JB Moore, an important contributor to some of hip-hop’s earliest hits, died in Manhattan on March 13 of pancreatic cancer. He was 81.
Although Moore was not well known today, Moore was instrumental in hip-hop’s early mainstream-Success in the late 1970s and early 1980s when he helped produce and write records for Kurtis Blow with Robert “Rocky” Ford Jr., his friend and colleague BillboardWhere Moore worked in ad sales and Ford was a reporter. (Ford died in 2020.)
Moore who also sometimes wrote jazz reviews for Billboardis credited as a producer and author on classic early hip-hop numbers such as “The Breads”, “Christmas Rappin ‘” and “Basketball.”
“One of the interesting things about our partnership,” Moore said of Ford in an oral story from 2001 for the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, “is what Robert and I got to know each other on each other on Billboardwe realized he was a black guy from the middle of Hollis, Queens, and I was a white guy from North Shore of Long Island and our record collections were practically identical. I think we had 800 items a piece and 200 of them were different. ”
Published during the 1979 season, “Christmas Rappin ‘” was the brain child of Ford, who came up with the idea of writing a Christmas song because he had a child on the way – Moore says “Christmas posts are perennials, which is why you get royalties ad infinitum on them,” according to Moore’s memory of mouth history.
Moore, who was already familiar with guitar, bass and songwriting, did not try to write and produce rap records. After serving in the Vietnam War, he initially saved money to write a novel about the conflict. “I had saved money to leave Billboard to write a book for five years, ”Moore said for the oral story.” I had about $ 10,000 and it was invested in doing “Christmas Rappin.”
Through Ford’s relationship with a then upcoming and upcoming Russell Simmons, who then promoted battles, he and Moore got the young rapper to put the “Christman Rappin ‘” texts inspired by the Clarke Moore poem “The night before Christmas” and the rest was history.
Ford and Moore traded the song around about 20 labels and were rejected until Mercury Records gave them a shot with a two-single deal that would turn into an album deal if the singles were a success, according to a 2018 blog post written by Simmons.
“We didn’t think a larger label would understand a rap record,” Moore remembered in the oral story. “But they would understand a parody.” He was right.
According to Simmon’s ‘Blog Post, “Christmas Rappin'” close to 400,000 copies, while their next single, Blow’s “The Breads,” was the first rap song certified gold to sell 500,000 copies. “The Pauses” also peaked at No. 87 on the Billboard Hot 100, while “Basketball”, which was released in 1985, topped on No. 71 on the chart. And just as it had Moore, Ford and Blow carved careers in the budding new genre known as rap music.
Blow paid tribute to Moore on Instagram with a long caption and partly wrote: “Moore was a key figure in the early commercialization of hip hop. His productions helped bridge the gap between hip -hop and mainstream audience in the late 70s and early 80s.” He ended by writing, “rest in power for a friend, teacher, pioneer who helped lay the basis for what hip -hop became. Thank you, JB, I learned so much.”
As a songwriting and production duo, Moore and Ford worked on Blow’s first four albums, helped produce three albums to full power and even had a hand in Rodney Dangerfield’s classic parody -rap song “Rappin Rodney”, which hit No. 83 on The Hot 100 in 1984.
Moore has no known immediate survivors.