Life and Def

Russell Simmons, the original and eternal hip-hop mogul, is one of the most innovative and influential figures in modern American business and culture. When no one outside of inner-city New York had even heard of hip-hop, Simmons saw the seeds of a global force that would change the way people talk, dress, listen to music, and choose the heroes they hang on their walls. Today, he oversees a sprawling, multimillion-dollar empire of culture-defining businesses in everything from music to fashion, advertising to film, and media to visual art. At the same time he's broadened his interests and influence and pushed hip-hop to new plateaus of power and relevance. Life and Def is a one-of-a-kind tale that interweaves the remarkable journey of Russell Simmons with the story of the culture he's transformed and been transformed by. In his own brash, compelling voice, Simmons chronicles his numerous business successes and occasional failures. He tells the story of the founding of the legendary Def Jam Records, whose roster stretches from original rap icons like L.L. Cool J, Public Enemy, and the Beastie Boys to today's top stars, including Jay-Z and DMX. He traces the launching of Def Comedy Jam, the long-running hit television series that introduced a new generation of black comedic stars to America, from Martin Lawrence and Bill Bellamy to Bernie Mac and Chris Rock. He spins hilarious tales of his adventures in Hollywood, where he's produced hit movies like Eddie Murphy's The Nutty Professor and worked with quirky geniuses like Abel Ferrara. He also tells the story of Phat Farm, the wildly successful pioneering urban clothing label whose origins lay in Russell's longtime fascination with fashion (and fashion models). Simmons's story is also one of personal transformation, from the driven man who in the heady days of early success indulged himself with drugs, sex, and world-class decadence to the husband and father he is today, a man who has found meaning in activism, philanthropy, and spiritual practice while never losing his passion for the social, political, artistic, and commercial potential of hip-hop. Through it all he relates telling anecdotes about the characters he's dealt with: models and gangsters, street poets and gurus, and major players like Donald Trump, Sean Combs, Jon Peters, and Tupac Shakur. Full of advice, opinions, and behind-the-scenes scoop, Life and Def is the story of the quintessential hip-hop life....

“Simmons managed what most of us only dream about: igniting a revolution rather than witnessing one.”—Gotham

“Urban legend Russell Simmons nearly single-handedly made rap music and culture mainstream. An African-American Horatio Alger tale.” —New York Post

“An inspiring glimpse at the rap impresario’s road to redemption.” —Essence

“In Life and Def, hip-hop’s mega-mogul gives the raw, uncut story behind his rise to the top.” —Honey

“Simmons’s love for hip-hop in general, and rap in particular, can’t be mistaken. This book is insightful. . . . Anybody who cares about rap should read this.” —Black Issues Book Review

“Groundbreaking . . . a serious blueprint of how to create a multimillion-dollar empire.” —New York Amsterdam News

Autorentext

RUSSELL SIMMONS, a member of Oprah's SuperSoul 100, is the founder or cofounder of numerous successful companies and philanthropic organizations, including Def Jam Records, Phat Farm clothing, the dRush advertising agency, and Rush Philanthropic.

NELSON GEORGE is a groundbreaking journalist, cultural critic, novelist, and filmmaker. Among his nine books are Show and Tell, the award-winning Death of Rhythm & Blues, and Hip Hop America,. He can be reached at www.nelsongeorge.com.

Leseprobe
1
Cold Gettin' Paid

There have always been two types of black businesses in this country. First, there are those like Johnson Publications or Essence Communications (or black hair care or cosmetics companies), which cater to black consumers and work that niche for all it's worth. Ebony and Essence, which are institutions in the black community, exist solely to target black consumers, draw revenue predominantly from the ad budgets of white corporations and portray a middle-class black version of American reality.

Then there's the Motown model. Berry Gordy labeled his company the "Sound of Young America." Gordy was a visionary who saw that black culture, as expressed through the music his company created, was just as viable and important culturally--and commercially--as anything in this country. Motown sold black pop music, written and performed by blacks, for consumption by all Americans regardless of their color.

My philosophy takes a little from both, yet differs fundamentally from them. Unlike Ebony or Essence, my audience is not limited by race. My core audience, my hip-hop audience, is black and white, Asian and Hispanic--anyone who totally identifies with and lives in the culture. Those are my peeps.

And unlike Motown, I don't believe in catering to the so-called mainstream by altering your look or slang or music. I see hip-hop culture as the new American mainstream. We don't change for you; you adapt to us. That's what has made Def Jam records, Def Comedy Jam and Phat Farm, to name a few of my ventures, commercially successful and influential. And that is the central philosophy that has driven my career.

WHAT IS HIP-HOP?

I guess I should start with my definition of hip-hop. To me, hip-hop is modern mainstream young urban American culture. I know there's a lot of ideas there, but hip-hop's impact is as broad as that description suggests. Like rock and roll, blues and jazz, hip-hop is primarily a musical form. But unlike those forms of black American music, hip-hop is more expansive in the ways it manifests itself, and as a result, its impact is wider. The ideas of hip-hop are spread not just through music, but in fashion, movies, television, advertising, dancing, slang and attitude.

The beauty of hip-hop, and a key to its longevity, is that within the culture there is a lot of flexibility. So Run-D.M.C. and A Tribe Called Quest and N.W.A and Mary J. Blige and Luther Campbell and the Beastie Boys can all wear different clothes, use different slang and have a different kind of cultural significance. Yet all are recognizable as being part of hip-hop. I believe hip-hop is an attitude, one that can be nonverbal as well as eloquent. It communicates aspiration and frustration, community and aggression, creativity and street reality, style and substance. It is not rigid, nor is it easy to sum up in one sentence or even one book. Simply put, when you are in a hip-hop environment, you know it; it has a feel that is tangible and cannot be mistaken for anything else.

Hip-hop culture is, all these years later, closer to its original aesthetics than jazz or blues or rock and roll are to their roots. For example, the originators of rock and roll were black men who wore fly suits, had their hair slick and didn't give a fuck. That describes all those artists in the '50s who laid down the foundation, men who were trying to fight their way out of southern racism and northern poverty. In their time they were regarded as outlaws. They got arrested. They got harassed. They were attacked.

Eventually mainstream America took over rock and roll and it changed. No longer rock and roll, it became rock. It became hallucinogenic. It became about rebellion for rebellion's sake. It was no longer about drinking and looking fly; it became about taking drugs and wearing dirty jeans. In the '60s and '70s, when this new rock emerged, the old music, and the old musicians, were tossed away. You couldn't tell this new audience that Chuck Berry and Led Zeppelin were the same thing. In one …