The Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" hit the disco and pop charts 30 years ago this week, transforming hip-hop from live street perfomance to a mainstream moneymaker. We look at the impact of 30 years of "Rapper's Delight" on music and culture with Mark Anthony Neal, professor of black pop culture at Duke University, and Paul Miller (better known as DJ Spooky). And for a firsthand account of the phenomenon that was the Sugar Hill Gang, we talk to Keith Shocklee of The Bomb Squad, and a producer for Public Enemy.

(Celeste continued the conversation with Miller and Shocklee in an After-Air conversation: Check it out below.)

Despite hopes that electing our first black president would usher in a "post-racial" era, race has become a prominent issue in the Obama presidency. From overt cases – the Henry Louis Gates incident – to more coded and/or ambiguous examples – the "birther" movement, Representative Joe Wilson's outburst on the House floor – racial flare-ups have featured prominently in the first seven months of this, our first African-American-led administration. Now, the conversation about Wilson's yell last week has increasingly turned to its racial implications. Earlier this week, former President Jimmy Carter said Wilson's outburst was racist. (The White House disagreed.) For two perspectives on the way this conversation is playing out, we speak to Mark Anthony Neal, professor of African American Studies at Duke University, and Joe Hicks, talk show host for KFI Radio in Los Angeles, California.