"The Rap Year Book takes readers on a journey that begins in 1979, widely regarded as the moment rap became recognized as part of the cultural and musical landscape, and comes right up to the present.

1979: The Sugarhill Gang's song "Rapper's Delight" is the first hip-hop song to become a national Top 40 hit and to use "hip-hop" in its lyrics.

In interviews with more than two dozen hip-hop legends, Queen Latifah Chuck D, Method Man, E-40 and eight others cited The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” as the first rap song they heard.

While hip-hop is continuously in a state of innovation, early on its ear for music was attached to the sounds its earliest listeners enjoyed partying to.

Joining him are fellow old-school hip-hop legends the Sugarhill Gang, whose 1979 song “Rapper’s Delight” became the first rap song to become a Top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.