Master G! It’s an honour

No thank you…it’s a pleasure

First off, your definition of old skool please

To me, old skool means the ‘old G’s’, people that built the foundations of music, for example you got James Brown and soul, George Clinton and funk and Sugar Hill Gang and hip hop.

When you recorded ‘Rappers Delight’, did you ever imagine it would reach that level of global popularity?

We hoped it would! But we never ever expected it to be like it was, we were on cloud 9 man… Everybody all over the world knew our songs, it was like a dream.

What do think of hip hop’s turn out now?

Some of it’s awful, some of it’s nice, people are making serious money these days so I suppose it’s positive in a way.

Name some of your current favourites

I like Cam’ron, he’s finally getting a fair shot in the game, he’s very real and I appreciate that about him, like 50 Cent, they can take hip hop to a commercial level without losing respect because people know they’re not frontin’.

True – anyone else?

Eminem, LL Cool J and probably Will Smith, he was able to take rap to a similar level Sugar Hill did, on a party vibe, and I liked that.

A lot of people have sampled your songs recently, did you like what they did with it?

Financially I do! But on a creative tip I think a lot of artists need to be more creative, we need new songs and new concepts ‘cos there’s a lot of sampling goin’ on and a lot of the same sounds are just getting repeated

So what are Sugar Hill up to now?

We’ve been touring all over the world for the past ten years! We got a clothing line coming out soon, ‘sugarhillwear.com’ and we’ve just finished a new album celebrating 25 years in the business. It’ll be a greatest hits CD with 4 new songs so make sure you check it out and I’ll see you guys in London!