Russell Simmons (1957- ) is an American businessman, a hip hop mogul.
Simmons took the hip hop music he heard in the streets of New York and got it put on the airwaves and in the music shops. He was the business brains that made hip hop into one of the main forms of black music.
No wonder, then, that USA Today in 2007 called him one of the “Top 25 Most Influential People of the Past 25 Years”.
In 1984 he founded Def Jam Records with music producer Rick Rubin. In the late 1980s he helped to put out such old school hip hop acts as Run DMC (of which his brother was a member), Kurtis Blow (a friend), LL Cool J, Whodini and the Beastie Boys.
He also founded Phat Farm, through which he sells hip hop clothing. That in turn gave rise to Baby Phat and Run Athletics.
Simmons is also behind the television shows “Def Comedy Jam”, “Def Poetry Jam”, “Run’s House” and others.
He was born in Hollis, a black middle-class part of Queens in New York, the son of a teacher. He went to City College of New York in Harlem. It was in Harlem in the late 1970s where he first heard the street poets that were called rappers.
He saw that the music industry was overlooking something big. So he dropped out of City College and started pushing rap music. He took what little money he had or could get from his father and made records and put on rap shows in Queens and Harlem. It paid off. He was able to sell 50,000 records for his friend Kurtis Blow. Now he could take on other acts and set his sights higher.
In 1984 he joined forces with music producer Rick Rubin, a punk rocker and fellow lover of rap. Together they founded Def Jam Recordings to put out the kind of music they loved but which the big record companies would barely touch. Later Simmons got CBS Records to agree to distribute for Def Jam.
By 1987 three of his acts were on the top of the black music charts: the Beastie Boys, Run DMC and LL Cool J.
At the time Whitney Houston was a crossover hit: she increased sales among whites by making her music sound more white and less black. Simmons took the opposite approach: he wanted his acts to be as street and black as possible. He did not cut out any of the bad language (as he would later urge in 2007). He wanted something that would ring true with audiences.
At first he was only interested in making black music for black people, not kind-of-black music for white people. But, as he would later point out, hip hop is universal, it speaks to people of all races.
In 1999 he sold his part of Def Jam to Universal for $100 million (20 million crowns).
He was married to Kimora Lee Simmons from 1998 to 2006. They have two daughters. He is the uncle of Angela and Vanessa Simmons, Run’s daughters.
He blogs for the Huffington Post.
He practises yoga and does not eat meat
See also:
How can you say he way making Black Music for Black people when he brought out the Beastie Boys – the ultimate crossover in Rap.
Also, it was him who teamed RUN DMC with Aerosmith in WALK THIS WAY – to establish the final crossover.
Also, he tapped into the corporate world with MY ADDIDAS.
Now way he was just interested in BLACK MUSIC. He was interested in making his business his own.
Love the man. Love what he did.
You are wrong in your statements.
Ah, feels good to be back.
-Stal
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My mistake. I corrected it. Thanks.
Russell Simmons is one of the first people who will tell you that hip hop is universal, but that was not his aim at first. Otherwise he would have tried to water down rap. Something he did not do, not even with the Beastie Boys.
The Aerosmith/Run DMC thing was Rick Rubin’s idea. As a producer for Aerosmith who also loved rap, he saw the match.
Welcome back!
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True, but it was Simmons who decided to team with Rubin, so then . . .
Still, I remember when I could not buy Rap tapes. Yes, I said tapes. They did not sell them in the store. They did not play rap music on MTV, except very late at night (for me on the west coast) with Yo MTV Raps.
The only radio station that played Rap music (in Los Angeles) was KDAY – and you needed to stand on your bed with tin foil attached to the radio and hold it real high just to hear it.
Long live the Mix tape.
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Stahl:
I think that you guys are both correct. Agabond’s point is that, in the beginning, Def Jam was a transparent vehicle for the nascent hip hop scene. Both Russel and Rick loved the music and let it speak for itself. They didn’t try to make it “more white” in an effort to find their early success.
However, after it became popular and commercially viable, both Russel and Rick were entrepreneurial and they began to look around for other opportunities.
Russel is, in my mind, the quintessential self-made man. The most important factor in his success is that age-old advice always given to young people — he followed his passion. If you remain true to that, you will generally find success. My hat is perpetually off to Mr. Simmons.
I happened to see “Krush Groove” recently on late-night cable. What a rush of memories! Among other things, look for the appearance of a probably 16 year old LL Cool J.
I remember in about 1983 a buddy of mine called me up — at the time I was living in Detroit’s Cass Corridor and hanging out with the anarchist publishers of “The Fifth Estate,” and he was a punk hanging out at the CBGB — and told me about this great music he’d been hearing at parties. The music was called “Hip Hop.” He sent me some home-made cassette tape compilations, long since lost or worn out. I’ve no idea who was on them, but they were so awesome. I was by then familiar with Afrika Bambaataa, but hadn’t been aware of the formalization of the term “Hip Hop.”
Of course, spoken rhyme over rhythmic music was nothing new — indeed, it was then actively practiced by dub poets like the great Linton Kwesi Johnson. The style that became “Hip Hop” did incorporate certain sonic (such as record scratching)and rhythmic (mostly drum machine tracks)elements in a way that had not previously been done.
In some ways, Hip Hop was enabled by technology in much the same way that the British Wave of rock music was enabled by technology. In the case of Brit rock, the technology was the advent of solid body electric guitars coupled with reliable very powerful amplifiers. In the case of Hip Hop, it was the direct drive turntable coupled with the portable mixer. Combining the features of these two devices enabled DJ’s to cut and blend snippets of extant recordings into new rhythmic textures and landscapes, over which they could then rap their own rhymed lyrics. Like the guitars and amps of Brit rock, the Hip Hop technology was available to the working classes. Also like Brit rock, the energy of Hip Hop was fueled in large part by young male hubris.
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LOL about the tin foil.
Krush Groove is loosely based on Russell Simmons’s early days. Blair Underwood plays his character.
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That’s cool – how hip hop and early Brit rock were playing with the technology and came up with a new sound.
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I remember when Mills used to blog as undercoverblackman – this post reminds me of some of his old stuff. The thing about Punk and Rap was that they were both the bastard children of Rock – each only being claimed once they succeeded in spite of the indifference of mainstream labels.
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