Stop Disrespecting the Pioneers: The Only 12 Rap Labels That Matter

#HipHopHistory,#SugarHillRecords,#Storytelling #Raplist #Lyricism Sylvia Robinson believes hip-hop can be a commercial product before almost anyone else in the music industry does — and proves it with "Rapper's Delight" in 1979, a record that sells over eight million copies and convinces every label that follows that this music is worth investing in. RZA negotiates a contract with Loud Records that lets all nine Wu-Tang members sign individual solo deals — a structure that generates hundreds of millions of dollars across the following decade. Suge Knight builds Death Row Records into one of the most commercially dominant labels in hip-hop history — and one of its most cautionary stories — before 2Pac is shot and killed months after signing. Rick Rubin starts Def Jam Recordings from his NYU dorm room and Russell Simmons initially refuses to release LL Cool J's debut because he does not believe a rap record without live instruments can sell. He is wrong. And De La Soul spends over three decades unable to release 3 Feet High and Rising on streaming because of a sample clearance dispute from Tommy Boy's biggest creative risk. Twelve labels. Twelve companies that decided what hip-hop sounds like. How many did you know? Drop your number in the comments. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔥 LABELS COVERED IN THIS VIDEO #12 — Sleeping Bag Records — Mantronix, EPMD (early releases) #11 — Wild Pitch Records — Gang Starr (No More Mr. Nice Guy), Main Source, The Coup #10 — Loud Records — Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep, Big Pun #9 — Ruthless Records — N.W.A, Eazy-E #8 — Death Row Records — Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, 2Pac #7 — Tommy Boy Records — De La Soul, Queen Latifah, House of Pain #6 — Cold Chillin' Records — Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie, Kool G Rap & DJ Polo #5 — Profile Records — Run-D.M.C., Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock #4 — Priority Records — Ice Cube, Master P, Paris #3 — Jive Records — DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, A Tribe Called Quest, Boogie Down Productions #2 — Def Jam Recordings — LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, Method Man #1 — Sugar Hill Records — The Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💬 COMMENT PROMPT How many of these twelve labels did you know before today? Drop your number below. And tell us which labels you want covered on the next test. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #HipHopHistory,#SugarHillRecords,#RappersDelight,#DefJam,#LLCoolJ,#PublicEnemy,#BeastieBoys,#JiveRecords,#ATribeCalledQuest,#BoogieDownProductions,#PriorityRecords,#IceCube,#MasterP,#Paris,#ProfileRecords,#RunDMC,#ColdChillinRecords,#BigDaddyKane,#BizMarkie,#KoolGRap,#TommyBoyRecords,#DeLaSoul,#QueenLatifah,#DeathRowRecords,#DrDre #SnoopDogg,#2Pac,#RuthlessRecords,#NWA #EazyE,#LoudRecords,#WuTangClan,#MobbDeep,#BigPun,#WildPitchRecords,#GangStarr,#SleepingBagRecords,#Mantronix,#HipHopLabels#RewindSonic,#GoldenEraHipHop,#HipHopDocumentary#Storytelling #Raplist #Lyricism