DEF JAM: MORE THAN A LABEL (Part 1)

Rick Rubin was a 20-year-old art student at New York University in 1983 when he famously laid the foundation for Def Jam Recordings. Holed up in his dorm room at Weinstein Hall, he toiled away on his band’s first EP, the self-titled Hose, which he recorded on a boombox. The project was the first release to be branded with the Def Jam logo, its chunky “D” and “J” emphasizing the importance of the DJ.

Russell Simmons, meanwhile, was making a name for himself promoting parties, producing records and managing artists like Run-DMC (Joseph “Run” Simmons is his brother), Kurtis Blow, Whodini, Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde and Jimmy Spicer.

As Simmons told NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday host Audie Cornish in 2011 upon the publication of Def Jam Recordings: The First 25 Years of the Last Great Record Label: “[Rick] had produced that record ‘It’s Yours’ by T La Rock and after he produced that record he started receiving tapes, and one of the tapes was LL COOL J’s ‘I Need a Beat.'

“The more I got to know Rick, the more I felt that my efforts should go into the partnership and not into a separate company. I saw Rick wanted to start a record company as an independent company, as opposed to some distribution deal, and it made sense. I put the money in with him—it was only a few dollars—and the first record, ‘I Need a Beat,’ sold so well. And it was not the sales of the records; it was the sound of the records that inspired me to be his partner. He’s a great producer and I thought, ‘We can do a lot together.’”

Rubin recalled in a separate interview with Cornish: “Russell and I met at a party for a TV show called Graffiti Rock. It was a pilot episode and Run-DMC appeared on it. I remember being really excited when I met him because, as a fan of hip-hop, his name [was] on a lot of the rap records that already came out. It turns out that ‘It’s Yours’ was his favorite record.

“[Russell] was five years older than me, and he was already established in the music business. And I had no experience whatsoever. So even then he was the face of hip-hop. If you had a club and you wanted to hire a hip-hop artist, you called Russell. Or if you were a record company and there was a hip-hop artist you were interested in signing, you’d call Russell.”

The two partnered on Def Jam in 1984, the same year Simmons welcomed Bill Adler―co-author, with Dan Charnas, of Def Jam Recordings: The First 25 Years of the Last Great Record Label―as director of publicity for Def Jam and Simmons’ Rush Artist Management. Adler, who was then writing for the Daily News, had met Simmons in 1980 when he was working on a story about Blow.

“Russell is brilliant in so many ways,” Adler told us, “but I wouldn’t call him a detail-oriented manager or administrator. There were very few people working full time for him then, and I don’t think he had a very clear idea about what I would do for him. But we just vibed, so he says, ‘Come work with me.’

“After a couple of weeks, I realized most of the artists we managed had label contracts, and either the label publicist was doing a shitty job or there was no label publicist. By that time, I’d been a music journalist for more than 10 years, and I thought, well, if nobody is doing this for us, I can do better than nothing. This is the work I’ll do.”

Def Jam released its second single, “It’s Yours," in 1984. But the first releases with Def Jam catalog numbers were LL COOL J’s “I Need a Beat” and the Beastie Boys’ “Rock Hard,” both also issued that year. The singles sold well, and Def Jam soon had a distribution deal with CBS Records, under the aegis of Columbia Records.

Still, Russell and Rubin could never have anticipated the explosion of success they’d experience in 1986 with the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill, the first rap LP to top the album chart. It remains one of Columbia’s fastest-selling debut albums. The Beasties―three nice Jewish boys from Manhattan, Michael “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “MCA” Yauch and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz—were overnight stars.

Adler never saw it coming. “None of us did,” he attests. “The label had just been a new opportunity created by people who’d already made a commitment to the culture. There was no way to predict that what we did would blow the fuck up.”

Def Jam’s development continued at a dizzying pace. In 1987 Long Island’s Public Enemy marched militantly into a new era with the incendiary Yo! Bum Rush the Show. The album was controversial for, among other things, the Black nationalist ideology espoused by fiery frontman Chuck D. Perhaps as a result, it was largely snubbed by radio. Still, the noise it made was hard to ignore, and units eventually started to move. By 1988, Yo! Bum Rush the Show had sold more than 300,000 copies. Def Jam’s inaugural president, Bill Stephney, who’s credited as executive producer of the album with Rubin and The Bomb Squad, was integral to Public Enemy’s introduction.

In 1982, Stephney, Chuck D and Bomb Squad producer Harry Allen were all in an Adelphi University class together called “Black Music and Musicians.” Stephney notes, “I was a communications major and [Chuck D] was a graphic arts major. We happened to meet on campus. And I was friends with Russell from early on. I was about 18, writing for a local music paper. I wrote about Kurtis Blow and in order to interview him, I had to find out who his manager was. His manager was this guy Russell Simmons.”

Three years later, Simmons would recruit Stephney to join Def Jam, where he began in promotion, pitching LL COOL J and the Beastie Boys to radio. “Over time, we started to add more stuff to my plate,” he says. “My duties became more broad because Russell and Rick, they were superstars, and the label just grew.”

Indeed, the hits kept coming, but behind the scenes, the relationship between Simmons and Rubin was crumbling.

“I used to say we essentially had two labels: Def Records and Jam Records,” Stephney ventures. “Def Records was Rick, with the rap and the rock, and Jam Records was the R&B stuff Russell liked, because that was his music from day one. What they always had in common was a desire to be cutting-edge.”

As Adler and Charnas explain in Def Jam Recordings, Simmons and Rubin had wildly different visions of how they wanted to move the label forward. They quote Simmons as saying, “Rick wanted to make Slayer and his loud rock records [he’d signed the L.A.-area thrash metal band in 1986]. Meanwhile, he lost the Beasties and here’s his hardcore rapper, LL COOL J, making ‘I Need Love.’ It was a fucking mess.”

One night while Rubin and Simmons were having dinner at the NoHo Star, Rubin asked Simmons, “Do you want to leave the company?” Simmons said, “No.” Rubin continues, as recounted in Def Jam Recordings, “I was surprised that he cared, and I was also surprised that he didn’t say, ‘What’s the problem? Let’s fix it.’ In retrospect, I guess I could’ve asked him the same question. The whole thing is that neither of us had that skill. So I said, ‘Then I guess I have to leave the company.’”

Rubin left Def Jam in 1988. Various sources say he was pushed out by Lyor Cohen, who became president of the label that year. Simmons remained.

In Def Jam Recordings Stephney reflects: “It was Rick who built Def Jam. Without question. In terms of its musical vision, its attitude, the logo—that all came from Rick. But if Rick built Def Jam, it’s still subordinate to Russell’s building hip-hop. Russell built the culture.”

The label has seen countless changes since Rubin’s departure, including JAY-Z’s tenure as president from 2004 to 2007. Simmons then stepped down in 2017 after multiple women accused him of sexual assault.

Def Jam is currently owned by the Universal Music Group. Its current roster boasts, among others, DJ Khaled, Justin Bieber, 2 Chainz, Big Sean, Jeezy, Pusha T, Rihanna, Muni Long, Jhené Aiko, Fridayy, Armani White, Hit-Boy and Coco Jones.

Since 2022, the company has been presided over by Tunji Balogun, who is acutely aware of the legacy he’s been tasked with preserving. As he told Leading Vibe Radio last year, “I’m taking over a label that actually means so much to the culture. There’s a responsibility that’s deeper than just taking a job. I’ve been entrusted with something that really means something to so many people.”