![]() Born Erik Schrody, Everlast first surfaced in Los Angeles as a member of Ice-T's Rhyme Syndicate Cartel, issuing his debut album, Forever Everlasting, in 1990. But despite its flaws and shortcomings, Kurtis Blow is an important album that hip-hop historians should make a point of hearing.Once best known for his tenure in the rap unit House of Pain, Everlast successfully reinvented himself in 1998 with the best-selling Whitey Ford Sings the Blues, a largely acoustic, hip-hop-flavored effort in the genre-crossing mold of Beck. And Mercury really screwed up by providing only the second half of "Christmas Rappin'" that landmark single should have been heard in its entirety. Switching from rapping to singing, Blow detours into Northern soul on the Chi-Lites-influenced ballad "All I Want in This World (Is to Find That Girl)" and arena rock on an unexpected cover of Bachman-Turner Overdrive's "Takin' Care of Business." While those selections are likable and kind of interesting - how many other old school rappers attempted to sing soul, let alone arena rock? - the fact remains that rapping, not singing, is Blow's strong point. Some of the tracks are superb, including "The Breaks" (a Top Five R&B smash in 1980) and "Rappin' Blow, Part Two," which is the second half of Blow's 1979 debut single, "Christmas Rappin'." And "Hard Times" is a forceful gem that finds Blow addressing social issues two years before Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five popularized sociopolitical rapping with 1982's sobering "The Message." Some of the other tracks, however, are decent but not remarkable. ![]() Thus, Kurtis Blow has serious historic value, although it is mildly uneven. Two exceptions were the Sugarhill Gang and Kurtis Blow, whose self-titled debut album of 1980 was among hip-hop's first LPs and was the first rap album to come out on a major label. Hip-hop became a lot more album-minded with the rise of its second generation ( Run-D.M.C., Whodini, the Fat Boys, among others) around 1983-1984, but in the beginning, many MCs recorded nothing but singles. Back in hip-hop's old school era - roughly 1978-1982 - albums were the exception and not the rule. ![]()
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