Sugar Hill Gang interview

Sugar Hill Gang, damn man, how are you guys doing?

MG: We’re doing great man, enjoying the tour. Having a good time all the time!

You started touring again back in ’94 right?

MG: Yea, after the hiatus. It was a partial reunion, cause I still wasn’t back with the group. Oh wait a minute, I think I did perform with y’all....yeah I did two shows.

So what made you decide to get back together after 12 years?

WM: Well, we officially disbanded in ’85, and got back together in ’94. Gee did two shows, got sick of Sugar Hill bullshit again, and left. I stayed around with Hank, and we did a lot of shows. But unfortunately the record owners son was calling himself Master Gee, instead of making up his own name. So I would call Gee every now and then, and be like ‘yo man, we’re putting it down, and we’re carrying the weight of this untalented ass called Joey Robinson, using you’re name’, and Gee was like ‘you do what you gotta do’. But every now and then I had to get that weight off my shoulders and call Gee and be like ‘yo, we’re doing some work, we’re taking care of things, but it feels whack’. So finally I got fed up in 2005 and told the record company owner ‘I quit, fuck y’all. Henry, you want to come with me?’ Then we started some new shit. But before that, as soon as I put down that phone to quit on Sugar Hill, I call Gee and told him I left the group, so I was like ‘you want to make some new music?’, and that was that. No hesitance.

MG: And that’s how we ended up right here, through that one phonecall.

WM: That was on march 19th, 2005. Joey Robinson’s birthday...

So after that you started touring again extensively?

MG: Yeah, we did the Apollo, we did CNN, we were the first rap group to perform on CNN. We did VH1, we’ve been doing television, we’ve been in the studio. We’re having talks right now about a tv-documentary, and we got a new album coming out.

Could you tell us something about that new album?

MG: Sure. We’ve got something with Kid Rock on there, something with Seal. Also, Kanye is on there. We’ve just been really fortunate to have people taking interest in us. So, our management is really reaching out and talking to a lot of different people.

H: Big shoutout to Northstar management, Brian and Eddie! That’s our management.

MG: For real. So the thing is that people still enjoy us and we enjoy them. I mean, we’ve been around for a long time, we’ve even got children and all of that, you know? What we’re doing with our album is giving an expression of us. What we’ve listened to, what we’ve come up with, what we’re influenced by. Our album is a representation of all that.

H: Also, recently, we’ve done something in London for Sony Records. They introduced the new walkman, and because the first walkman came out in ’79, at the time of Rapper’s Delight, they wanted us to help promote it. So we did a show there with Dizzie Rascal, and now he’s gonna be on the album too.

WM: Plus we did a track with Bob Sinclar.                                                                                   

For real, the housecat?

MG: Yeah! We did a track with him about three weeks ago in New York. That’s gonna be our first single!

Thats like experimenting with totally different music styles.

MG: Yeah exactly! And that’s exactly what I mean man, this is a real representation of what we’ve heard, what we’ve experienced, our lifes. Mike and I have been friends for 30 years. I met Henry and Rob through Mike, coming back into the group, and their family. I feel like I’ve known them forever. So, this music is our music man, and that is exactly what’s coming out it the album. We’re taking it to the next level.

As pioneers of hiphop, do you feel like your priveleged to do so? To say which way hiphop is going?

MG: I don’t think we’re priveleged, but I definetely think we got a say in it. We don’t follow the crowd, we make new trends.

WM: Did you hear that song out there we did tonight, Turantula? That’s our song, plus we did Bob Sinclair, house music, and we did a latin song tonight, we did oldschool crunk, dirty south. So we’re stretching, we’re branching out.

MG: Everything you heard tonight is a representation of us, Sugar Hill Gang. At the end of the show we just played a couple of tracks that we just enjoy, like Cheryl Lynn and Frankie Beverly, that’s the stuff we’ve been listening to. We used to rap over Frankie Beverly back in the day, you know?

WM: Rob-o has house, club, and jazz experience. Henry has R&B experience, so you know, everything is in there.

Will the album have any throwback songs, like disco funky type tracks?

WM: Oh yeah, we always got on of them shits. Melle Mel is also on the album, on a song called World Tour. It’s crazy man, it’s unbelievable!

So when is it coming out, you got a date yet?

MG: Yeah next year, spring time. We’re shooting for that right now.

H: Can’t stop, won’t stop. Hahahahaha!

Hen-Dog breekt uit in een slappe lach, waarna Wonder Mike er nog een schepje overheen doet met enkele grapjes en imitaties. De Sugar Hill Gang is een groep van volwassen mannen die het na dertig jaar nog steeds voor elkaar krijgen om van hun hobby hun werk te maken. De heren lijken zich constant te vermaken en doen niets anders dan grappen en grollen met elkaar. Dit spiegelt zich in de altijd feestelijke feelgood sound van hun muziek. Vijf minuten later krijg ik toch nog de kans mijn laatste, persoonlijke vraag te stellen.

I just got one question about Rappers Delight real quik. How did that particular song change your lifes?

MG: Well, for me, I saw how money can fly by faster than the speed of light. I’m not kidding. I mean Rapper’s Delight is what opened the door for us, it’s the thing that introduced us to the world. Before us there were no records, there was nothing.

WM: That was a strange feeling, that whole time. Before Sugar Hill, I already knew Gee, cause we battled his group. I busted his ass.

H: Hahahahahahahaha!

Hen-Dog giert het weer onophoudelijk uit van het lachen. Het interview loopt zeker tien minuten uit.

WM: Anyway, before Sugar Hill, I knew these dudes, and I had a feeling that history was in the making. A long, long time ago I saw Hard Days Night, and I was like ‘damn, I gotta do that shit for a living.’ And it was actually coming true. And as musically involved that we are, even before we got into music, my whole family always had some jazz and motown going on. So listening to this new thing called hiphop, I was like ‘damn this is some historical shit!’, cause it’s not heard on the radio yet! I heard it in New York on the boomboxes, but not on radio. And we go down to 125th street were the Apollo is in Harlem, right after Rapper’s Delight was released. And every store we passed, they were playing it. Every car that passed was playing it. So you would hear ‘M-A-S-T-E-R, Holiday Inn, Now what you hear is not a test’, all of that! It was crazy!

H: I mean, the song was actually so hot at one time, that Master Gee needed to have a body-double. He couldn’t come out of a venue and go to the bus or the limo. He had to have someone that looked just like him to get there first, and then Gee would come out the back door or something, know what I mean, haha! It was that crazy!