In 1979, at the age of twenty, Blow became the first rapper to be signed by a major label,
Mercury, which released "Christmas Rappin'". It sold over 400,000 copies, becoming one of the first commercially successful hip hop singles. Its follow-up, "
The Breaks", sold over 840,000 copies. Besides his own work, Blow has been responsible for hits by
The Fat Boys and
Run DMC. He performed as an actor and in music coordination in several feature films including Leon Kennedy's
Knights of the City and the hip hop film
Krush Groove. He was host and co-producer for
Das Leben Amerikanischer Gangs (1995), an international film production focusing on the West Coast gang scene. As host and associate producer for Miramax's
Rhyme and Reason, he gave an informative account of the status of hip hop, while he participated in the three volume record release
The History of Rap for Rhino Records in 1998. Blow also co-produced "Slippin, Ten Years with the Bloods" and won praises from Showtime for being the most viewed documentary in 2003. Blow was recently a producer for the Netflix show
The Get Down. Blow has spoken out emphatically against racism. He was an active participant in the
Artists United Against Apartheid record "
Sun City". He worked with Rev.
Jesse Jackson's
Operation Push and
National Rainbow Coalition in Chicago and with Rev.
Al Sharpton's Action Network in New York City. In 1995, he started working on-air in radio, Power 106, the No. 1
CHR radio station in
Southern California. He hosted
The Old School Show on Sunday nights, featuring hits from the past. He also worked for
Sirius Satellite Radio on the Classic Old School Hip Hop station Backspin (Channel 46) from 2000 to 2004. Beginning in 1996, Kurtis Blow was featured in a hip hop display at the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In the same year, rapper
Nas debuted at No. 53 on the
Billboard Hot 100 with his version of Blow's "If I Ruled the World". In 2017, Blow formed "The Bboy Committee", a group of 1st generation Bboys/Girls, who created the style of dance called Bboying, Rocking, and Break Dancing. The members of the Bboy Committee are as follows: Trixie (Lauree Myers), RIP Wallace D, Dancing Doug (Douglas Colon), A1 Bboy Sasa, DJ Clark Kent (Tyrone Smith), the Legendary Smith Twins, the Zulu Kings and Cholly Rock (Anthony G. Horne), OG BGirl – Darlene Rivers, "Puppet" (William "Billy Bill" Waring), Darryl Solomon (The Mad Hatter), Kurtis Blow, Lil Cesar Rivas, and Shabba-Doo. The committee is dedicated to the facilitation of the Bboy section of the Universal Hip Hop Museum. Blow became an ordained minister on August 16, 2009. As the founder of the
Hip Hop Church in Harlem, In 2016, Kurtis Blow appeared in a documentary on the evolution of hip hop,
Hip-Hop Evolution. Hosted by Canadian rapper and broadcaster
Shad, the series profiled the history of
hip-hop music through interviews with many of the genre's leading cultural figures. The series was produced by
Russell Peters,
Scot McFadyen,
Sam Dunn and
Nelson George. It won the 2016
Peabody Award, and the 2017
International Emmy Award for Best Arts Programming. The series has been broadcast on Netflix. As of April 2026, Blow also serves as executive director of Hip Hop Alliance. == Discography ==