Def Jam, Inc.
Russell Simmons, Rick Rubin, and the Extraordinary Story of the World's Most Influential Hip-Hop Label
-
- $7.99
Publisher Description
In the early ‘80s, the music industry wrote off hip-hop as a passing fad. Few could or would have predicted that the improvised raps and raw beats busting out of New York City’s urban underclass would one day become a multimillion-dollar business and one of music’s most lucrative genres.
Among those few were two visionaries: Russell Simmons, a young black man from Hollis, Queens, and Rick Rubin, a Jewish kid from Long Island. Though the two came from different backgrounds, their all-consuming passion for hip-hop brought them together. Soon they would revolutionize the music industry with their groundbreaking label, Def Jam Records.
Def Jam, Inc. traces the company’s incredible rise from the NYU dorm room of nineteen-year-old Rubin (where LL Cool J was discovered on a demo tape) to the powerhouse it is today; from financial struggles and scandals–including The Beastie Boys’s departure from the label and Rubin’s and Simmons’s eventual parting–to revealing anecdotes about artists like Slick Rick, Public Enemy, Foxy Brown, Jay-Z, and DMX.
Stacy Gueraseva, former editor in chief of Russell Simmons’s magazine, Oneworld, had access to the biggest players on the scene, and brings you real conversations and a behind-the-scenes look from a decade–and a company–that turned the music world upside down. She takes you back to New York in the ‘80s, when late-night spots such as Danceteria and Nell’s were burning with young, fresh rappers, and Simmons and Rubin had nothing but a hunch that they were on to something huge.
Far more than just a biography of the two men who made it happen, Def Jam, Inc. is a journey into the world of rap itself. Both an intriguing business history as well as a gritty narrative, here is the definitive book on Def Jam–a must read for any fan of hip-hop as well as all popular-culture junkies.
From the Hardcover edition.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hip-hop devotee and expert Gueraseva writes about one of the genre's most important labels with an insightful combination of doting love and cold, hard reality. Her chronicle of Def Jam, which was started in 1984 by NYU roommates Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons with $5,000 and became a multibillion-dollar phenomenon, covers the art and personalities of the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, Jay Z and others. Gueraseva portrays Rubin as a rebel and Simmons (whose brother was in RUN-DMC) as a skillful deal maker. Early on, the label signed such talent as LL Cool J and Slick Rick. Along with a gallery of triumphs the Beastie Boys' "Brass Monkey," Nice & Smooth's "Sometimes I Rhyme Slow" came occasional failures, such as the 1988 film Tougher Than Leather, which critics called "vile, vicious, despicable, stupid, sexist, racist and horrendously made." The story builds forcefully after a Village Voice article pronounces Rubin "the king of rap," a title widely seen as underrating Simmons, and the first major crack appears in a partnership that eventually collapses. Though often grim, this is an inspiring study of visionaries who found success beyond their wildest dreams. Photos.
