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 - who, after changing his stage name from "Son of Kurtis Blow," would go on to become the first half of Run-D.M.C. He became an MC in his own right 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.
He was in on the earliest stages of hip-hop culture in the '70s - first as a breakdancer, then as a block-party and club DJ performing under the name Kool DJ Kurt after enrolling at CCNY in 1976, he also served as program director for the college radio station.
Kurtis Blow was born Kurtis Walker in Harlem in 1959. But at his very best, Blow epitomizes the virtues of the old school: ingratiating, strutting party music that captures the exuberance of an art form still in its youth. For all his immense importance and influence, many of Blow's records haven't dated all that well his rapping technique, limber for its time, simply wasn't as evolved as the more advanced MCs who built upon his style and followed him up the charts. For that matter, he was really the first significant solo rapper on record, and as such he was a natural focal point for many aspiring young MCs in the early days of hip-hop. Blow was the first rapper to sign with (and release an album for) a major label the first to have a single certified gold (1980's landmark "The Breaks") 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. His popularity and charisma helped prove that rap music was something more than a flash-in-the-pan novelty, paving the way for the even greater advances of Grandmaster Flash and Run-D.M.C. As the first commercially successful rap artist, Kurtis Blow is a towering figure in hip-hop history.
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