Sugarhill Gang

The cover of the Sugarhill Gang's debut is all party. A crowd of dancers fills the frame in silhouette, lit from behind in hot orange and red as if caught under a club's stage lights, with the group's name curving across the top in glowing gold letters.

The album is built around "Rapper's Delight," the 1979 single that took rap out of Bronx block parties and onto the radio. Assembled by Sylvia Robinson for her Sugar Hill label, the trio of Wonder Mike, Big Bank Hank and Master Gee rode a replayed groove from Chic's "Good Times" for nearly fifteen minutes, and the song reached the Billboard Top 40, the first rap record to do so.

The image matches what the music was in 1980: dance music for a crowd. Before rap had its own visual language of street corners and gold chains, this cover sold it the way disco records were sold, as a night out, which is exactly how most of the world first heard hip-hop.