Kurtis Blow's 'The Breaks' is certified gold — the first gold-selling rap single

Why it matters

December 8, 1980. The Recording Industry Association of America certified "The Breaks" gold, which meant Mercury Records had moved more than 500,000 copies of the single. That made it the first rap record to officially be a Big Record by the music industry's own internal accounting system. This is the boring-but-important kind of milestone. A gold certification is a piece of paperwork. It does not make a record better. It does not change what is on the wax. What it does is settle the argument about whether rap is a viable commercial format in any room where that argument is happening, which in late 1980 was every label-office room in New York. "Rapper's Delight" had outsold this. "Rapper's Delight" never got the plaque, because Sugar Hill never filed. Kurtis Blow was on a major; the major filed. So in the official ledger of American music, the first gold rap single is this one. You can argue with the official ledger. The official ledger does not care.