History
"Rapper's Delight" hit #36 on the U.S. pop charts, #4 on the U.S. R&B charts, #1 on the Canadian Singles Chart, #1 on the Dutch Top 40, #3 on the UK singles chart, and #2 on VH1's top 100 hip-hop songs of all time. Reportedly it became the first hip-hop single to go diamond (5 million copies), but it should be noted that Sugarhill was one of many small independent labels that were not willing to let outside accountants go through their books; thus, it has never been certified by the RIAA. In 1980 the song was the anchor of the group's first album The Sugarhill Gang.
It was the first Top 40 song to be available only as a 12-inch extended version in the U.S. — no 7-inch, 45-RPM record was made. In Europe, however, it was released on the classic 7-inch single format on French pop label Vogue, with a shorter version of the song. It was this 7" single that reached number one in the Dutch chart.
The song ranked #248 on Rolling Stone magazine's 2004 list of "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
Read more about this topic: Rapper's Delight
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It gives me the greatest pleasure to say, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that never in the history of the country, in any crisis and under any conditions, have our Jewish fellow citizens failed to live up to the highest standards of citizenship and patriotism.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)