MISTER EVERYTHING

INDY’S FIRST HIP-HOP RECORD RELEASE LED A WAVE OF COMMERCIAL SUCCESS FOR THE GENRE.

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by Kyle Long

New York’s Bronx borough is the undisputed birthplace of hip-hop, so you might be surprised to learn that a relatively unsung Indianapolis funk musician played a large role in crafting the sound of early hip-hop music.

Reggie Griffin earned the nickname “Mr. Everything” for his uncanny proficiency with every musical instrument he touched. Griffin rose to prominence in the 1970s with Manchild, a powerful funk group featuring future soul superstar Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds.

Industry insiders predicted big things for Manchild, but the group quickly disintegrated after releasing their second album in 1977. At the dawn of the ’80s, Griffin was looking for a fresh start. When the opportunity to serve as an in-house musician and arranger for New Jersey’s Sugar Hill Records came up, Griffin jumped.

During the early ’80s, Sugar Hill Records held a near-monopoly on rap music. The label’s marquee group, the Sugarhill Gang, charted rap’s first hit with their 1979 release Rapper’s Delight. For Griffin’s first assignment at Sugar Hill, he was asked to add some musical embellishments to the Gang’s follow-up single Apache.

Griffin’s knowledge of drum machines and synthesizers was a huge asset at Sugar Hill. “I sat down and got my Prophet 5 synthesizer out, and I just started putting in all these different filter sweeps and synth parts on the track,” Griffin shared during a 2018 interview. “The rest is history.” During his time at Sugar Hill, Griffin created some of the most iconic rap music of the 1980s, including Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s 1982 single The Message, selected by Rolling Stone magazine as the greatest hip-hop song of all time.

The link between Indianapolis and Sugar Hill was the East Coast producer George Kerr. In the 1960s, Kerr worked as a vocalist with Little Anthony and the Imperials, but he later ventured into production for labels like All Platinum, a division of Sugar Hill.

“One of George’s daughters lived in Indianapolis, and he had a residence here. So George would leave New York on a weekend and come hang out with his daughter in Indianapolis,” WTLC radio personality Rickie Clark recalled during a 2018 interview.

During Kerr’s excursions to Indianapolis, he networked with local music industry players like Clark and Griffin. That’s how Clark came to record the first rap record ever released in Indianapolis, Ladies Rights, issued on the Indy 5 label in 1980. “That recording was done in New Jersey at the Sugar Hill Records studio. In fact, the track was done by the same musicians who played on the Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight,” Clark said. Ladies Rights was not only the first rap record released in Indianapolis; it was among the first wave of rap records released anywhere.

From these roots, the Indianapolis rap scene grew exponentially during the late ’80s and ’90s, with acts like the Tibbs Street Posse and N.A.P. establishing a local identity for the music. Prior to the pandemic, hip-hop filled Indianapolis clubs and concert halls seven days a week, reflecting the genre’s popularity as a form of expression. ■