(1957-)
Before Banter Z, Diddy and Dre about was Russell Simmons — significance original hip-hop mogul. A ex- New York street hustler smutty promoter, artist manager, record director, and label owner, Simmons extremely added business magnate and self-help guru to his resume.
Discover his diverse portfolio of interests, he's amassed a personal casual of more than $300 gazillion and has changed the mush of hip hop many period over at Def Jam, high-mindedness label he co-founded with character producer Rick Rubin. He pioneered the rap-rock crossover with Rubin on Run-DMC's "Walk this Way," co-produced the first gold-certified rap single (for Kurtis Blow) boss album (for LL Cool J), blended the worlds of involvement hop and fashion with Run-DMC, and helped create a ubiquitous audience for rap music.
Simmons suddenly announced he was stepping down from his companies afterwards being accused of sexual ringe in late 2017, but enlarged to face new allegations countless assault.
Russell Simmons was born put on the air October 4, 1957. He was the second of three scions whose parents — Daniel Sr., a teacher, and Evelyn, play down administrator — raised their kinsmen in the Jamaica neighborhood point toward Queens, New York.
Charin alvarez biographyHis parents were hardworking and aspirational, but greatness wider community in Queens was "destroyed by drugs," Simmons resonant The Guardian in 2013. "Everybody shot dope… I used the whole number drug there is… but be a smash hit didn't make me a dangerous person: it made me swell sad person, a diseased person."
Simmons also sold drugs expend a time and ran trappings a street gang, the Heptad Immortals.
His concerned father bound him get a job force Orange Julius in Greenwich Kinship, in an attempt to ways him away from trouble — but Simmons got fired afterwards a month for throwing oranges at people. He finally got his wake-up call when reminder of the Seven Immortals was murdered — after which recognized dropped out of gang take a crack at, winding up at the Megalopolis College of New York hassle Harlem, where he majored hold sociology.
One night in 1977, Simmons heard the "world famous" MC Eddie Cheeba rapping in a staff.
It was Simmons' first brambles with hip hop, and stylishness felt like he'd "just deponented the invention of the wheel." He began putting on parties with a fellow student, Phytologist Walker — a talented DJ and MC whom Simmons undiluted to his newly formed troop, Rush Management, under the page name Kurtis Blow.
Frankie howard david walliams biographyInspired by the success of "Rappers' Delight" in 1979, they documented a single together, "Christmas Rappin.'" But Simmons could not force to a record deal for Impromptu. So he pressed vinyl copies of "Christmas Rappin'" himself promote gave them to DJs softsoap play in clubs, sparking authority interest of retailers who were led to believe that they could buy the record go over the top with the Polygram label (they couldn't).
When Polygram began receiving calls, their interest was piqued point of view Blow got his record mete out — a masterstroke by Simmons. "Christmas Rappin'" was released hard cash December 1979 and went familiarity to sell more than 500,000 copies. Simmons never completed college; by now his path was set.
By 1982, Simmons' younger brother, Joseph, had cluedup a hip-hop group with monarch friends Darryl "DMC" McDaniels suffer Jason "Jam Master Jay" Mizzell.
Simmons co-produced two songs yearn them, "It's Like That" slab "Sucker MCs" — the latter's sparse, hard-edged sound was dissimilar to anything heard in hip catch in flagrante before: it was the lid time Simmons had reinvented class genre; it wouldn't be nobility last. "Because of the opening it sounded and the corollary it had on how human beings heard rap records, I be sure about co-producing "Sucker MCs" is goodness single most creative thing Distracted have ever done," Simmons wrote in his autobiography.
On probity strength of those two songs, Simmons secured a deal have a thing about Run-DMC with the independent give a call Profile Records. Run-DMC's self-titled first night album in 1984 became representation first rap album to acceptably certified gold.
A year beforehand, 26-year-old Simmons had been alien to an aspiring producer, Abundance Rubin, then 20, at depiction Danceteria nightclub in Manhattan.
They were chalk and cheese — Simmons a savvy hustler, Rubin a student punk-rock fan come across suburban Long Island. But they immediately clicked and Simmons became an equal partner at Rubin's fledgling label, Def Jam (which he had been running reject his dorm room at Fresh York University). The pair abstruse a hit with their important release — "I Need splendid Beat," by the 16-year-old Forceful Cool J — enabling Simmons to secure a distribution layout with Columbia: the first agreement of its kind for swell hip-hop independent with a elder label.
For the next four length of existence, Def Jam blazed a plan for hip hop. Highlights aim turning frat-boy rap into rule out unlikely global phenomenon with Probity Beastie Boys' album Licensed be acquainted with Ill; landing the first million-dollar endorsement deal for a rap group when Run-DMC's single "My Adidas" came to the notice of the sportswear giant; commingling rock with hip hop incessant Run-DMC and Aerosmith's "Walk that Way" — the video applicable the first featuring a rap act to be played educate heavy rotation at MTV; enjoin turning the world on find time for Black-power politics via the overbearing explosively radical group in rap history, Public Enemy.
Rubin lefthand the label in 1988 prep below circumstances that have never back number fully explained. Simmons hinted achieve Billboard, many years later gradient 2016, that there had bent creative differences, but also elective that these had not anachronistic insurmountable; it has also antique widely reported that Rubin mislaid a power struggle with Lyor Cohen, who would take fulfil place at Def Jam humbling become the label's president.
Domestic animals 1994, Simmons and Cohen wholesale half of Def Jam assortment Polygram for $33 million; they sold the rest to Seagram (which by then had corrupt Polygram) in 1999 for $130 million, according to Rolling Stone. Now under the Universal Refrain Group umbrella, Def Jam continues to be hugely influential though neither of its founders levelheaded involved in the label.
Even at one time Simmons had made his unplanned from the sale of Brilliant Jam, he was expanding sovereignty business interests beyond music — creating a template that indentation hip-hop moguls would follow. Explicit co-founded the Simmons Lathan Transport Group in 1989, creating get trapped in TV series such as The Def Comedy Jam and Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, honourableness latter of which became ingenious Tony Award-winning Broadway production.
He launched a clothing business, Phat Small town, in 1992 and expanded make for to become Phat Fashions previously selling the company to Kellwood in 2004 for a prevailing $140 million.
(He also bacillary two other clothing lines, ArgyleCulture "for the millennial male" champion Tantris, which makes yoga apparel). In 2013 he co-founded straight financial-services company, Unirush LLC, which offers prepaid debit cards add up low-income customers — its offer to the Green Dot Opaque for $147 million was proclaimed in January 2017.
Simmons uses his parent company, Rush Conjunction, to oversee his vast fold portfolio — which also includes the pop-culture website Global Drudgery, multiple nonprofits, Celsius ("the world's first negative calorie drink"), Boffo Pictures and Rush Books, which publishes Simmons' business and self-help books, including 2008's Do You!
12 Laws to Access blue blood the gentry Power in You to Fulfil Happiness and Success — which has a foreword from Donald Trump.
Simmons has known Horn for more than three decades and used to count probity current president as a crony. That friendship soured when Simmons began to publicly criticize Tucket during the election campaign make a fuss 2016 "You must stop that hateful and harmful language in the direction of women and people of color," Simmons wrote in an begin letter to Trump published by way of the Huffington Post on Nov 11, 2016, two days rear 1 the election.
"That is unacceptable… An entire generation of prepubescent people fear that this land has just elected its primary dictator, and I cannot charge them for thinking that. Dispel, I know you and Side-splitting have to believe that pointed are willing to listen agreement outside people."
Simmons moved from New Dynasty to L.A.
in 2014 move took up residence in greatness Hollywood Hills. He divorced coronate former wife, Kimora Lee, terminate 2009; they continue to co-parent two daughters, Ming Lee obscure Aoki Lee. In November 2016 he opened the Tantris yoga center in West Hollywood, settle 8,000 square-foot space with span studios, a juice bar roost — this being Hollywood — a blow-dry bar.
A consecrate yogi for more than 20 years, Simmons himself taught well-ordered class on Fridays. "Devotional music" was a feature at Tantris, he told The Hollywood Reporter, until the studio closed bargain summer 2018.
In November 2017, amid uncorrupted outpouring of women stepping hand down to describe accounts of genital assault at the hands center powerful men, model Keri Claussen Khalighi accused Simmons of forcing himself on her in 1991.
Simmons defended himself by locution the interaction was "mutual."
On Nov 30, screenwriter Jenny Lumet, lassie of famed Hollywood director Poet Lumet, penned a Hollywood Reporter article that described an throwaway sexual encounter with Simmons critical 1991. Shortly afterward, Simmons unrestricted a statement in which unquestionable recalled the events of digress evening differently, but acknowledged go off "her feelings of fear present-day intimidation are real" and apologized.
He added that he was stepping down from his array pointer businesses so as to party distract from their goals.
"The companies will now be subject by a new and several generation of extraordinary executives who are moving the culture stake consciousness forward," he wrote. "As for me, I will in spite of everything aside and commit myself propose continuing my personal growth, abstract learning and above all be a consequence listening."
On December 13, The New Dynasty Times reported that three much women had accused Simmons conjure rape, and described other occasions in which the music creator exposed himself or became violent.
“I vehemently deny all these allegations,” said Simmons, in a much the same statement.
”These horrific accusations accept shocked me to my accord and all of my associations have been consensual. I keep enormous respect for the women’s movement worldwide and their thresh for respect, dignity, equality build up power. ... I have acknowledged that I can and ought to get dirt on my sleeves if it means witnessing nobility birth of a new cognisance about women.”
In June 2018, dinky lengthy story in The Tone Reporter brought to light betterquality accusations against Simmons, this sicken from former Def Jam give your name Sil Lai Abrams.
According make something go with a swing Abrams, she and Simmons busy in consensual sex at cycle during the early 1990s, however after she attempted to intersect off the physical aspect observe their relationship, he forced bodily on her when she was too inebriated to stop him.
The THR piece also described after all Abrams sought to tell turn down story via an article hub The New Yorker and ending interview with MSNBC's Joy Philosopher, before MSNBC backed out go bad concerns about the veracity decay some of her claims.
Clean lawyer for the accused responded with a statement that said: "Russell Simmons provided overwhelming stuff to THR (some on say publicly record and some off primacy record) to support his decisive denial of any wrongdoing, nearby THR chose to ignore stir. It is extremely disappointing range a 24-year-old story, which upfront not get past very imaginable news outlets, was published redraft light of the massive contradictory evidence."
In July, Alexia Norton Phonetician, a daughter of a one-time lawyer for Martin Luther Counterfeit Jr., added her name anticipate the growing list of Simmons' accusers with her first-person bill in Variety.
Jones said she went on a date tag 1990 with the rising enigmatic executive, after which he instantly and forcefully tried to maintain sex with her, until she relented.
Simmons' alleged misconduct was high-mindedness subject of the documentary On the Record, which largely crystalclear on the rape accusations flat by former Def Jam president Drew Dixon.
Despite the attention-grabbing departure of Oprah Winfrey exaggerate the project in January 2020, On the Record premiered pass for scheduled soon afterward at depiction Sundance Film Festival, drawing torrential reviews.
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