Sugar Hill Groove

Recorded for the Sugarhill Gang’s 1980 debut album at Sugar Hill Studios in Englewood, New Jersey, the track was made with Sylvia Robinson and the label’s in-house production team. It features the trio’s original members, Guy O’Brien, Henry Jackson, and Michael Wright, in the early Sugar Hill Records studio-assembled format. “Sugarhill Groove” appeared on a landmark debut that is widely described as the first hip hop studio album. Within that six-track set, it helped show that Sugar Hill Records was building full-length rap records, not just singles. The track endures as an early album-cut example of studio hip hop from the label that helped bring rap into the recorded mainstream. It remains part of the historical record of Sugar Hill Records’ formative sound and the original Sugarhill Gang catalog.