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Kurtis here makes reference to the famous fairy tale of the Three Little Pigs, with the “not by the hair of my chinny chin chin” refrain

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The “guy with the 88’s” on this song was Denzil Miller, a jazz/r&b/pop keyboardist with an astoundingly long list of credits, including records with Mick Jagger, Lenny White, and Nona Hendryx

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Interestingly, Robert Ford’s reasoning behind making a Christmas song had little to do with the holiday spirit. From Fricke and Ahearn’s book:

Robert Ford: I discovered I was gonna become a father in 1979, so I needed money. So Russell [Simmons]’s idea about making a record with Kurtis Blow suddenly made a lot more sense to me. One of my mentors at Billboard was Mickey Addy. He was the person who taught me about music publishing. Mickey always had nice little checks from writing old Christmas songs for Perry Como, so I said, “I’m gonna write a Christmas record”

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This little shout-out to the famed Christmas poem A Visit from St. Nicholas (a.k.a. The Night Before Christmas) is not accidental. This song’s writers, J.B. Moore and Robert Ford, intended this song to pay homage to the poem. They explain in Jim Fricke and Charlie Ahearn’s superb oral history Yes Yes Y'all: Oral History of Hip-Hop’s First Decade:

J.B.: We both had quit Billboard in September of ‘79…,but we were both still writing. We ran into each other in the office in September, and Robert said he had the idea for a “Christmas Rap”. I went home that night and did a parody, basically, of “The Night Before Christmas”, done in rap

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Kurtis' “Hold it now!” exhortation here has been sampled countless times, most famously at the very beginning of the Beastie Boys' “Hold It Now – Hit It!”

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Released in December, 1979, this is arguably the first Christmas rap record and the first song Kurtis Blow released on Mercury Records. This classic was co-written by Walker and two Billboard writers, J.B. Moore and Robert Ford, and none other than Russell Simmons had a huge hand in getting the song made. There was also a Christmas-themed Rapper’s Delight knock-off released locally by Chicago radio station WJPC the same month.

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Opening track to Pac’s Sophomore album “Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.”

To see annotations on this song by the cast and author of the Broadway musical Holler If Ya Hear Me, which tells a powerful story of today using Pac’s music, see here

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Lorenzo Jerald Patterson (born June 16, 1969), better known by his stage name MC Ren, is an American rapper and songwriter from Compton. He began his career as a member of the controversial rap group N.W.A in 1987, and had a strong presence on both Straight Outta Compton and Niggaz4Life. Following the breakup of the group in 1991, MC Ren embarked on a successful solo career.

He released 3 albums and 1 EP on Ruthless Records where he was signed from 1987 to 1999. In 2004 he started in own record label, Villain Entertainment, where he released an album in 2009. Currently he’s working on his second EP titled Rebel Music.

His moniker is derived from his first name (Lorenzo). He used to write alot of the lyrics for N.W.A, and is considered the most underrated member in the group.


Discography

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OFWGKTA weigh in with their take on the holiday season (hint: they don’t like it very much)

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In May 2011, XXL Mag wrote an article “Book of Rhymes,” including story of Rakim:

Early in his career, Rakim, the artist credited with modernizing rap via the complexity of his lyrics, misplaced a full rhyme book and spent months worrying that it had fallen into the wrong hands. As a safety precaution, he began writing rhymes in wild-style graffiti lettering — a fact he later alluded to on the 1990 single “Let the Rhythm Hit ’Em."

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