Def Jam, Inc.

Insightful and comprehensively detailed, Stacy Gueraseva`s DEF JAM, INC. is an insider`s history of Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin`s hip-hop record label, from its early years in the mid-1980s, when it released innovative records by artists like Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys, to its later incarnation as one of the American music industry`s biggest success stories. Probing inside the label`s complex world, Gueraseva spins the tale of a pioneering partnership between Simmons, a Queens hip-hop promoter, and Rubin, a former NYU student whose use of his dorm room as a testing ground for his DJing skills had earned him admiration and wrath from his peers in equal measure. After the dazzling success of groundbreaking performers like Public Enemy and LL Cool J, the company`s street-credible image was gradually overtaken in the 1990s by the realities of big business, with the widely differing styles of the music-oriented Rubin and the more hedonistic Simmons, the latter of whom took to the good life like a rapper to Courvoisier, contributing to their eventual split. The first in-depth dissection of this hip-hop business phenomenon, DEF JAM, INC. is also an engrossing study of the basic mechanics of a record label, its evolution, and the strains put upon it by its own runaway success. Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All rights reserved.