![]() ![]() So energetically, again I felt like it was in line with punk rock and maybe hard rock, more than it was in line with R&B, which I never really liked. Well I listened to mostly rock music, and I felt like hip hop was like an extension of rock music when it was done well. I liked punk rock, and it seemed like a new breed of punk rock to me. Magic's Rap Attack on WHBI", and I would listen to that every week and it was on for an hour - and during that hour that was the only place you could hear hip hop on the radio - and I'd listen to it and would record it every week on a cassette recorder - and then listen back to it all week. Rubin: I was a fan of rap music since I was in high school, and there was a radio show called "Mr. So when he heard "Rock Box," or he heard some of the records we created, they inspired him because they were closer to his sensitivity. In fact he was even - not so much as a rebellion from the R&B things that really offended him, as a kid offended me or made me feel locked out, I felt different from the traditional black record execs - but Rick was from a different background anyway. I did that and I met Rick and he felt the same way. It was kind of like, the producers would come, and musicians would come and we'd just ask them, "let's create new sounds" or "let's not use anything but drums. And all the records I produced, we made sure that none of the instrumentation that sounded commercial, or were part of the mainstream, were in it. I didn't want to hear anything, any instrumentation that sounded like it was already on the radio. It was like as a kid I was just rebelling. I also had a complete disdain for what was the mainstream. And that was the creation of hip hop as an expression for people who felt locked out of the mainstream." And there was a rebellion in the streets, and kids played funky records, whether it was a jazz, or a blues, or a rock and roll, or a funky R&B band like James Brown, they would play those backing tracks and they would rap over them and create their own music, something that was a better soundtrack for what they were living. Simmons: The radio was listening to, or playing records like Patrick Juvet's "I Love America" or "YMCA" by the Village People, and that's what black radio in New York sounded like. Or if you were a record company and there was a hip hop artist you were interested in signing, you'd call Russell, because he was the center of hip hop from before me, before we ever met. It's true! If you had a club and you wanted to hire a hip hop artist, you called Russell and he would get you a hip hop artist. So even then he was the face of hip hop, even before Def Jam he was the face of hip hop. was five years older than me, and he was already established in the music business. ![]() ![]() And he was really surprised when he met me because it was, because he didn't picture me as I was, based on what the record sounded like. And when I met Russell he, it turns out that "It's Yours" was his favorite record, which was a surprise to me. But I remember being really excited when I met him because, as a fan of hip-hop, he had already - you know his name on a lot of the rap records that already came out - Kurtis Blow, Run DMC - so I was excited to meet him. Rubin: 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 and the Treacherous 3 appeared on it and it was in a loft somewhere on the West Side in the teens. He's a great producer and I thought, "We can do a lot together." And it was not the sales of the records it was the sound of the records that inspired me to be his partner. I put the money in with him - it was only a few dollars - and the first record, "I Need A Beat" sold so well. But then I saw Rick wanted to start a record company as an independent company, as opposed to some distribution deal, and it made sense. I was managing a lot of acts and I was ready then - and I had produced a few acts that were successful, including Run DMC. Because I already had Run DMC and Whodini and Jimmy Spice and Kurtis Blow and the Fearless Four. 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. He 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." He remixed it, or redid it, and it became our first release for Def Jam records. They were phenomenal, and he was a great producer. And he was part of a band called the Beastie Boys, who I met later. I mean his whole DMX machine was full of hit records, from what I could hear. ![]() Simmons: I met him and he had a drum machine full of hot joints. On The Partnership Between Simmons and Rubin ![]()
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