J.B. Moore, a key contributor to some of hip-hop’s earliest hits, died in Manhattan on March 13 of pancreatic cancer. He was 81. “One of the interesting things about our partnership,” Moore ...

By Alex Williams J.B. Moore, an advertising man from suburban Long Island who wrote the lyrics to one of rap’s first hits — Kurtis Blow’s 1979 novelty song, “Christmas Rappin’” — and ...