On the eve of the first-ever Olympic breakdancing competition, hip-hop legend Kurtis Blow was thrilled. It was the first time one of the core elements of hip-hop culture had reached such a global stage.

Alongside DJ Kool Herc (whose breaks provided the soundtrack for B-boys and girls), Blow is credited with popularizing breakdancing. The rapper began breaking as a teenager in the early 1970s, as part of the Hill Boys breaking crew — named for the Sugar Hill area of Harlem where Malcolm X first started his galvanizing pro-Black movement —  

And while the International Olympic Committee decided to remove breakdancing from the 2028 Olympics, Blow is unbothered. As far as he’s concerned, his legacy and the legacy of breaking itself is all but set in stone. 

"It was definitely something special," Blow tells GRAMMY.com. "And I wasn’t the only one who realized it at the moment it was happening."

Born Kurtis Walker, the Harlem-based Blow began DJing when he was just seven years old. In 1979, the 20-year-old's "Christmas Rappin’" sold over 400,000 copies and turned the up-and-comer into a household name. But it was his follow-up single, 1980’s "The Breaks," that helped launch a whole new genre: rap music. "The Breaks" became the first hip-hop album to receive a gold certification from the RIAA, and proved that Blow wasn’t just a one-trick pony. 

Kurtis Blow proved to be immediately influential on the then-nascent rap scene. When Rev. Run of Run-D.M.C. started his career, he billed himself as "The Son of Kurtis Blow" to give him an air of credibility that helped propel the hip-hop trio into the pop culture stratosphere. But Blow's influence didn’t begin and end with his "adopted son": Everyone from Russell Simmons to Wyclef Jean has worked with Blow, and he has been sampled by Nas ("If I Ruled The World" is all but an interpolation of Kurtis Blow’s song of the same name), KRS-One and many others. In fact, more than 100 songs have used samples from "The Breaks," and nearly 1,500 songs have used a sample or an interpolation from Blow’s discography. 

Learn more: Essential Hip-Hop Releases From The 1970s: Kurtis Blow, Grandmaster Flash, Sugarhill Gang & More

Kurtis Blow was also one of the first rappers to sign to a major label (Mercury Records) and was the first rapper to be a multihyphenate (in addition to his music, Blow worked as an actor on films like In a Dark Place and California Dreamers, and was the musical coordinator for the legendary hip-hop film Krush Groove). Blow continues to work steadily in hip-hop today, though he eschews the legendary breaking parties in favor of cultural events that offer a new glimpse into the culture he helped create. 

To wit, Blow is performing with The Hip Hop Nutcracker, in which Tchaikovsky’s classic score is set to breakdancing and modern hip-hop dance; the emcee will perform a brief set to kick off each show. A nationwide tour kicks off in Southern California in November and concludes at the end of December in Durham, North Carolina.

Kurtis Blow spoke with GRAMMY.com about the importance of bringing breaking to the Olympics, reconciling his ministry with modern hip-hop’s message, and his four-decade legacy. 

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Breakdancing has been a huge part of hip-hop culture for many, many years — and it’s long overdue to be recognized on a global scale like the Olympics. What are your thoughts about seeing this movement that you started getting this kind of recognition?

This whole culture that we call hip-hop started back in the 1960s. With the Civil Rights movement, community organizers, and government officials all debating about something so basic: the right to all be seen as equal and free. It was a traumatic time, you know? But we had music that was so relevant to the whole movement. 

By the time the late 1970s and early 1980s came along, everyone was trying to escape all of the traumatic racism that was still going on. And music became our escapism. That’s where breaking came in: everyone was just trying to mimic James Brown on the dance floor. You’d see one guy doing his thing, and everyone would form a circle around him. Pretty soon, someone else would join the circle and challenge him. And before you knew it, there was a whole competition — and whoever won became the most popular in the club. 

That kicked it all off. To see it recognized on such a large scale just reaffirms, to me, that this hip-hop culture of ours was made with love. 

There were breaking films such as 1985's 'Krush Groove' that were completely revolutionary in that it gave everyone — not just those within the culture — a view into the world of hip-hop, and suggested what it could become. At the time, you were becoming the first commercially successful rapper and one of the pillars of what would become the New York sound. Were you aware that you were on the precipice of something revolutionary?

I don’t want to call myself a visionary or anything like that, but I did know that this was something special, because I saw how quickly it spread around different boroughs in New York City. 

From Harlem and the Bronx, and then over into Queens, Brooklyn, and even New Jersey, it was amazing to see everyone just gel around that whole hip-hop scene. As I said before, we all needed that escapism, you know? Forget about your troubles, just come and dance.

With me being in Harlem, right down the block from the Cotton Club and that whole mindset around dancing becoming America’s pastime  — just coming from that era, where we had to go to the parties to have a good time — [I knew] that we had created something that would outlast us. 

Not only did you attend divinity school, but you are also an ordained minister. How do you bridge those two aspects of your life and how do you reconcile being a rapper with being a minister?

That is such a great question, and thank you for asking. 

It’s very simple: God is the Creator. God created hip-hop. We have to start with that, right here. God gave us the talent to perform the music; he gave us the passion to want to spread the music to the masses. He gave us the desire to say, "Hey, come take a look at me! God has blessed me with this — can you do this?"

Now, when you talk about the actual elements of hip-hop — that is, the emcees, and the message that we bring — it’s crucial to understand that we are commanded by God to uplift our community and to show them love. This is the actual essence of hip-hop: peace, unity, love, and just having safe fun. 

My mission is to believe in the faith that God is real, and God is in the miracle business. I have seen nothing but miracles for the last 45-50 years in this thing called hip-hop. And it’s important to understand that God is in the mix, and we are all blessed by the common denominator known as hip-hop. It should be our mission to get that back. 

As for what’s going on today — the nature of the lyrics, the gangster rap, and all the violence — it didn’t really start out that way, did it? And if we can inspire the future for our youth, then we’ve made a difference. Because the future is in their hands, and we need to inspire them. 

But, as a counterpoint, times are different today. And what these men and women are speaking to may not necessarily be destructive — rather, there could be a case made where they’re merely being street poets, and telling the reality of life as they see it. What advice would you give to those people who are telling a different story than the one you told all those years ago?

We are called to be these soldiers, warriors, servants, and communicators. So I understand their reality is different, you know? The world is upside down. The kids out there are just telling it like it is. They’re communicating their reality.

But I think that we should not only communicate how it is, but how it could be. And how it should be. 

Think of how different it would be if they also gave some inspiration for a positive future: "Yeah, we goin’ through this, we goin’ through that, but with God, you can overcome all of that. With prayer, you can have miracles, and blessings, come down."

Even if you just understand the nature of the reality that we’re going into right now — things like mass incarceration, the drug epidemic, gun violence, the war profiteering off of Black and brown bodies — it falls upon the shoulders of the elders of this community, this hip-hop movement, to inspire and communicate the possibilities to the younger up-and-comers. 

They need to understand that they are the product of royalty. They are the descendants of kings and queens of Africa. They need to honor themselves and honor their ancestors, accordingly. 

The culture of hip-hop isn’t just about the music. It’s about fashion, slang, cars, the sports — if you think about it, anthropologically, hip-hop is a civilization onto itself. But, as with all things, so much of it has been co-opted and mainstreamed. How do we bridge the divide between the originators and the colonizers?

Only love can bridge that gap between the ages, the races, our government — the diversity of all these different countries — you know, it needs to be all love. 

This is what it’s going to have to take for us to change our present reality. And I feel that in hip-hop, that is the key to that future. The OG’s had the right mindset: peace, love, unity, and having safe fun. We need to get back to that. 

When you look back on your career and the legacy you leave behind, how do you want to be remembered?

I remember being in divinity school at Nyack College in New York, and the professor asked the whole class the same thing.  And I thought about it for a while, you know? I thought about being remembered as a pioneer of hip-hop — an OG breakdancer — a DJ when I was just seven years old — and an incredible educator. 

But what stuck with me was being known as a man of God. That’s it. Because that encompasses everything that I have been through and survived. All of my success, and everything you know about me, comes from God — and to God be the glory.