and by on . Even when it became a hit back then I was like , ‘ Yeah , ok , whatever , ’ and stay fresh it go . We signed to Tuff City Records , and put records out ourselves . ”

The Sugarhill Gang never had another U.S. hit .