The Sequence—Angie B. (Angela Brown, later Angie Stone), Blondy (Gwendolyn Chisolm), and Cheryl the Pearl (Cheryl Cook)—helped bring early hip-hop from live performance to commercial records. Their 1979 single “Funk You Up” became one of the genre’s early commercial successes, and its musical ideas continued to circulate through later sampling and interpolation.
Who sang “Funk You Up”?
The song was recorded by The Sequence, a trio of women rappers and performers signed to Sugar Hill Records. The National Museum of African American Music (NMAAM) identifies the group as the first all-female act to release a hip-hop project on vinyl, a precise claim about a recorded release—not a claim that the trio were the first women to participate in hip-hop in every form.
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NMAAM dates “Funk You Up” to 1979 and describes it as one of the first commercially successful hip-hop recordings. That milestone matters because hip-hop was still strongly associated with live performance: The Sequence put a women-led rap record into commercial circulation at an early point in the genre’s recorded history. NMAAM’s Sequence exhibit presents the group’s place in that history.
How The Sequence got its start on Sugar Hill Records
According to NMAAM executive director William Jeffries III’s account, the trio performed backstage at a Sugarhill Gang concert in Columbia, South Carolina, on October 20, 1979. Sylvia Robinson saw them there and brought them to New Jersey to record within a week. NMAAM says The Sequence became the second act signed to Sugar Hill Records, after The Sugarhill Gang.
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This account links the group’s live beginnings directly to its recorded breakthrough. “Funk You Up” was not simply a performance preserved after the fact: signing with Sugar Hill gave The Sequence a route into the commercial recording business while hip-hop records were still a new proposition.
What the group did after “Funk You Up”
The Sequence’s history continued beyond its best-known single. NMAAM says the group released three albums on Sugar Hill Records and toured nationally in 1980 alongside hip-hop acts as well as R&B and funk artists. That mix placed the trio in front of audiences across musical scenes, rather than limiting their work to a single early rap hit.
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NMAAM’s April 21, 2026 event release also reports that the group sold more than one million records worldwide. It says the debut single was certified gold and that the 12-inch single sold 500,000 copies in three weeks. Those are figures reported by the museum; the certification and sales claims should be understood as NMAAM’s account, not as independently verified sales records presented here.
What “Funk You Up” influenced
The song’s afterlife is part of its legacy. NMAAM names Dr. Dre, Erykah Badu, En Vogue, Trina, Katy Perry, Mark Ronson, and Bruno Mars among artists who have sampled or interpolated elements of “Funk You Up.” Sampling reuses recorded audio; interpolation recreates or adapts musical material. The museum’s list does not specify which artist used which method or identify the associated tracks, so those connections should not be assigned more precisely without track-level evidence.
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The broader point is that The Sequence’s contribution did not end with an early chart or sales milestone. Their record remained a source of musical material for artists working in later eras and styles, carrying a piece of early hip-hop into new recordings.
Why “first” needs careful wording
Questions about who was “first” in hip-hop can refer to different things: taking part in live culture, recording a rap performance, releasing a commercial record, or putting an all-female act’s project on vinyl. These are related but not interchangeable milestones. NMAAM’s specific distinction for The Sequence is that they were the first all-female act to release a hip-hop project on vinyl. It is more accurate to preserve that wording than to expand it into an unsupported claim that they were the first women in hip-hop.
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Where to learn more
NMAAM presented a dedicated Sequence exhibition from April 25 through June 17, 2026, and held a public event on April 25. Those dates have passed; check the museum’s current listings for any future exhibition or related programming.
For a broader view of women’s history in hip-hop, Netflix describes Ladies First: A Story of Women in Hip-Hop as a four-installment documentary series spanning early pioneers and contemporary performers, with attention to hip-hop’s social, racial, and political context. It is not a documentary specifically about The Sequence, and availability may vary by region.
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