Wendy R. Williams talks to Stacy Gueraseva Author of DEF JAM, INC Ballantine Books Release Date August 2, 2005

Russell Simmons, Rick Rubin and the Extraordinary Story of the World’s Most Influential Hip-Hop Label

On July 19 th, 2005 I met hip-hop author Stacy Gueraseva (former editor-chief or Russell Simmons One World magazine). Stacy’s book DEF JAM, INC is due to hit the stores on August 2 nd, so the drums are starting to roll.

Here is a quote from the press release about the book: “In the early 1980s, the music industry wrote off hip-hop as a passing fad. Few could or would have predicted that the improvised raps and raw beats bursting out of New York City's urban underclass would one day become a multimillion-dollar business --and one of music's most lucrative genres.

Among those few were two visionaries: Russell Simmons, a young black man from Hollis, Queens, and Rick Rubin, a Jewish kid from Long Island. Though the two came from different backgrounds, their all-consuming passion for hip-hop brought them together. Soon they would revolutionize the music industry with their groundbreaking label, Def Jam Records.

DEF JAM, INC. traces the company's incredible rise from the NYU dorm room of nineteen-year-old Rubin (where LL Cool J was discovered on a demo tape) to the powerhouse it is today; from financial struggles and scandals --including The Beastie Boys' departure from the label and Rubin’s and Simmons's eventual parting -- to revealing anecdotes about artists like Slick Rick, Public Enemy, Foxy Brown, Jay Z, and DMX.”

Stacy has a back story that matches the rise of Def Jam. She is from the Moscow of the old Soviet Union, moving here with her parents (her father was with the UN) when she was a teenager. So Stacy is an outsider to American culture and has developed that keen eye for the nuances of our culture that you can only have if you have spent some time with your nose pressed up against the window panes of life. So when she first attended an American high school, her first day in high school was covered in the newspapers as Soviet Child attends an America School. Stacy went on to attend Smith College (1993-1997) where she was the editor of the campus newspaper and DJ'd in off-campus clubs.

Stacy got her job at Oneworld the old fashioned way, she sent in a resume and was hired. Stacy was at Oneworld from 1998 to 2001 and that is where she made the contacts she needed to be able to write DEF JAM, INC. So in 2002 when she first started work on the book, she contacted her old boss, Russell Simmons, and asked for his help. Simmons agreed. Once Russell Simmons was on board, pretty much everyone else agreed to help. The only road block was some of the artists did not want to be interviewed because the book was not about them and they only wanted to talk about themselves. One big disappointment was the fact that LL Cool (Def Jam’s first find) would not go on record. But in the end Stacy was able to talk to over seventy Def Jam artists and employees (including Simmons and Rubin).

One of the stories that Stacy told me she covers in her book is the story about how Def Jam got past the resistance main-stream stations had to playing hip hop and how they countered that resistance by courting MTV. She is also tells how incredibly unorganized the guys were in the beginning, doing things like ignoring the rules of branding by not even having the name Def Jam on their business cards. But they made it despite themselves, breaking all the rules of the Harvard Business School and making it up as they went along.

As I was leaving, I asked Stacy whether she has moved on and if any other cutting-edge music form has caught her eye. She said no, that she loves the energy of hip-hop and will always be a fan and she thinks there are only three forms of popular music – pop, country and hip-hop. Stacy’s last remark was, “As long as there is music, there will be Def Jam.”

So, if you love hip-hop and/or popular culture, Def Jam INC (www.defjambook.com) is definitely the book to read.

Rock on,

Wendy