As he's publicly exhibited multiple times, Philadelphia's stage-ready mayor Michael Nutter is certainly no stranger to sudden Sugar Hill Gang covers. In fact, Nutter credits his sly DJ beginnings as his eventual entryway into politics. Speaking to Jump Philly in 2011, Nutter detailed his affiliation with the Impulse club and its impact on his own political networking:
"I worked at a place called the Impulse Disco at Broad and Germantown. I started working there in the summer of 1976. The owner, his son and I are high school best friends to this day. He’s godfather to my daughter. Robert Bynum. He owns a couple of establishments – Warmdaddy’s, and he manages Relish up in West Oak Lane. I was working for his father, Ben. Ben Bynum owned a number of bars and clubs. The Impulse, before it was a disco, was more of a club on Germantown Avenue, called the Cadillac Club. Billy Paul recorded an album there. All the great stars of that era in the 70s came through the Cadillac Club. Ben had traveled to Europe where disco was, of course, the craze. He decided to close the Cadillac Club, completely gut it out and turn it into in essence the first black-owned disco in Philadelphia."
Nutter recently revisited his slightly musical past, with accompaniment from The Roots, during Philadelphia's 4th of July Jam on Saturday. Performing The Sugar Hill Gang's iconic 1979 single "Rapper's Delight" with relative ease, Nutter gave the track some distinctly Philadelphian grace.
