The Billboard Top 40 for the week ending 35 years ago on January 5, 1980 had enough acts to populate a classic rock album, with Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, and the Eagles all represented. But jumping into the chart at the 37th position was something that would have been new to most listeners. Fortunately, the strange single helped name its own category by using the phrase “hip hop” twice in the first five seconds of its lyrics, and by its name: “Rapper’s Delight.”

What evolved into the rap/hip-hop scene emerged from clubs in New York, and this single by the Sugarhill Gang marked a watershed moment: The first Top 40 single by the emerging genre, marking its movement from the urban underground into the national mainstream.

The backing track it sampled from was fittingly a disco record: Chic’s “Good Times.” The week the Sugarhill Gang jumped into the Top 40 was the first week of the 1980s. Disco was dying, and the new decade would have a new sound. “Rapper’s Delight” is a long way from hardcore lyrics about drugs and street violence, and serves as a nice transition between the worlds of disco and rap. (There’s a lot of ‘70s-style optimism in a lyric like “I am Wonder Mike, and I'd like to say hello, to the black, to the white, the red and the brown, the purple and yellow.”)

The sort-of goofy, sort-of endearing “let’s get together and make funky tunes” ethos of the New Jersey-based trio who called themselves the Sugarhill Gang wouldn’t last forever…but the style of music they helped popularize, emphasizing spoken words delivered in rapid-fire fashion to a beat, was here to stay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUqvPJ3cbUQ