The poverty-themed Hard Times marked perhaps the first instance of hip-hop's social consciousness, and was later covered by Run-D.M.C.īlow initially found it hard to follow up The Breaks, despite releasing nearly an album a year for most of the '80s. The debut album Kurtis Blow was also released in 1980, and made the R&B Top Ten. It was a hit and it helped him get a contract with Mercury.īlow's second single, The Breaks, was an out-of-the-box smash, entering the Top Five of the R&B charts in 1980 and eventually going gold. Blow recorded a single co-written by Rocky Ford and J.B. Over 1977-1978, Blow's club gigs around Harlem and the Bronx made him an underground sensation, and Billboard magazine writer Robert Ford approached Simmons about making a record. Blow performed with legendary DJs like Grandmaster Flash, and for a time his regular DJ was Simmons' teenage brother Joseph or Joey (who, after changing his stage name from "Son of Kurtis Blow," would later become the first half of Run-D.M.C). He became an MC around 1977, and changed his name to Kurtis Blow (as in a body blow) at the suggestion of his manager, future Def Jam founder and rap mogul Russell Simmons.
After enrolling at City College of New York in 1976, he also served as program director for the college radio station. He began to immerse himself in the newborn hip-hop culture in the early '70s : breakdance, block-party and club DJ performing (as Kool DJ Kurt).
Kurtis Blow was born Kurtis Walker in Harlem in 1959. For all his immense importance and influence, many of Blow's records haven't dated all that well. For that matter, he was really the first significant solo rapper on record. He was the first rapper to sign with (and release an album for) a major label the first to have a single certified gold ( The Breaks in 1980) the first to embark on a national (and international) concert tour and the first to cement rap's mainstream marketability by signing an endorsement deal. As the first commercially successful rap artist, Kurtis Blow is a towering figure in hip-hop history.
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