first. And she would give you the
changes as you played through it: ‘No,
make it a little more funkier. A little
less high-hat here. Change that beat;
it’s a shuffle. Doug, play a little more
straight, more Motown here.’ Sylvia
knew how to work with musicians.”
Although Sugar Hill’s first records
ignored hip-hop’s original street
culture by spotlighting the rapper
and demoting the DJ, Sylvia was the
first to correct the slight with 1981’s
cut-and-scratch landmark “The
Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on
the Wheels of Steel,” which paved the
way for the break-, loop- and sam-
ple-driven tracks of golden age hip-
hop. She was also the first to establish
rap as a potent vehicle for political
lyrics in 1982 when she produced
“The Message” with Melle Mel and
Ed “Duke Bootee” Fletcher.
The climax of Sylvia’s rap run was
“White Lines,” the 1983 dancefloor
smash by Mel, on which Wimbish
replayed the bassline from Liquid
Liquid’s “Cavern.” (The writers of
which, of course, remained uncred-
ited.) But that year also brought the
debut of Run-D.M.C., whose “Sucker
MCs” marked the overthrow of the
Sugar Hill sound on the streets. That
Sylvia never heard Run-D.M.C.’s demo
owed everything to her bad reputation
among up-and-coming managers like
Russell Simmons. In retrospect, the
deals that second-generation hip-hop
labels like Tommy Boy, Profile, and
Simmons and Rick Rubin’s Def Jam of-
fered weren’t structurally much better,
creating, in time, their share of tortu-
ous lawsuits. But in the mid-1980s, the
game was Sugar Hill’s to lose, and it
lost because big money had reinforced
its bad habits.
“They had a way of running stuff
that was like, ‘Just give a person
enough to make ’em happy,’ ” Wim-
bish told hip-hop historian JayQuan.
“They leased ’em a few cars and gave
them stuff that they always had want-
ed. As long as they didn’t have any
access to their money. Soon as you
pissed ’em off, they would cut you off
and ice you.”
The last straw for Wimbish came af-
ter he and Mel composed and record-
ed a song for a soundtrack to Miami
Vice. “I played every instrument on
it,” says Wimbish. But the credit was
“L. Robinson” — Leland Robinson, Syl-
via’s middle son. “She gave my credit
to Leland for a [high school] gradu-
ation present. Leland wasn’t even in
the studio.” Leland, for his part, insists
that he wrote it. “I produced that song.
I did the drum track. Doug didn’t write
that,” he told Billboard recently.
Wimbish and Mel retained the
attorney Wimbish’s partner Le Blanc
was using in his own lawsuit against
the Robinsons. And like Le Blanc,
Wimbish feared the ire of Joe and
his associates. “I felt like I was being
threatened,” he recalls. “My friend,
one of my elders, gave me a pistol.
He said: ‘Somebody comes, you just
squeeze this.’ ”
Stiff competition, a disintegrat-
ing roster and cash-flow problems
prompted the Robinsons to cast about
for corporate partners. But their repu-
tation preceded them — at Columbia,
an internal memo cast them as “the
black mafia.” It was, in fact, the mob to
whom they turned to facilitate a press-
ing-and-distribution deal with MCA in
the personage of a wiseguy named Sal
Pisello. The catch: They wouldn’t get
any money upfront, and their prized
Chess Records catalog would be held
as collateral against any losses.
By 1986, Sugar Hill was upside
down in its deal, and with their mas-
ters on the line, Joe and Sylvia sued
MCA and Pisello, accusing them of
conspiring to strip the company of its
assets. A four-year legal fight ensued,
and by the time MCA settled — keep-
ing the Chess masters but relinquish-
ing Sugar Hill’s — Sylvia and Joe had
divorced. Acquaintances and Sylvia
herself intimated that the divorce was
as much about splitting their business
interests and making sure Joe paid her
as it was about personal differences.
Their ongoing arrangement was a
peculiar one.
“At 5:30, 6:00 every night, he would
come by,” recalls Leland. “They would
go to a restaurant — The Palm, what-
ever. Then he would drop her off, go
home. Sunday mornings, he got up,
brought bagels to the house, lox, cream
cheese. He didn’t want the divorce to
affect us.”
“Good friends,” in fact, was the
name of Sylvia’s first solo venture. She
launched Bon Ami Records in 1989
with an album from an East Orange,
N.J., rap group called The New Style.
It tanked, but the act resurfaced two
years later as Naughty by Nature
— proof that Sylvia still had an eye
for talent. She rebranded again as
Diamond Head Records in 1994, but
by then hip-hop had creatively left
her behind.
The mid-’90s CD boom proved
fruitful — Sugar Hill sold its back
catalog to reissue label Rhino Records
in a seven-figure deal. The Robinsons
would need the cash: By the late 1990s,
Joe had been stricken with cancer;
Kerr, despite their difficult history,
shuttled him to chemotherapy. After a
period of remission and then a relapse,
Joe died in 2000. “I loved Joe,” says
Kerr. “I was there to see him take his
last breath.”
Despite the divorce, this final sepa-
ration devastated Sylvia. “I think she
lost the will to live after he passed,”
says Leland. “She wasn’t the same.”
Her spirit was further gutted in 2002
when a fire ripped through the studios
on West Street in Engelwood, destroy-
ing the building and most of Sugar
Hill’s masters. In a 2005 “Rapper’s
Delight” retrospective in Vanity Fair,
she sounded as bitter as any of the
artists who had left the label: “I made a
lot of people a lot of millions, and I got
jerked. I didn’t get nothin’.”
Sylvia died of heart failure on
Sept. 29, 2011. Hundreds attended her
homegoing at Englewood’s Commu-
nity Baptist Church. Here she was still
royalty — her casket borne in a white
carriage by two ivory-colored horses,
the altar bedecked with a perfect floral
replication of the Sugar Hill logo.
In the last decade of her life, Sylvia
had turned her business over to her
three sons. They inherited not just the
enterprise, but some of the bad prac-
tices that had built it. On March 29,
2012, all three entered guilty pleas in
a federal tax-evasion case. The woes
of Sylvia’s children stemmed in part
from their failure to produce anything
new, their business instead coasting on
the fumes of the Sugar Hill brand and
publishing royalties. Every dollar they
earned, in one way or another, mother
had made possible.
Rhondo Robinson died suddenly in
- Not long after Joey buried his
brother, he walked into a meeting with
Hollywood producer Paula Wagner
and told her his mother’s story. Wag-
ner snapped up Sylvia’s life rights. She
identified with the story more than
a bit — Wagner had risen from agent
to producer to CEO of United Artists
until a messy exit and split from her
business partner Tom Cruise in 2008.
“She wasn’t afraid to be alone in the
creative wilderness,” says Wagner of
Sylvia. “She had to face the music busi-
ness in the 1970s, a very male-domi-
nant world.” Wagner remains confi-
dent the movie will go into production,
but declines to say when.
A biopic of his mother’s story was a
longtime goal for Joey, but he did not
live to see it: He died of cancer in 2015.
Whatever an eventual film may
portray, the story of Sylvia Robinson
doesn’t tie up neatly. Any audit of her
involves examining a tricky balance
sheet of career-making generosities
complicated by her tendency to pay
her own injuries and slights for-
ward. But to credit where credit is
due: From Mel to Kurtis Blow, from
Russell to Rick, from Latifah to Missy,
Biggie to 2Pac, Jay to Dame, Kim to
Foxy, Wayne to Drake, Nicki to Cardi,
every dollar hip-hop earns, mother
made possible.
&
POWER PLAYERS 2019
78 BILLBOARD • OCTOBER 19, 2019
TURNER:^ MICHAELOCHS^ARCHIVES/GETTYIMAGES.^ M
OMENTS:^ WALTER/MEDIAPUNCH/SHUTTERSTOCK.Sylvia was an uncredited producer for Ike & Tina
Turner (above left); The Moments (above) changed
their name to Ray, Goodman & Brown when they
fled the Robinsons’ All Platinum label in 1979.