Matters of "Life and Def" - Russell Simmons - Interview

From Def Jam Records to Def Poetry Jam, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons talks about the romance of urban street culture, how it has fueled his business success, why he practices yoga and where he believes his inner light is leading him.

Simmons's new memoir, Life and Def: Sex, Drugs, Money, and God--written with a little help from a friend, coauthor Nelson George--is a personal story of his path as the world's most successful hip-hip entrepreneur and also a chronicle of the rising cultural influences from our urban streets in the 1970s, '80s and '90s. Simmons certainly pulls no punches about either sex, drugs, money or God in his candid book (see review, page 46). But in a recent conversation with the distinguished poet Sonia Sanchez, he thoughtfully explores the broader implications of both his cultural and business preoccupations.

This man. This 43-year-old man, coming out of Hollis, Queens, saw his lower middle-class community saddled with heroin on one corner, while righteous, industrious Muslims claimed another. Yet Russell Simmons and his chosen crew always had, he says, a "great affinity for our own ideas for our own black culture sifted through an American prism."

During my personal interview with the cofounder and chairman of Def Jam Records in his Manhattan offices one recent Monday morning, Russell Simmons held forth through many interruptions and phone calls from people needing to speak with him immediately. During the several hours I sat with him, four powerful men in their own right reached out and touched him for quick conversations: rapper-cum-box-office-hero Will Smith, both the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson Sr. and the Reverend Al Sharpton (these two spiritual and activist leaders had just presided together over the christening of Russell and Kimora Lee Simmons's infant daughter), and another music mogul. I was struck by the manner in which Brother Simmons handled each one of these calls--with deep respect, but also with a mind that always leaps forward to solid conclusions.

A Unique Double Consciousness

As Brother Simmons continued to talk to me, I was also startled by the light emanating from him. I wondered out loud where that inner light was coming from--complementing the morning sun that surrounded him with so much peace.

He smiled a quiet smile. "Sister," he responded, "I'm glad you see light in me. There are people who walk in my office and see nothing but the dullest thing in the world. So it's really about you. People see God in others because God is in them.

"But I will say to you," he continued, "that more and more, I try to make my life about service, and hope that one day we can all `see' a little better because God is with everyone and everywhere."

Brother Simmons's observant eyes, I noted, are also those of a man who is uniquely attuned to the pulse of both culture and business. I asked him about this 21st-century double consciousness I perceived in him--the twin selves of the businessman and the cultural innovator. I asked him how he had reconciled this duality.

And as I posed this question, Brother Simmons gazed out enigmatically, leaned back in his skin and replied: "Well, let me say this, sister. My experiences have been, from the very beginning, cultural and creative. And my business has been a way of exposing the culture, exposing the artists so that the world could hear and see them. Being close to these artists personally, I wanted to see them get their work out there, so I became more business-oriented and shaped my career to help them go further.

"The business I started out in, the record business, is a business where there is a huge margin," Brother Simmons explained. "It's not a business in which the margin is so small that you have to be a sophisticated businessman to realize a profit. Now that I have moved into other hip-hop-oriented businesses--clothing, television, film, publishing and advertising--they require more detailed knowledge about how you actually manage them to realize a profit. But in each of these cases, I've also done what I've done most of my life: I've been blessed to find people who are smarter than I am, and they help me to execute the vision I have."

Launching Def Poetry Jam

Of course, I was particularly interested in Brother Simmons's entree into the spoken-word arts arena via his new Def Poetry Jam project. "I became interested in Def Poetry Jam through my older brother, Danny Simmons, and his colleague, Bruce George," he told me. "These young men were anxious to let all these unheard youth voices have their say. They asked me to help them bring a spoken-word talent search and competition to major cities."

Was there a connection between this new project and his seminal role as a producer and impresario of rap, one that launched pioneering acts as varied as Kurtis Blow, Run-DMC and Public Enemy? Yes, indeed. "After so many years in hip hop," Brother Simmons said, "I was interested in just the spoken word--that is, literally taking away the hip-hop music and making just the words the music. You see, the music that we play takes away from the poetry to some degree, because we tend to want to write to fit the music, instead of putting the music to fit what we write. I think that when you take the music away, you're suddenly forced to say something much more interesting, much more profound. Because when there's no music playing to pump your words up, now you got to say what really makes sense."

And how are his plans for Def Poetry Jam informed by his experience with the wildly successful HBO comedy series Def Comedy Jam? Brother Russell is betting that TV's mass market reach could give poetry the same kind of explosive boost it gave black comedians--more visibility that also contributes to a higher quality of expression. "We'll move the Def Poetry Jam in the same fashion we did Def Comedy Jam," he said. "When we began Def Comedy Jam, we didn't even know if we could get past four shows, but we ended up with more than 16 comedians who were great! Those comedians came out of the community, and they needed exposure. So we put their acts on video, on television, and everyone improved--the quality of the Def Comedy ]am shows got better after only a few months. The quality of poetry will be much better if these young poets see mass exposure.

"The problem in hip hop has been that nobody looks at these kids as positive," Brother Russell continued. "There are millions of positive rap artists, but they are typically alternative performers. Most of them wear dreadlocks, unlike the black boys with baldheads and baggy jeans who look threatening to white people and some black people, too. You know, black people don't see dreadlocks as threatening; they see dreadlocks, and they say, `This must be intellectual' Even white folks look at dreadlocks and say, `Ah, he's safe....' I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.

"It's not something I expect to exploit to make a lot of money from," he added. "I look at it as a cultural thing that gives young people something good to talk about, that may give them hope. But you know," Brother Russell also noted, "maybe music will benefit in that the musicians or the writers of the lyrics on top of the music will listen and think how great it is that poets are saying these things and being inspired to stretch themselves. Because we don't have enough balance now in what we're saying in the music."

So Brother Russell envisions "commercial poets" populating TV screens. "Poets like Black Ice, like DMX. Because every time DMX does the spoken word, he has a conversation with God. So there is something about the conversations with God that I want to bring out of him. That's what the spoken word will allow us to do."

Focus, Service and Legacy

Discipline has long been a cornerstone of Brother Simmons's daily life. I asked him what keeps him in focus while working and living in the middle of this distracting, power-packed Manhattan Island? He looked at the ceiling for a minute, moved his chair back from his desk where he had been sitting for hours, and then spread his hands in front of himself as if in prayer.

"I study yoga," he said. "I don't do yoga, because you have to in a state of yoga; and it works for me because it's a simple shift. It gives me a simple explanation, and it doesn't have too much mysticism in it. I've always been a rebel, so organized religion for me has always been a problem."

What does he want next? "I don't want to be a Russell Simmons, greedy-ass entrepreneur," he said simply. "I would like to be a Russell Simmons, philanthropist/activist." He told me that his early contacts with Muslims in his old neighborhood made him a big fan of the Nation of Islam and Minister Louis Farrakhan, who provided his first introduction to the idea of service in his community. "I'm hopeful that I can be a better participant in relieving some of that suffering I have seen. I find that as you get older you just realize that there are more people in the universe than just yourself. I think we're all connected. In fact, you realize as you grow older that you're the least important as just a single individual, that you're a part of the whole, as opposed to the whole being you.

"I'm not a politician," he said adamantly. "I only want to help relieve the suffering in communities, and I want to help people see their community in each other. I came from an era where there was a lot of racism. But I wouldn't let it hurt me. I was bussed to predominantly white schools, but I shielded myself from bitterness. I don't even blame people sometimes when they say things that show their ignorance. I have a range of relationships--with Jews, Christians, Muslims, Krishnas--so I think that maybe I can be helpful in bringing people together. I can give people a chance to have more dialogue with each other. I love all the great ministers, the great reverends, the great rabbis, the great imams, though as I said, I personally have a problem with organized religion. Still, I love all the people who have the glow from their religion. That's great. But the glow turns sour on a lot of them at the mention of tolerance, and tolerance is what it's all about. And what I'm about."

Brother Russell's major life goal? "I'd like to contribute to shaping the culture in some way and leading it as part of the process. I don't have any regrets about the truth in any of the records we have today or that we have had. One of my favorite records is `Shut 'em Down' by Public Enemy. I'm proud that I signed Black Ice, because now it's personal, not just about exposure--it's about holding the world to itself and reminding the world of itself."

I think Brother Russell is a river running through the country--a strong current cracking through rocks of hatred, stasis, ignorance, old ways of looking and doing business with the world. Now he is ready to give his time to something called poetry in this country and the world. And I look forward to seeing the results.

I know a great river runs through this man called Russell Simmons.

Sonia Sanchez is an award-winning poet and professor. After publishing with such writers as Amiri Baraka, she released her first poetry collection, Homecoming in 1969. Her works received critical acclaim, most notably the autobiography A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women (1973) and Homegirls and Handgrenades (Thunder's Mouth Press, 1984), which earned the prestigious American Book Award for poetry in 1985. Does Your House Have Lions? was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the NAACP Image Award in 1998. That same year, she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Temple University, where she taught creative writing and black literature. Earlier this year, Sanchez received the 2001 Robert Frost Medal for Poetry from the Poetry Society of America. In her interview on page 43, she engages hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons to explore some of the more philosophical themes presented in his new memoir, Life and Def: Sex, Drugs, Money and God.

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