"The Breaks" is a hip-hop landmark, released in 1980 when rap records were just starting to appear. Kurtis Blow had been performing live a block parties as an MC and breakdancer for years, and he fused that energy into the song. In a
Songfacts interview with Kurtis Blow, he said: "The concept was created as a tribute to all the breakers in and around the South Bronx and Harlem back in the early days of hip-hop. I wanted to do a tribute song with many breaks so that the breakers could get down and do their thing. When we danced during the breaks of a song, that was our time to go off - to do our best moves."
"Breaks" are breakbeats, the substrate of hip-hop. DJs like Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash would find the sections of songs with just drums and maybe some vocal stabs and put a copy of each record on their two turntables. When the breakbeat came to its conclusion on the first turntable, they'd switch the fader to the second turntable, where they had the same breakbeat cued up. This way they could play the break over and over, creating a beat an MC could rap over.
Lyrically, this song explores the multiple meanings of the word to create a fun, clever flow with a bona fide party vide. It came about when Kurtis took the idea to his producers, J.B. Moore and Robert Ford. J.B. came up with the concept of other implied meanings for "breaks," like brakes on a bus or a car, good breaks or bad breaks in life. Kurtis told Songfacts: "He referred back to this old song, a philosophy song, I think it came out in 1920 or something, where a guy was talking, saying - 'Oh, your girlfriend left you, and you lost your job and your car got towed away, well don't worry, tomorrow the sun will shine and everything will be alright' - good breaks and bad breaks can happen in life, but don't worry because there's always another tomorrow. We wanted to repeat that concept and have the many meanings within one song."
"The Breaks" was the first rap song to sell over 500,000 copies, earning a certified Gold record. "
Rapper's Delight," released a year earlier, certainly sold a lot more (as Kurtis attests), but that song was released on the independent label Sugar Hill Records, which apparently never sent it to the RIAA for certification. Kurtis Blow was signed to Mercury Records, a major label that followed the standards and used their Gold records for promotion. When Kurtis signed with Mercury in early 1980, he became the first rapper signed to a major label. His self-titled debut album (with "The Breaks") was the first rap record released on a major label.
Sampling technology was out of reach at this time, so rap records used live instruments to create the tracks. "Rapper's Delight" interpolated an existing song ("
Good Times" by Chic), but "The Breaks" was all original. Here's the personnel:
Drums: Jimmy Bralower
Bass: Tom Wouk
Guitar: John Tropea
Electric Piano: J. B. Moore
Piano, Clavinet: Denzil Miller
Timbales: Jamie Delgado
It was arranged by Larry Smith, who according to Kurtis, also added bass. Smith was a key figure in early hip-hop, going on to produce Run-D.M.C. and Whoodini.
The full version of the song runs 7:43 and was released as a 12-inch single, which was the same size as a record but contained just one song on each side, allowing for much longer songs than a typical 45 RPM single would hold. It became the second certified Gold 12-inch in all of music. The first was Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand's "
No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)," which came out in 1979.
There were no rap stations when this song was released, so radio play was minimal. Speaking with Songfacts, Kurtis Blow talked about how they got word out. "There was no real marketing for the song, no plan," he said. "We just wanted to make a kick-ass record and that's exactly what we did. The clubs ate it up. You couldn't find a club in America during the summer of 1980 that would not play this song around 12, 1 o'clock in the morning."
Kurtis performed this song on Soul Train, whose host and creator Don Cornelius told the rapper after the performance, "It doesn't make sense to old guys like me... I don't understand why they love it so much."
Cornelius, who was typically far more ingratiating to his guests, was expressing how many in his generation felt about the emergence of hip-hop. Kurtis was gracious about it, but disappointed by Cornelius' reaction. The Soul Train host kept with the times, however, and had many more rappers on the show as the trend shifted in that direction. By adapting the show to the musical landscape, Cornelius kept Soul Train on the air for 35 years.
The short-lived European group Los Umbrellos recorded a Flamenco version called "Flamenco Funk" in 1997. Los Umbrellos had a minor hit that year with "
No Tengo Dinero."
Tom "T-Bone" Wolk played bass on this track, which got the attention of Hall and Oates, who enlisted him to join their backup band. Wolk played on many of the duo's hits as well as songs by Billy Joel, Robert Palmer and Elvis Costello before his death from a heart attack in 2010 at age 58.
"The Breaks" is the grand finale in The Hip Hop Nutcracker, a stage production of the famous play re-imagined in modern-day Brooklyn. The show launched in 2018 with Kurtis Blow as MC and producer.
