ABSTRACT
Acclaimed as the ‘CEO of Hip-Hop’ by Business Week in 2003, Russell Simmons represents one of America’s most illustrious media magnates (Business Week, 27 October 2003). Growing up in New York, as a student Simmons had spent his spare time promoting parties and club shows around Harlem and Queens. During the early 1980s he honed his entrepreneurial skills managing his brother’s popular rap trio, Run DMC, and in 1984 he joined Rick Rubin (a record producer and punk rock fan) in co-founding Def Jam records, a label whose impressive roster of rap artists-including Public Enemy, L.L. Cool J and the Beastie Boys-helped take hip-hop to the centre of American (and subsequently global) popular culture. Following Rubin’s acrimonious departure in 1988, Simmons became head of Def Jam and began transforming the company into a multisector business empire. By 2003 Simmons was heading Rush Communications, a vast corporation that encompassed a footwear company, an advertising agency, a luxury watch company and clothing lines that alone grossed around $400 million a year (Ebony, July 2003).
