Biography russell simmons
Russell Simmons
(1957-)
Who Is Russell Simmons?
Before Fall guy Z, Diddy and Dre nearby was Russell Simmons — say publicly original hip-hop mogul. A trace New York street hustler nasty promoter, artist manager, record director, and label owner, Simmons besides added business magnate and self-help guru to his resume.
Surrender his diverse portfolio of interests, he's amassed a personal casual of more than $300 bundle and has changed the mush of hip hop many days over at Def Jam, honesty label he co-founded with depiction 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) existing album (for LL Cool J), blended the worlds of freshen hop and fashion with Run-DMC, and helped create a omnipresent audience for rap music.
Simmons suddenly announced he was stepping down from his companies aft being accused of sexual offensive in late 2017, but spread to face new allegations atlas assault.
Born and Raised in Borough, NY
Russell Simmons was born govern October 4, 1957. He was the second of three progeny whose parents — Daniel Sr., a teacher, and Evelyn, resolve administrator — raised their coat in the Jamaica neighborhood grow mouldy Queens, New York.
His parents were hardworking and aspirational, nevertheless the wider community in Borough was "destroyed by drugs," Simmons told The Guardian in 2013. "Everybody shot dope… I deskbound every drug there is… nevertheless it didn't make me deft bad person: it made fight a sad person, a defective person."
Simmons also sold opiate berk for a time and ran with a street gang, say publicly Seven Immortals.
His concerned daddy made him get a position at Orange Julius in Borough Village, in an attempt friend steer him away from matter — but Simmons got pinkslipped after a month for throwing oranges at people. He ultimately got his wake-up call what because one of the Seven Immortals was murdered — after which he dropped out of be in charge of life, winding up at honourableness City College of New Royalty in Harlem, where he majored in sociology.
How Simmons Got Dominion Start
One night in 1977, Simmons heard the "world famous" Presenter Eddie Cheeba rapping in dinky club.
It was Simmons' have control over brush with hip hop, final he felt like he'd "just witnessed the invention of class wheel." He began putting multiplication parties with a fellow undergraduate, Curtis Walker — a brilliant DJ and MC whom Simmons signed to his newly try company, Rush Management, under loftiness stage name Kurtis Blow.
Inspired by the success of "Rappers' Delight" in 1979, they evidence a single together, "Christmas Rappin.'" But Simmons could not pay for a record deal for Break. So he pressed vinyl copies of "Christmas Rappin'" himself focus on gave them to DJs add up play in clubs, sparking illustriousness interest of retailers who were led to believe that they could buy the record overexert the Polygram label (they couldn't).
When Polygram began receiving calls, their interest was piqued viewpoint Blow got his record bargain — a masterstroke by Simmons. "Christmas Rappin'" was released proclaim December 1979 and went culpability to sell more than 500,000 copies. Simmons never completed college; by now his path was set.
Run DMC, Def Proceed With Rick Rubin
By 1982, Simmons' younger brother, Joseph, had take for granted a hip-hop group with reward friends Darryl "DMC" McDaniels person in charge Jason "Jam Master Jay" Mizzell.
Simmons co-produced two songs care for them, "It's Like That" gain "Sucker MCs" — the latter's sparse, hard-edged sound was poles apart anything heard in hip come across before: it was the labour time Simmons had reinvented leadership genre; it wouldn't be primacy last. "Because of the pathway it sounded and the coercion it had on how liquidate heard rap records, I find creditable co-producing "Sucker MCs" is representation single most creative thing Uncontrolled have ever done," Simmons wrote in his autobiography.
On distinction strength of those two songs, Simmons secured a deal disclose Run-DMC with the independent earmark Profile Records. Run-DMC's self-titled premiere album in 1984 became representation first rap album to rectify certified gold.
A year before, 26-year-old Simmons had been foreign to an aspiring producer, Rant Rubin, then 20, at interpretation Danceteria nightclub in Manhattan.
They were chalk and cheese — Simmons a savvy hustler, Rubin a student punk-rock fan cause the collapse of 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 give birth to his dorm room at Additional York University).
The pair esoteric a hit with their extreme release — "I Need straight Beat," by the 16-year-old Be ablaze Cool J — enabling Simmons to secure a distribution contract with Columbia: the first parcel out of its kind for swell hip-hop independent with a main label.
Cashing Out on Boffo Jam
For the next four length of existence, Def Jam blazed a line for hip hop.
Highlights contained turning frat-boy rap into trivial unlikely global phenomenon with Representation Beastie Boys' album Licensed ensue Ill; landing the first million-dollar endorsement deal for a rap group when Run-DMC's single "My Adidas" came to the bring together of the sportswear giant; assimilation rock with hip hop put the accent on Run-DMC and Aerosmith's "Walk that Way" — the video suitable the first featuring a rap act to be played treatment heavy rotation at MTV; with the addition of turning the world on greet Black-power politics via the peak explosively radical group in rap history, Public Enemy.
Rubin consider the label in 1988 err circumstances that have never antique fully explained. Simmons hinted appoint Billboard, many years later contain 2016, that there had archaic creative differences, but also unexpressed that these had not antique insurmountable; it has also antiquated widely reported that Rubin missing a power struggle with Lyor Cohen, who would take coronet place at Def Jam tolerate become the label's president.
Loaded 1994, Simmons and Cohen vend half of Def Jam belong Polygram for $33 million; they sold the rest to Seagram (which by then had greedy Polygram) in 1999 for $130 million, according to Rolling Stone. Now under the Universal Penalization Group umbrella, Def Jam continues to be hugely influential granted neither of its founders silt involved in the label.
Mogul: 'Def Jam Comedy' to Phat Farm to Global Grind
Even beforehand Simmons had made his unplanned from the sale of Boffo Jam, he was expanding monarch business interests beyond music — creating a template that assail hip-hop moguls would follow. Smartness co-founded the Simmons Lathan Telecommunications Group in 1989, creating bash TV series such as The Def Comedy Jam and Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, dignity latter of which became clever Tony Award-winning Broadway production.
He launched a clothing business, Phat Locality, in 1992 and expanded bowels to become Phat Fashions earlier selling the company to Kellwood in 2004 for a in circulation $140 million.
(He also heedful two other clothing lines, ArgyleCulture "for the millennial male" suggest Tantris, which makes yoga apparel). In 2013 he co-founded clean financial-services company, Unirush LLC, which offers prepaid debit cards enrol low-income customers — its move to an earlier time to the Green Dot Tummy for $147 million was proclaimed in January 2017.
Simmons uses his parent company, Rush Subject, to oversee his vast branch of learning portfolio — which also includes the pop-culture website Global Abrade, multiple nonprofits, Celsius ("the world's first negative calorie drink"), Crucial Pictures and Rush Books, which publishes Simmons' business and self-help books, including 2008's Do You!
12 Laws to Access nobleness Power in You to Figure out Happiness and Success — which has a foreword from Donald Trump.
Simmons has known Trumpet for more than three decades and used to count description current president as a keep count of. That friendship soured when Simmons began to publicly criticize Ruff during the election campaign be pleased about 2016 "You must stop that hateful and harmful language concerning women and people of color," Simmons wrote in an ajar letter to Trump published infant the Huffington Post on Nov 11, 2016, two days funding the election.
"That is unacceptable… An entire generation of verdant people fear that this nation has just elected its prime dictator, and I cannot accuse them for thinking that. Nevertheless, I know you and Uncontrollable have to believe that bolster are willing to listen barter outside people."
From New Dynasty to the Hollywood Hills, Yogi Style
Simmons moved from New Dynasty to L.A.
in 2014 person in charge took up residence in authority Hollywood Hills. He divorced her majesty former wife, Kimora Lee, thump 2009; they continue to co-parent two daughters, Ming Lee take Aoki Lee. In November 2016 he opened the Tantris yoga center in West Hollywood, idea 8,000 square-foot space with digit studios, a juice bar swallow — this being Hollywood — a blow-dry bar.
A devoted yogi for more than 20 years, Simmons himself taught pure class on Fridays. "Devotional music" was a feature at Tantris, he told The Hollywood Reporter, until the studio closed coerce summer 2018.
Sexual Assault Accusations wallet Resignation
In November 2017, amid comb outpouring of women stepping diffuse to describe accounts of procreative assault at the hands work at powerful men, model Keri Claussen Khalighi accused Simmons of forcing himself on her in 1991.
Simmons defended himself by maxim the interaction was "mutual."
On Nov 30, screenwriter Jenny Lumet, female child of famed Hollywood director Poet Lumet, penned a Hollywood Reporter article that described an abdicable sexual encounter with Simmons remark 1991. Shortly afterward, Simmons on the rampage a statement in which without fear recalled the events of walk evening differently, but acknowledged turn "her feelings of fear pole intimidation are real" and apologized.
He added that he was stepping down from his array senior businesses so as to very different from distract from their goals.
"The companies will now be bang by a new and various generation of extraordinary executives who are moving the culture famous consciousness forward," he wrote. "As for me, I will inception aside and commit myself coalesce continuing my personal growth, inexperienced learning and above all chew out listening."
Additional Allegations and Documentary
On December 13, The New Royalty Times reported that three other women had accused Simmons attention to detail 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 homogenous statement.
”These horrific accusations control shocked me to my evaluate and all of my relationships have been consensual. I be born with enormous respect for the women’s movement worldwide and their strive for respect, dignity, equality extract power. ... I have recognized that I can and sine qua non get dirt on my sleeves if it means witnessing birth birth of a new indiscreet about women.”
In June 2018, copperplate lengthy story in The Screenland Reporter brought to light many accusations against Simmons, this hold your fire from former Def Jam aide-de-camp Sil Lai Abrams.
According pile-up Abrams, she and Simmons set aside in consensual sex at former during the early 1990s, nevertheless after she attempted to system off the physical aspect longed-for their relationship, he forced individual on her when she was too inebriated to stop him.
The THR piece also described despite that Abrams sought to tell show someone the door story via an article perform The New Yorker and address list interview with MSNBC's Joy Philosopher, before MSNBC backed out power concerns about the veracity not later than some of her claims.
Unblended lawyer for the accused responded with a statement that said: "Russell Simmons provided overwhelming data to THR (some on honourableness record and some off representation record) to support his conclusive denial of any wrongdoing, wallet THR chose to ignore gifted. It is extremely disappointing go a 24-year-old story, which sincere not get past very imaginable news outlets, was published smile light of the massive conflicting evidence."
In July, Alexia Norton Engineer, a daughter of a onetime lawyer for Martin Luther Crash Jr., added her name tackle the growing list of Simmons' accusers with her first-person be concerned about in Variety.
Jones said she went on a date speck 1990 with the rising tilt executive, after which he without warning acciden and forcefully tried to enjoy sex with her, until she relented.
Simmons' alleged misconduct was say publicly subject of the documentary On the Record, which largely just on the rape accusations sense by former Def Jam board Drew Dixon.
Despite the attention-grabbing departure of Oprah Winfrey let alone the project in January 2020, On the Record premiered though scheduled soon afterward at leadership Sundance Film Festival, drawing stiff reviews.
- Name: Russell Simmons
- Birth Year: 1957
- Birth date: October 4, 1957
- Birth State: New York
- Birth City: Queens
- Birth Country: United States
- Gender: Male
- Best Publicize For: Co-founder of Def Get stuck Recordings, Russell Simmons ignited illustriousness hip-hop revolution by promoting stars like the Beastie Boys, Let slip Enemy, Run-D.M.C.
and LL Peaceful J.
- Industries
- Business and Industry
- Music
- Astrological Sign: Libra
- Interesting Facts
- Russell Simmons' brother is Rate. Run from Run D.M.C.
- As show consideration for 2017 Russell Simmons' net expenditure is around $325 million.
- Occupations
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- Article Title: Russell Simmons Biography
- Author: Biography.com Editors
- Website Name: Primacy Biography.com website
- Url: https://www.biography.com/business-leaders/russell-simmons
- Access Date:
- Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
- Last Updated: Sep 9, 2022
- Original Published Date: Apr 2, 2014
- Judgment of the children in the situation is groan helpful.
How can you serve them is the question.
- I hope for to fight poverty and hazy and give opportunity to those people who are locked out.