It’s a fresh new year, and, after two years of the HerStory Book Club, we are ready for a bit of a change. For 2024, we are going to focus on flowers for HerStory, and our inspiration is going to be a bit more loosey-goosey than it usually is. Every month, our colorway will be inspired by a flower, and the HerStory recipient of that month will somehow be associated with that flower.
January’s colorway is Lily of the Valley, inspired by the lovely flowers that are the birth-month flowers of our HerStory recipient, Sylvia Robinson. Robinson is known as the Mother of Hip-Hop: she was the founder and CEO of Sugar Hill records AND the producer and promoter of two of the most iconic songs in hip-hop history, Rapper’s Delight (1979) by the Sugarhill Gang, and The Message (1982) by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. In a discovery that tickled our fancy even more, she’s the Sylvia from the “Sylvia? Yes Mickey? How do you call your loverboy?” song from Dirty Dancing! AND! She played guitar on and arranged Ike & Tina Turner’s first hit, It’s Gonna Work Out Fine (but did not get a producer credit, because patriarchy).
Robinson was at the vanguard of so many things regarding women, particularly Black women, in the music industry, and there is definitely some sordidness in regards to her business practices, which have tarnished her reputation a bit. We won’t get into those today, because we are here to sing her praises and celebrate everything she did for the genre and industry, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least mention them.
So many songs from early hip-hop and rap have her mark on them; Sugar Hill Records was THE label that first recorded and promoted rap and hip-hop, and helped to cement it as a musical genre in the waning days of disco and funk. Even things like boy bands have Sylvia to thank: she created the Sugarhill Gang specifically to explore the genre of hip-hop she had been hearing at clubs. And now, hip-hop/rap is the most listened-to musical genre in the world.
Sylvia Robinson’s legacy is still being felt today. Every hip-hop song that breaks records, every female recording artist that dips her toes into producing, every song about the struggles of marginalized communities that hits the charts, has Robinson to thank in some ways. She fought for herself in a time that was less than encouraging to women. She had two distinct recording careers: one as half of Mickey & Silvia in the 1950s, and one as a solo act in the 1970s. She founded two recording labels, received awards and recognition across musical genres for her work, and was posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022. She’s an absolute legend, and we have so enjoyed getting to know more about her history, and by extension, the history of hip-hop, this month.
