Overview
- Gwendolyn “Blondy” Chisolm died in Atlanta on Monday, April 6, following a brief illness, with no official cause released.
- Bandmate Cheryl “The Pearl” Cook disclosed the news on social media, and a family statement to Billboard confirmed it and said a private memorial will follow.
- Tributes from peers quickly surfaced, including messages from The Furious Five and Sugar Hill Records representative Leland Robinson.
- Chisolm had been finishing a memoir and working with the National Museum of African American Music on a permanent exhibit about The Sequence.
- The Sequence’s 1979 single “Funk You Up” became the first charting hit by a female rap group and later fed samples and interpolations by artists such as Dr. Dre, En Vogue and Erykah Badu.