Mildred Virginia Jackson (born July 15, 1944) is an American R&B and soul recording artist. Beginning her career in the early 1960s, three of Jackson's albums have been certified gold by the RIAA for over 500,000 copies sold. Jackson's songs often include long spoken sections, sometimes humorous, sometimes explicit. She recorded songs in a disco or dance music style and occasionally in a country style.
Occasionally, Jackson has been called the "mother of hip-hop," or of rapping itself. This has more to do with the long spoken sections in many of her songs as opposed to actual rapping. According to the cataloguing site WhoSampled.com, her songs have appeared in 189 samples, 51 covers, and six remixes revealing the appeal of her proto-typical rapping style of delivery.
Since she always enjoyed writing poems, in the early '70s Jackson began crafting such proto-rap R&B singles as the outspoken "A Child of God (It's Hard To Believe)."