Rapper and singer-songwriter Gwendolyn “Blondy” Chisolm, of ’70s Hip-Hop group The Sequence, died on Monday, April 6. She was 68.
Chisolm’s family confirmed she died following a brief illness.
“My sister gave a lot of herself to the music industry,” Monica Scott, Chisolm’s sister, said in a statement to Billboard. “Everyone knows her famous lyrics and melodies, which continue to bring joy to millions of people. She was a creative force who touched countless hearts.”
Chisolm’s bandmate Angie Stone, 63, was killed in a traffic accident in Montgomery County, Alabama in March 2025. Stone and Chisolm formed The Sequence with Cheryl “The Pearl” Cook in 1979. They released their first hit song, “Funk You Up” that same year.
Their first album, Sugar Hill Presents The Sequence, debuted in 1980 on Sugar Hill Records and was the first album released by an all-female act.
Their follow-up self-titled album in 1982 was a limited commercial success. The group’s final album The Sequence Party was released in 1983.
Gwendolyn (left) and Cheryl (right) are pictured at the Hip-Hop Hall of Fame Awards on May 19, 2014 in New York City.
Chisolm and her group mates met at C.A. Johnson High School in Columbia, South Carolina, where they were all cheerleaders.
“‘Funk You Up’ comes from a cheer,” Chisolm told Rolling Stone in 2017. “‘Funk You Up’ was [sings]: ‘We’re gonna blow you, right on out. We’re gonna blow you right on out.'” Chisolm also sang with Stone in their church choir.
“Funk You Up” has been sampled by artists including En Vogue, Boogie Down Productions, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Ice Cube, Flavor Flav, De La Soul, Trina, and Dr. Dre, who borrowed the “ring ding dong” hook for his 1995 smash hit “Keep Their Heads Ringin'”.
“For everybody that has used our music, we should have been millionaires a long time ago,” said Cook.
In 2016, Chisolm, Cook and Stone accused Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars of stealing their work on 2016’s Record of the Year and Grammy winner, “Uptown Funk.”
They pointed to the bridge that is very similar to the chorus of their hit track, “Funk … you … right on up.”
“Bruno Mars took the lyrics, the cadence and the melodies,” said Stone in 2016, “and then they went and reached over to ‘Apache’ [Sugarhill Gang’s 1981 hit song co-written by Cook] and got ‘Jump on it/Jump on it.’ I’m like, OK, now y’all done did too much. We’re broke over here, OK? We need some money. We need some of that, because we created that!”
“We damn near 60 years old,” Chisolm said. “It’s nothing funny about this. We still have to work. Cheryl lost her grandmama’s house due to not being able to pay her bills.”
In an email to Sandrarose.com in February 2016, publicist Kali Bower suggested the family of Sugar Hill Records founder Sylvia Robinson (who died in 2011) didn’t share the record’s royalties with the group.
“With respect to [the] Robinson family, it has been quite a lengthy process of formal and informal dealings with the Robinson family. It has been a rough ride for the ladies, in attempts to settle all issues surrounding the music.”
