Sylvia Robinson Jacket

In 1964, she and her husband Joe Robinson co-founded Sugar Hill Records in 1979. She assembled a new group, the Sugarhill Gang, and produced their song “Rapper’s Delight” – hip hop’s first top 40 single. Signing the all-female group The Sequence, Robinson set the stage for groups like Salt-N-Pepa. She co-produced the first hip hop track featuring turntable techniques (“The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel”), paving the way for production techniques like sampling. Robinson was inducted into the Rock Hall in 2022.