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Kurtis Blow Promotional Portrait
Kurtis Blow Promotional Portrait

Kurtis Blow Promotional Portrait

Publisher Mercury Records
Publisher PolyGram Records, Inc.
Signer Kurtis Blow
Subject Kurtis Blow
Visual image Kurtis Blow
Date1980
Mediumpaper (fiber product)
DimensionsOverall (HWD): 10 × 8 in. (25.4 × 20.32 cm)
Credit LineMoPOP permanent collection
Object number1999.221.3
Text Entries
Kurtis Blow (Kurtis Walker, b. 1959) became the first rapper to be signed by a major record label, Mercury Records in 1979. His first single “Christmas Rappin’” sold more than 400,000 copies and became a holiday staple. With his second release, “The Breaks”, in 1980, Blow earned the first gold record ever for a Rap artist and launched the careers of The Fat Boys and Run-DMC. He went on to accomplish many other firsts including being the first Rap artist to star in a national television commercial (Sprite, 1986), making the first Rap video (“Basketball,” 1984), and acting in a soap opera (One Life to Live, 1991). He is also the founder of the International Hip-Hop Museum. 
Black and white promotional portrait photo of Kurtis Blow.
CopyrightThis work is issued under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License. For more information, go to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
On View
Not on view
"The Breaks," by Kurtis Blow: Gold Single Award Presented to Phonogram, Inc. / Mercury Records by RIAA
Mercury Records
Date: 1980
Medium: gold; acrylic; wood
Object number: 1999.221.5
Kurtis Blow and unidentified male
Kurtis Blow
Date: c. 1986
Medium: chromogenic color prints
Object number: 1999.733.259
Promotional T-shirt for Diamond and the Psychotic Neurotics: Stunts, Blunts, & Hip-Hop
Mercury Records
Date: c. 1992
Medium: cotton
Object number: 1998.827.122
Large format image
Mercury Records
Date: c. 1958
Medium: polyvinyl chloride; paper (fiber product); ink
Object number: 1997.342.1414.A,.B
Large format image
Mercury Records
Date: c. 1961
Medium: polyvinyl chloride; paper (fiber product); ink
Object number: 1997.342.1415.A,.B
Large format image
Mercury Records
Date: c. 1958
Medium: polyvinyl chloride; paper (fiber product); ink
Object number: 1997.342.1416.A,.B
"The Breaks" Handwritten Lyrics by Kurtis Blow
Kurtis Blow
Date: c. 1980
Medium: ink; paper (fiber product)
Object number: 1999.221.4
Grand Master Mele, Mel & The Furious 5, Kurtis Blow, Sparky Dee, Bond Tck, at L'Amour East, Elmhurst, NY, August 12, 1988
Kurtis Blow
Date: 1988
Medium: ink; paper (fiber product)
Object number: 1998.802.27
Large format image
Mercury Records
Date: 1959
Medium: polyvinyl chloride; cardboard; ink
Object number: 1997.342.535.A, .B
Leather jacket: formerly owned by Kurtis Blow
Kurtis Blow
Date: c. 1985
Medium: leather
Object number: 1999.221.1,.2
Afrika Bambaataa Promotional Portrait
Profile Records, Inc.
Date: c. 1985
Medium: paper (fiber product)
Object number: 1998.854.19
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