Legendary R&B singer and songwriter Sylvia Robinson passed away at a New Jersey hospital on Thursday from complications related to congestive heart failure.  She was 75.  Robinson enjoyed her first success as an artist in the 50s as part of the duo Mickey & Sylvia with the #1 R&B single, "Love Is Strange."  Her partnership with Mickey Baker would yield several more hits before she went on to a solo career.  The singer married Joe Robinson in 1964, and the couple formed All Platinum Records and release perhaps her biggest solo hit, "Pillow Talk," a song originally written for Al Green, who passed on the song for religious reasons. 

Robinson's greatest contribution to music might have come when she and her husband formed Sugar Hill Records in 1979 and introduced the world to rap with the Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight," a song many credit with beginning the rap movement in hip-hop.  She would later sign Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five to the label, and is remembered by many as the Mother of Hip-Hop.