#ellen mayer

Yellow, Red, Green-GO!, by Ellen Mayer/Illustrated by Ying-Hwa Hu, (July 2024, Star Bright Books), $7.49, ISBN: 978-1-59572-979-8 Ages 0-3 Explore patterns the fun way! This playful board book takes a mom and young child on a bike ride through their neighborhood to grandma’s house, where they encounter all sorts of patterns: a dog’s “bow-wow-woof”, the layout of toys in the toy store, and the…

by ELLEN MAYER // @ELLENREBECCAM

Basically everything about hip-hop’s first pop success is a little bit strange and, many believe, inauthentic. “Rapper’s Delight” didn’t come from one of the original hip-hop crews who honed their craft throwing dance parties in the Bronx. It was recorded by Sugar Hill Gang, a New Jersey-based rap trio that was assembled by producer Sylvia Robinson, much in the way execs assembled boy bands in the early ‘90s. And it’s an open secret that Big Bank Hank copied his lyrics for “Rappers Delight” from the hip-hop pioneer Grandmaster Caz. In an essay for Cuepoint, Caz writes about making peace with Hank’s legacy. Even though the song probably seemed cutting edge to pop audiences at the time, Caz explains that “Rapper’s Delight” was outdated compared to the rest of hip-hop:

And it was so damn long I almost fell asleep. It was like 15 minutes long! And they were doing that “disco style” of rhyming, emulating the early disco DJs like Hollywood and Lovebug—all of them trying to sound like radio DJs, that same cadence. It was the style that we in hip-hop all had before we eventually found our own voice. I used that disco voice myself when I was younger and coming up in hip-hop. But I had found my voice by then, so by the time “Rappers Delight” came out, I was like, that’s corny.