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Personnel: Kurtis Blow (rap vocals); Adam White, David Reeves (spoken vocals); Denzil Miller (guitar, piano, Clavinet); J.B. Moore (guitar, Fender Rhodes); Eddie Martinez, Dean Swenson, John Tropea (guitar); Onaje Allan Gumbs (Hammond B-3 organ, keyboards); Robert Kondor (synthesizer, programming); Craig Short, Tommy Wouk, Richard Pascal (bass); Jimmy Bralower (drums, tom toms); Jamie Delgado (congas, timbales); William Waring, Larry Smith, Wayne Garfield, Rocky Ford (background vocals).
All tracks have been digitally remastered from the original master tapes using 20-bit technology.
With his defiant, starkly pronounced vocal flow and tersely insightful lyrics, Kurtis Blow could almost be called rap's first breakout solo artist. From its initial exhortation to "clap your hands everybody," its implicit call to chant the chorus, and its simple yet undeniably inviting guitar riff and conga drum madness, along with Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" Blow's landmark single "The Breaks" helped introduce this rapidly growing underground style to a larger nation of souls who wanted to dance the night away.
However Kurtis Blow wasn't just 'The Breaks"; KURTIS BLOW, the eponymous album fashioned around the hit, contains track after track of early hip-hop splendor. The introduction "Rappin' Blow (Part 2)" is the perfect showcase for his deceptively simple and engaging rhyming style. Despite Blow's general association with party songs, heady notions aren't ignored, such as "Hard Times," a smoothed-out inspirational jam about overcoming obstacles. Keep an eye out also for "All I Want in This World," where he actually croons rather ably on perhaps the original rapper's love ode.
