Founded: 1979
Location: Englewood, NJ
Founders: Sylvia Robinson, Joe Robinson, and Morris Levy
Sugar Hill Records — the record label that launched what became the hip-hop industry — was founded by Joe and Sylvia Robinson out of the ashes of their doomed, bankrupt, All-Platinum Records with an infusion of cash from notorious Roulette Records founder Morris Levy.
The label began as a vehicle for a record that Sylvia Robinson produced in 1979 for a pre-fabricated rap group she called the Sugar Hill Gang. But that record, “Rappers Delight,” became the first successful rap record and for a time the best-selling 12-inch single of all time.
Sugar Hill Records went on to corner the rap market, signing legitimate rap acts from across the river in New York like Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five. At its height, Sugar Hill Records was one of the largest independent record labels in the country.
Roster included:
Sugar Hill Gang
The Sequence
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five (later Grandmaster Melle Mel & The Furious Five)
West Street Mob
Trecherous Three
Funky Four plus One
Spoonie Gee
Sugar Hill Records’ miserly and controlling ways earned them the ire of their artists and a horrible reputation in the hip-hop community.
Grandmaster Flash split from the rest of his crew over creative differences and lack of payment from the Robinsons. Other acts declined or left the label as artists and creative initiative shifted to newer independent labels like Profile, Tommy Boy, Jive and Def Jam in the mid 1980s.
In 1983, short on cash, Joe and Sylvia Robinson made a deal to sell Sugar Hill Records to MCA. It was a horrible deal that saw them sink further into debt, lose their Chess/Checkers/Cadet catalog, and got them mired in a Federal investigation into their ties with the Mafia.
As Sugar Hill’s troubles mounted in the late 1980s, Sylvia and Joe Robinson divorced.
Sylvia founded Bon Ami Records in 1987 and discovered a group called The New Style. After their unsuccessful debut in 1989, the group would later move to Tommy Boy Records and record as Naughty by Nature.
Joe Robinson died of cancer in 2000. In 2002, Sugar Hill’s studios and offices on West Street burned to the ground.
Sugar Hill Records ceased to operate in 1986, and the catalog is now owned by Rhino Records, a division of Warner Music Group.
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