Preview: Kurtis Blow on ‘The Anthology of Rap’

Kurtis Blow is a pioneer of rap and hip-hop. He was the very first rapper to sign with a major record label, and his 1980 single, ‘The Breaks,’ was the first rap song to to become a certified gold record. Coming soon, the NewsHour profiles The Anthology of Rap, a new collection of rap lyrics released by Yale University Press that pays academic homage to the genre. Jeffrey Brown recently sat down with Blow, as well as Anthology editors Adam Bradly and Andrew DuBois and hip-hop artist Common, to discuss how rap can be read as lyric poetry and assess the development of the art form over the last three decades. Keep watching the NewsHour and checking Art Beat for the entire piece.