Sylvia Robinson, Hip-Hop Pioneer and Singer-Songwriter, Has Died | "Pillow Talk" | "Love Is Strange"

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/rap-pioneer-sylvia-robinson-dead-at-75-20...

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Rolling Stone...

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Rap Pioneer Sylvia Robinson Dead at 75
Singer produced key tracks 'Rapper's Delight,' 'The Message'

By Matthew Perpetua
September 29, 2011 1:30 PM ET

PHOTO: sylvia robinson circa 1970
Sugar Hill Records founder, Sylvia Robinson.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

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Sylvia Robinson, the producer of the Sugar Hill Gang's pioneering hip-hop single "Rapper's Delight," died this morning at the age of 75 from congestive heart failure. Robinson, a singer, musician, producer and label executive at Sugar Hill Records, began her career as half of the duo Mickey and Sylvia in the late Fifties, scoring a hit on her own in 1973 with "Pillow Talk."

Robinson masterminded "Rapper's Delight," the first-ever commercially successful hip-hop single, in 1979. In 1982, she produced another hip-hop classic, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "The Message." That song, widely credited with bringing social consciousness to hip-hop music, was the first rap song ever added to the National Archive.

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http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sylvia-robinson-founder-sugar-hill-242188

The Hollywood Reporter...

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Sylvia Robinson, Co-Founder of Sugar Hill Records, Dead at 75

12:00 PM PDT 9/29/2011 by Jethro Nededog

"The mother of Hip-Hop" died Thursday of congestive heart failure.

Sylvia Robinson, considered “the mother of Hip-Hop,’ died Thursday at hospital in New Jersey at 75-years-old, reports The New York Times. According to S2SMagazine.com, she died from congestive heart failure.

The singer, songwriter, and record producer is credited with forming the iconic Sugar Hill Gang and helped launch hip-hop with the first successful rap recording, “Rapper’s Delight.”

Robinson, and her husband, the late Joe Robinson, founded Sugar Hill Records in 1979 as rap was emerging in New York City dance clubs and parties. She helped to form the Sugar Hill Gang with rappers, Big Bank Hank, Wonder Mike, and Master Gee. Their song, “Rappers Delight,” reached No. 4 on the R&B charts making it the first successful rap song and opening the door for other rap artists to enter the music business.

She’s also credited for discovering and signing rap icons, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and producing their groundbreaking song, “The Message.”

Robinson was also a successful R&B singer in the group Mickey & Sylvia with several hits in the 1950s, including hits, “Love Is Strange” and “Pillow Talk.”

She had three sons, Joseph Robinson Jr., Leland Robinson, and Rhondo Robinson.

http://rapfix.mtv.com/2011/09/29/hip-hop-pioneer-sylvia-robinson-passes-away-at-...

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MTV...

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Hip-Hop Pioneer Sylvia Robinson Passes Away At 75

Posted 10 hrs ago by MTV News in Music News

By D.L. Chandler

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Iconic record music executive, singer-songwriter and producer Sylvia Robinson has passed away today in a New Jersey hospital at the age of 75. Ms. Robinson’s long and celebrated career began in the late 1950s, but she is most known for being the mastermind behind seminal rap group The Sugarhill Gang, helping craft and release their influential single “Rapper’s Delight”— the first commercially successful rap single ever.

The legendary CEO co-founded Sugar Hill Records along with her husband Joe Robinson and backers Milton Malden and record exec Morris Levy.

Finding success with The Sugarhill Gang, the label went on to sign some of hip-hop’s earliest and most notable acts such as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, female rap crew The Sequence, Funky Four Plus One and the Treacherous Three.

As a publishing songwriter, Ms. Robinson wrote some of R&B’s greatest songs. Penning the classic “Love on a Two Way Street” by singing group The Moments, Ms. Robinson also had her own smash hit “Pillow Talk” released in 1973.

In total Sugar Hill Records amassed a reported 26 gold plaques before folding in 1986 due to a distribution deal that went sour. The Sugar Hill Records studio in Englewood, New Jersey was lost in a fire in 2002.

Often called the “Mother of Hip-Hop,” Ms. Robinson’s lasting legacy still flourishes today and she served as an inspiration to young women in the male-dominated music industry where she called as many shots and had equal success as many of her male counterparts.

Rest in peace, Sylvia Robinson.

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The New York Times...

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/arts/music/sylvia-robinson-pioneering-producer...

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September 30, 2011
Sylvia Robinson, Pioneering Producer of Hip-Hop, Is Dead at 75
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

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Sylvia Robinson, a singer, songwriter and record producer who formed the pioneering hip-hop group Sugarhill Gang and made the first commercially successful rap recording with them, died on Thursday in Edison, N.J. She was 75.

She had been in a coma at the New Jersey Institute of Neuroscience and died there of congestive heart failure, a family spokeswoman said. Ms. Robinson lived in Englewood, N.J.

Ms. Robinson had a successful career as a rhythm and blues singer long before she and her husband, Joe Robinson, formed Sugar Hill Records in the 1970s and went on to serve as the midwives for a musical genre that came to dominate pop music.

She sang with Mickey Baker as part of the duo Mickey & Sylvia in the 1950s and had several hits, including “Love Is Strange,” a No. 1 R&B song in 1957. She also had a solo hit, under the name Sylvia, in the spring of 1973 with her sultry and sexually charged song “Pillow Talk.”

In the late 1960s, Ms. Robinson became one of the few women to produce records in any genre when she and her husband founded All Platinum Records. She played an important role in the career of The Moments, producing their 1970 hit single “Love on a Two-Way Street.”

But she achieved her greatest renown for her decision in 1979 to record the nascent art form known as rapping, which had developed at clubs and dance parties in New York City in the 1970s. She was the mastermind behind the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” the first hip-hop single to become a commercial hit. Some called her “the mother of hip-hop.”

“Back in the days when you couldn’t find females behind the mixing board, Sylvia was there,” said Dan Charnas, the author of “The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop” (2010). “It was Sylvia’s genius that made ‘Rapper’s Delight’ a hit.”

At the time, the label the Robinsons had founded was awash in lawsuits and losing money. Facing financial ruin, Ms. Robinson got an inspiration when she heard Lovebug Starski rapping over the instrumental breaks in disco songs at the Harlem World nightclub.

“She saw where a D.J. was talking and the crowd was responding to what he was saying, and this was the first time she ever saw this before,” her son, Joey Robinson, recalled in a 2000 interview with NPR. “And she said, ‘Joey, wouldn’t this be a great idea to make a rap record?’ ”

Using Joey Robinson as a talent scout, she found three young, unknown rappers in Englewood — Big Bank Hank, Wonder Mike and Master Gee — and persuaded them to record improvised rhymes as the Sugarhill Gang (sometimes rendered as Sugar Hill Gang) over a nearly 15-minute rhythm track adapted from Chic’s “Good Times.”

The song was “Rapper’s Delight,” and the Robinsons chartered a new label, Sugar Hill Records, to produce it. It sold more than 8 million copies, reached No. 4 on the R&B charts and No. 36 on Billboard’s Hot 100, opening the gates for other hip-hop artists.

Ms. Robinson later signed Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and in 1982 she was a producer of their seminal song, “The Message.” It was groundbreaking rap about ghetto life that became one of the most powerful social commentaries of its time, laying the groundwork for the gangsta rap of the late 1980s.

Born Sylvia Vanderpool in New York City in 1936, Ms. Robinson made her recording debut at 14 singing blues with the trumpet player Hot Lips Page on Columbia Records while she was still a student at Washington Irving High School in lower Manhattan. She went on to make several other blues recordings for the label, including “Chocolate Candy Blues,” before joining forces with Mr. Baker in 1956.

After several hits, Mickey & Sylvia broke up in 1962 when Mr. Baker moved to Paris. Two years later, Ms. Robinson married Joseph Robinson, a musician, and settled in Englewood, where the couple opened an eight-track recording studio, Soul Sound, and established the All Platinum label.

Ms. Robinson’s survivors include her sons Joey, Leland and Rhondo and 10 grandchildren. Mr. Robinson died of cancer in 2000.

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