Kurtis Blow, Nas and Rev Run on Hip-Hop’s Early Days

Nas welcomes Kurtis Blow for a Paid in Full conversation celebrating an artist who helped build hip-hop before it became a global business. Rev Run and Roxanne Shanté join them. Nas says Blow's music shaped his own journey and asks him to return to Harlem before the hits and record deals.

Blow remembers a time when the emerging culture was not yet called hip-hop. People called what they did rocking, breaking, burning or partying: they loved music and wanted to enjoy themselves.

He places those memories in the aftermath of the civil rights movement, recalling assassinations, protests and traumatic conflict. He remembers a community organizer's image of buildings burning on one side of the street while children on the other tried to make something together.

Blow describes the burned and abandoned buildings he saw in the Bronx and the graffiti that appeared in those spaces. He recalls New York's financial crisis and a lack of federal help. Against that backdrop, he says, young people built music and culture from very little.

Music also offered an escape. Blow remembers putting his head near a club speaker, feeling the bass through his body and closing his eyes. Nas asks whether disco was among the music he heard, and Blow says it was central to that era.

After a week of work, people dressed up, went to clubs and danced under strobe lights and disco balls. Blow sees hip-hop as emerging from that culture, describing it as a kind of neighborhood variation on disco.

Growing up in Harlem, Blow says he could not afford many clubs. At 16, he obtained a fake ID and visited New York discos, studying different DJ styles because he wanted to become a DJ himself.

At Club 371 in the Bronx, he saw DJ Hollywood draw a line around the block and do things on the microphone he had never heard. Blow had already started emceeing in Harlem in 1974, imitating radio personality Hank Spann at a club called the Wham.

Asked how he was discovered and signed, Blow recalls meeting Russell Simmons in college in 1977. He persuaded Simmons to come to his Harlem neighborhood and hear him DJ at a crowded house party.

Blow had assembled his crew and an audience for the visit. Simmons heard him work the room with call-and-response routines and a record by Chic. They became friends, and Blow returned to his communications studies.

Blow says he learned a strategy for competing in a crowded city: build a track record in smaller markets, then return with evidence that audiences respond. He proposed opening a club in Simmons's neighborhood, and they started Night Fever disco.

That community became a family. A young Joseph Simmons, later known as Rev Run, remembers cooking breakfast, posting flyers on Jamaica Avenue and doing whatever he could to be involved. Blow took him under his wing.

Run recalls breaking his wrist and being heartbroken because he could not tour as Blow's DJ. Blow remembers traveling with crates of records, staying with the Simmons family on weekends and later driving a cab. Both men had worked as DJs as well as rappers.

Run remembers practicing on turntables he bought with money from shows; Blow praises his speed and skill. They describe performances in which Run began DJing, Blow joined him and took the microphone, and Run later returned to introduce Blow's set.

Run says he developed the idea of using a scratched record to call Blow onstage. After his injury, another DJ took over; later, when Run became an artist in his own right, he adapted the idea for his own entrance.

Nas asks how it felt to see the teenager Blow mentored become part of Run-DMC. Blow remembers protecting him when he was young and says their bond remains close. Run describes the honor of working with Blow and recalls touring and appearing in Krush Groove together.

Run traces part of his combative stage persona to Eddie Murphy's comedy and encouragement from Jam Master Jay. The group remembers the energy of those shows, including microphone drops that frustrated the sound crew because equipment kept breaking.

The conversation turns to early tours alongside major artists. Run remembers preparing to DJ for Blow at Madison Square Garden when Bob Marley was on the bill. Blow describes the period as dreamlike and recalls meeting stars including Michael Jackson and Prince.

Blow shares a playful story about arranging a photo shoot with Prince in Memphis. Fans crowded the venue, and he jokes about the enormous difference between the number of autographs Prince signed and his own.

Nas says Blow's music presented the Bronx and its people with dignity when other accounts focused on destruction. He explains how seeing Blow perform ‘If I Ruled the World’ in Krush Groove inspired him to revisit the song with Lauryn Hill.

Blow says he was honored. He remembers receiving a cassette, putting it into his car's powerful sound system and listening repeatedly for about two hours. Excited by what he heard, he told the record company he believed the release could become a major success.

Roxanne Shanté closes by explaining that Paid in Full recognizes artists' passion, accomplishments and contributions to hip-hop. She says Blow's dedication from the culture's early days makes him a fitting honoree, and congratulates him.