The Song of the Day is:
Kurtis Blow – “Basketball”
From the album Ego-Trip (1984)
Basketball is my favorite sport
I like the way they dribble up and down the court
Just like I’m the king on the microphone
So is Dr. J and Moses Malone
I like slam dunks, take me to the hoop
My favorite play is the alley-oop
I like the pick-and-roll, I like the give-and-go
‘Cause it’s basketball, uh, Mister Kurtis Blow
They’re playing basketball
We love that basketball
William Waring – Robert Ford – Kurtis Blow – J. B. Moore – Jimmy Bralower – Full Force
Our man Kurtis Blow has been on my mind a bit lately. I saw on Questlove’s Facebook feed that Kurtis Blow had a heart transplant and is recovering. He’s now sixty-one, so taking care of his health is a major priority. I had planned on playing a song by him as a “song of the day” as a well-wishing. I had figured I‘d be playing “The Breaks” his signature song, but the pieces really fell in place when I heard his song “Basketball”. See today opens the abbreviated NBA preseason, and for me that means I’m back to work. My new job is as a sound engineer in DC, and my first event will be today, the Washington Wizards vs the Detroit Pistons. Given all this, what better song to play than Kurtis Blow’s “Basketball”? At this point, three and a half decades on, its references are quite dated. Kurtis Blow, born Kurtis Walker, mentions many of the big players of the day, many of whom would go on to play on the 1992 Dream Team, including Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan, who had just been drafted into the NBA the year this song was released. The majority of the players cameoing in this song are legend who started to wind down or retired by the songs release, including Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Dr. J and Wilt Chamberlain among them. This is as much a love letter to basketball as Terry Cashman’s “Talking Baseball” is to baseball, and with the decades that have passed now, it’s almost as wistful. Kurtis Blow is one of the original rappers, coming to fame as a twenty-year old with hits like “Christmas Rapping” and the never-not-popular “The Breaks”.Most of the successfully recorded rappers before him were a part of groups (like Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five and the Sugar Hill Gang), but Blow was really the first solo star of the genre. He really didn’t have a whole lot of crossover hits, but that was par for the course for the developing rap genre. He stayed busy though, producing (for acts like the Fat Boys and Run-DMC), acting and being an activist against topics such as apartheid and racism. It would appear that his main project currently is as the chairman of the upcoming Universal Hip-Hop Museum, which is expected to open in 2023. In 2002, teenaged rapper and actor Lil’ Bow Wow covered “Basketball” for his film Like Mike. We’re wishing Kurtis Blow a speedy recovery and many decades with his new heart!
If you enjoy the blog, please consider helping me pay the dues paypal.me/MichaelSliwa.
Thanks!
Hear Today, Grown Tomorrow 
One thought on “1,476.) Thurs Dec. 17, 2020”