Kurtis Blow on Building Hip-Hop From Nothing and the Mentorship That Shaped Run-DMC

The conversation opens with Kurtis Blow's reflection that before hip-hop became a global business, he was helping build the culture from the ground up. He said that the music and culture were built in a time before the world understood what the music could be.

Blow added that the scene did not yet have the name hip-hop. He said it was called rocking, breaking, burning and partying.

Before the main questions, the host welcomed the guests and framed the evening as a celebration of one of the architects of the culture. The host said that for him personally, Blow's music had become part of his own journey.

The host said the conversation would focus on legacy more than on records, on the man, the movement he started and the legacy he carries.

Asked to take the audience back to Harlem before the record deals, Blow said the early days were when hip-hop was brand new. He said the context was that they were coming out of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Blow recalled the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, JFK and RFK, and said the period was traumatic. He quoted a community organizer's line that the buildings were burning down on one side of the street while the kids on the other side were trying to put something together.

Another guest described the Bronx in the 1970s, referring to a documentary called The Bronx is Burning, and said that landlords set fire to their own buildings to collect insurance money, so that nearly every block had a building burned to the ground. Young people spent time in the abandoned buildings, where they first saw graffiti.

Blow also said that the president came to New York and refused to give the city money to clean up the damage.

Blow said that in that time they had nothing, and built the music and culture from the ground up with nothing.

Hear the full statement in the video.

Blow said the love of the music was very important, and that for the people of his time it was more like escapism. He described going to the club and putting his head against the speaker, listening to the bass rumble all the way down to his toes. He would close his eyes and go off, and he said that was hip-hop to him.

Asked whether he was listening to disco, Blow said it was definitely disco, and that he was an avid supporter of that era. He said disco music was very important. Coming out of the civil rights movement, people gained the right to vote, and then the hippies, flower children and love-your-neighbor movement arrived, and dancing became their greatest pastime.

He described the routine of the time: everyone worked hard all week, then went to a disco or club downtown with strobe lights and a disco ball, dressed in suits, ties and silk dresses, and danced into the night. He said hip-hop came out of that era.

A guest described hip-hop as a mutation of disco, and another called it ghetto disco. Blow agreed with the second label.

Blow said he came from Harlem and did not have the money to get into the clubs. In 1975, when he was 16, he got a phony ID on 42nd Street, which made him 21. With it he could enter the clubs, and he visited many of the city's discos, including Levigotas, Nemo, Negún's, Superstar, Cafeteria, Hotel Diplomat, Ipanema's and The Garage.

He said he was studying to become a DJ and wanted to see the different styles and do his research. He then went to see DJ Hollowway, who he said was number one at Club 371, the House of Joy and Fun in the Bronx. The line went around the block, and Blow said he heard the DJ do things on the microphone that he had never heard before.

Blow said he had been MCing since 1974 in Harlem, when he started by trying to impersonate his hero on the radio, Hank Span of WWRL. He did that voice at a club called the Wham, which he described as an old police station on 152nd Street in Amsterdam, the hill, across from the Battlegrounds, a park where battles took place. He called the Wham his first job.

The guests responded that it was real New York and hip-hop history.

Asked how he was discovered as a rapper and became the first rapper signed to a major label, Blow said he convinced Russell Simmons. He said he and Russell met in college in 1977, when Blow was 17. He invited Russell to his block in Harlem to hear him DJ.

Blow said he set it up with his crew and the whole block. About 150 people were at the house party. He played good times, the crowd responded, and Russell became his friend.

Blow said that his communications classes taught him that if you want to make it in the big city, you have to go to the outskirts and build a track record. At the time there were at least 50 MCs in New York. His approach was to take a number one spot in one market, then another, and then return to the big city to say he had a track record. He said that is how you get successfully into the city.

Ron Joey described catering to Blow and his friends as a kid and said he was taken under Blow's wing. He then told the story of breaking his wrist. He said he was heartbroken because his wrist was broken and his heart was broken too, since he could not go on tour as Kurt's DJ. He said he was probably 14 or 15 at the time.

Blow said he stayed at Run's house often as a young man, carrying two crates of records by train and bus to shows on the weekends. A guest pointed out that he was a DJ before he was a rapper, and Blow agreed, describing himself as a mixture of both.

Run recalled that Blow's father bought him turntables, and that he was paid $35 a show, which he said was a lot of money back then. He used some of that money to buy turntables and got fast at DJing.

Run described how they performed. Blow came out to DJ for a little while, then Run came out and started DJing without introducing himself. Blow would take the mic and rap. Afterward, Blow returned to the turntables and cut up the intro, and Run began the show. Run said that was how he came up with calling Blow out, and that the name Curtis Blow was his idea.

Run said he later started scratching Blow's name on a record to call him out himself. He did that until he broke his wrist, passed the job to Davey, and eventually became Run, with Jay taking the name Run after that.

Asked how it felt to see Run become Run-DMC, Blow said he remembered Run at 13 and used to protect him from Russell. He said nobody could touch him, and compared it to the movie Crush Groove. Blow said Run was his son and that he was his heart, and he still is.

Run said he was very lucky to have Blow, who took care of him, and that he was honored to be close to Blow. The two then made films together, including Crush Groove, and toured together. A guest said Crush Groove came out in 1985 and called it one of his favorite movies.

Asked where the line came from, Run said he got it from a joke Eddie Murphy made about his father saying this is my house. Run said he used to say it all the time, and Jay told him he needed to say it on stage. Run then told Eddie Murphy, who said to get out of here, but Run said he got the line from him. Run said Eddie inspired him because Eddie lived on Long Island and was so close and so funny, and that is where the line came from.

Run said he came up with this part, and that Russell had come up with the stage line because Run was touring with Kurt and the Fat Boys, whom Russell produced, along with some Run-DMC records. He admitted he was a bad kid and not a good son for a while, and Blow countered that he himself had been a bad father, so the two of them traded self-criticism about their roles as sons and fathers. Run then said that he wanted to curse everybody out, and that is why he used to come out and say this is my house, throw mic stands, and act crazy.

Run said he used to come out and say this is my house, throw mic stands and act crazy. Blow said they used to drop the mic down at the end of the show, and Run said he showed every bit of attitude he could figure out.

Blow said that they were crushing microphones every night. The sound man came to him and asked him to talk to them and tell them to stop dropping the mics, because they were breaking the mics every night. Blow said his answer was to tell them to make them pay for it, and he said he paid for it. He said that he did what he had to do, but he did not stop.

A guest said Blow was the first hip-hop artist on tours with big bands, and asked how it was to be the rap act on a major tour with audiences who had not seen rap music. Blow named Marvin Gaye and Bob Marley, and said Marley was the big kahuna.

Blow recounted that Davey got sick one day, and he was getting ready to set up the turntables to DJ for Marley at Madison Square Garden. A guest said that showed how old school and how great Blow was, having played with the biggest band ever.

Blow said he tells the story often as a dream, and that it was like a movie, including meeting Michael Jackson and Prince. He described a photo shoot with Prince that came right after he made If I Ruled the World and Krush Groove, when he was a little hot. He had his record company arrange it, and it took place at a club in Memphis, Tennessee.

Blow said that inside the club there were about 3,000 women, and another 2,000 outside who could not get in. Prince signed about 2,000 autographs and took that many photos, while Blow did about 20.

Blow was introduced as the person whose song Lauryn Hill had remade, and a guest said Hill was impressed by If I Ruled the World and that seeing him perform it at Krush Groove had affected him. A guest said that while the Bronx was being framed as burning in the news, Blow's song told a different story and uplifted the Bronx, showing how beautiful its people were during the worst times.

A guest said that the line if I rule the world, spoken by a Black man on the silver screen, was an act of audacity, and that Blow did rule the world, which is why Hill redid the song. Blow called it an honor and a homage.

Blow said he first heard the remake on a cassette in his new Nissan, which had a great sound system. He listened to the tape for about two hours, rewinding it repeatedly. He then called Sony and told them the tape was great. He told them that if they released the record with normal promotion behind it, it would go double platinum. He said that it did.

Shanté said that what the audience saw was a true reflection of what Paid in Full is about. She said Paid in Full is not about anyone's personal feelings about anything in the industry, but about the love of hip-hop and a person's accomplishments, passion and contribution to hip-hop.

She said Blow's passion had been there from the beginning and in the fight to make hip-hop what it is today, so it was only right that he become an honoree of Paid in Full. She told him she loved him and congratulated him, because he deserved to be paid in full. Blow thanked her.