Download or read book Def Jam Recordings written by Bill Adler and published by Random House Digital, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The illustrated oral history of the greatest hip-hop hit-making machine in history.

Download or read book Def Jam Inc written by Stacy Gueraseva and published by One World/Ballantine. This book was released on 2011-03-30 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early ‘80s, the music industry wrote off hip-hop as a passing fad. Few could or would have predicted that the improvised raps and raw beats busting 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’s 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 Gueraseva, former editor in chief of Russell Simmons’s magazine, Oneworld, had access to the biggest players on the scene, and brings you real conversations and a behind-the-scenes look from a decade–and a company–that turned the music world upside down. She takes you back to New York in the ‘80s, when late-night spots such as Danceteria and Nell’s were burning with young, fresh rappers, and Simmons and Rubin had nothing but a hunch that they were on to something huge. Far more than just a biography of the two men who made it happen, Def Jam, Inc. is a journey into the world of rap itself. Both an intriguing business history as well as a gritty narrative, here is the definitive book on Def Jam–a must read for any fan of hip-hop as well as all popular-culture junkies.

Download or read book The Story of Def Jam written by Brian Baughan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-09-29 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When it was founded in 1984, Def Jam was a tiny operation nestled in the college dorm room of Rick Rubin. He and promoter Russell Simmons quickly built a music empire around a talented crew of groundbreaking artists and an allegiance to the "real street music" that was about to bust out of New York City's hip-hop circles. Over the course of several decades, Def Jam has helped launched many of the best acts in rap and pop music, including LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, Method Man, DMX, Ja Rule, Jay-Z, and Rihanna. Over 200 gold and over 70 platinum records bear the Def Jam label. Def Jam's 25th anniversary in 2009 was just another milestone in the story of a label that helped define the sound as well as the wider culture of hip-hop.

Download or read book The Men Behind Def Jam The Radical Rise of Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin written by Alex Ogg and published by Omnibus Press. This book was released on 2009-12-17 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Def Jam label gave America hip hop. But who gave America Def Jam? Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin did. The Men Behind Def Jam examines the most unlikely history of the legendary label that started life in a student dorm and went on to introduce the world to LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, DMX and Jay-Z. Hustler-incarnate Russell Simmons and ex-punk Rick Rubin, the odd couple, fought and triumphed against all predictions to change the course of popular music forever. Here is an honest appraisal of these rival personalities, the quarrels, the successes and the failures of the spectacular Def Jam adventure. With Rubin and Simmons now pursuing other interests, the label continues with others at the helm, but the story of Def Jam’s birth and coming of age makes for one of pop music’s most feisty and fascinating legends.

Download or read book The Story of Def Jam Records written by Brian Baughan and published by Mason Crest Publishers. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When it was founded in 1984, Def Jam was a tiny operation nestled in the college dorm room of Rick Rubin. He and promoter Russell Simmons quickly built a music empire around a talented crew of groundbreaking artists and an allegiance to the "real street music" that was about to bust out of New York City's hip-hop circles. Over the course of several decades, Def Jam has helped launched many of the best acts in rap and pop music, including LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, Method Man, DMX, Ja Rule, Jay-Z, and Rihanna. Over 200 gold and over 70 platinum records bear the Def Jam label. Def Jam's 25th anniversary in 2009 was just another milestone in the story of a label that helped define the sound as well as the wider culture of hip-hop.

Download or read book Bum Rush the Page written by Tony Medina and published by Crown. This book was released on 2009-04-23 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bum Rush the Page is a groundbreaking collection, capturing the best new work from the poets who have brought fresh energy, life, and relevance to American poetry. “Here is a democratic orchestration of voices and visions, poets of all ages, ethnicities, and geographic locations coming together to create a dialogue and to jam–not slam. This is our mouth on paper, our hearts on our sleeves, our refusal to shut up and swallow our silence. These poems are tough, honest, astute, perceptive, lyrical, blunt, sad, funny, heartbreaking, and true. They shout, they curse, they whisper, and sing. But most of all, they tell it like it is.” –Tony Medina, from the Introduction

Download or read book Def Jam Fight for NY written by Dan Irish and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covers every fighting style, details on over 20 venues, 60+ character bios and move lists.

Download or read book The Big Payback written by Dan Charnas and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “There has never been a better book about hip-hop…a record-biz portrait that jumps off the page.”—A.V. Club THE INSPIRATION FOR THE VH1 SERIES THE BREAKS The Big Payback takes readers from the first $15 made by a “rapping DJ” in 1970s New York to the multi-million-dollar sales of the Phat Farm and Roc-a-Wear clothing companies in 2004 and 2007. On this four-decade-long journey from the studios where the first rap records were made to the boardrooms where the big deals were inked, The Big Payback tallies the list of who lost and who won. Read the secret histories of the early long-shot successes of Sugar Hill Records and Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC's crossover breakthrough on MTV, the marketing of gangsta rap, and the rise of artist/ entrepreneurs like Jay-Z and Sean “Diddy” Combs. 300 industry giants like Def Jam founders Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons gave their stories to renowned hip-hop journalist Dan Charnas, who provides a compelling, never-before-seen, myth-debunking view into the victories, defeats, corporate clashes, and street battles along the 40-year road to hip-hop's dominance. INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS

Download or read book To Live and Defy in LA written by Felicia Angeja Viator and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How gangsta rap shocked America, made millions, and pulled back the curtain on an urban crisis. How is it that gangsta rap—so dystopian that it struck aspiring Brooklyn rapper and future superstar Jay-Z as “over the top”—was born in Los Angeles, the home of Hollywood, surf, and sun? In the Reagan era, hip-hop was understood to be the music of the inner city and, with rare exception, of New York. Rap was considered the poetry of the street, and it was thought to breed in close quarters, the product of dilapidated tenements, crime-infested housing projects, and graffiti-covered subway cars. To many in the industry, LA was certainly not hard-edged and urban enough to generate authentic hip-hop; a new brand of black rebel music could never come from La-La Land. But it did. In To Live and Defy in LA, Felicia Viator tells the story of the young black men who built gangsta rap and changed LA and the world. She takes readers into South Central, Compton, Long Beach, and Watts two decades after the long hot summer of 1965. This was the world of crack cocaine, street gangs, and Daryl Gates, and it was the environment in which rappers such as Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Eazy-E came of age. By the end of the 1980s, these self-styled “ghetto reporters” had fought their way onto the nation’s radio and TV stations and thus into America’s consciousness, mocking law-and-order crusaders, exposing police brutality, outraging both feminists and traditionalists with their often retrograde treatment of sex and gender, and demanding that America confront an urban crisis too often ignored.

Download or read book Def Jam Inc written by Stacy Gueraseva and published by One World/Ballantine. This book was released on 2011-03-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early ‘80s, the music industry wrote off hip-hop as a passing fad. Few could or would have predicted that the improvised raps and raw beats busting 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’s 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 Gueraseva, former editor in chief of Russell Simmons’s magazine, Oneworld, had access to the biggest players on the scene, and brings you real conversations and a behind-the-scenes look from a decade–and a company–that turned the music world upside down. She takes you back to New York in the ‘80s, when late-night spots such as Danceteria and Nell’s were burning with young, fresh rappers, and Simmons and Rubin had nothing but a hunch that they were on to something huge. Far more than just a biography of the two men who made it happen, Def Jam, Inc. is a journey into the world of rap itself. Both an intriguing business history as well as a gritty narrative, here is the definitive book on Def Jam–a must read for any fan of hip-hop as well as all popular-culture junkies.

Download or read book Marvel s Voices written by Marvel Various and published by Marvel Entertainment. This book was released on 2021-08-11 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collects Marvel's Voices: Legacy (2021) #1, Black Panther (2016) #1, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2015) #1, Black History Month variants; material from Marvel's Voices (2020) #1, Marvel's Voices (2020) #1 [New Printing], Black Panther (2018) #23-25. Stories from the world outside your window, by diverse creators who are making theirs Marvel - and making their voices heard! Inspired by Marvel's acclaimed podcast series MARVEL'S VOICES, new and established writers and artists share their unique perspectives on legendary characters - including Black Panther, Storm, Blade, Ironheart, Luke Cage, Spectrum, Shuri, Doctor Voodoo, Nick Fury and the Blue Marvel. It's a dizzying array of adventures that will inspire and uplift! Plus: The opening chapter of Ta-Nehisi Coates' revolutionary BLACK PANTHER epic, the sensational first meeting of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, and a stunning gallery of Ernanda Souza's Black History Month variant covers!

Download or read book Jam Master Jay written by David E. Thigpen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2003 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Follows the life of innovative rap musician Jam Master Jay, including his difficult childhood, his respected career with Run DMC, and the violent end to his life in October 2002.

Download or read book Def Jam Recordings written by Def Jam and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: UPDATE AND REVISED to reflect 10 more years at Def Jam Recordings: In association with Def Jam, a celebration of thirty-five years of the label that defined hip-hop music and culture, in the words and photographs of its founders and artists. This is the story of Def Jam in the words of its artists and top executives, taken from interviews and seamlessly told as a narrative of no-holds barred recollections and anecdotes, made even more compelling by the fact that Def Jam is one of the last great record labels to enjoy the widespread cultural influence that it does, in light of the increasing digitization of music. Def Jam celebrates a label that defined hip-hop and whose impact extends beyond its incredible roster of recording artists to all areas of culture--fashion, lifestyle, cinema, art--impacting the music business and pop culture forever. In 1984, Def Jam introduced a new kind of music and lifestyle--hip-hop--through aspiring record producer and punk-rocker Rick Rubin and party promoter/artist manager Russell Simmons. It has become the sound of young America, akin to Motown in the sixties. This is the first book to see the label whole: through an oral history woven from interviews (some exclusive) with its founders and artists such as LL Cool J, Beastie Boys, Jay-Z, Ludacris, Ja Rule, Rihanna, Ashanti, and Kanye West, as well as through rare memorabilia from personal archives of the label's movers and shakers: behind-the-scenes photos, flyers, advertisements, movie posters, album cover art, magazine covers, and press clips from around the world. It also showcases images from some of the best-known photographers of the era, including Albert Watson, Glen E. Friedman, Jonathan Mannion, and Annie Leibovitz. It is designed by Cey Adams, Def Jam’s founding creative director and is an insider's portrait of the last great record label.

Download or read book It s No Secret written by Carmen Bryan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-11-06 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The former girlfriend of rap star Nas and mother of his daughter discusses their relationship, her part in his famous feud with rival rapper Jay-Z, and her struggle to maintain independence and find love as a single mother in the projects.

Download or read book Life and Def written by Russell Simmons and published by Crown. This book was released on 2002-09-24 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russell Simmons, the original and eternal hip-hop mogul, is one of the most innovative and influential figures in modern American business and culture. When no one outside of inner-city New York had even heard of hip-hop, Simmons saw the seeds of a global force that would change the way people talk, dress, listen to music, and choose the heroes they hang on their walls. Today, he oversees a sprawling, multimillion-dollar empire of culture-defining businesses in everything from music to fashion, advertising to film, and media to visual art. At the same time he’s broadened his interests and influence and pushed hip-hop to new plateaus of power and relevance. Life and Def is a one-of-a-kind tale that interweaves the remarkable journey of Russell Simmons with the story of the culture he’s transformed and been transformed by. In his own brash, compelling voice, Simmons chronicles his numerous business successes and occasional failures. He tells the story of the founding of the legendary Def Jam Records, whose roster stretches from original rap icons like L.L. Cool J, Public Enemy, and the Beastie Boys to today’s top stars, including Jay-Z and DMX. He traces the launching of Def Comedy Jam, the long-running hit television series that introduced a new generation of black comedic stars to America, from Martin Lawrence and Bill Bellamy to Bernie Mac and Chris Rock. He spins hilarious tales of his adventures in Hollywood, where he’s produced hit movies like Eddie Murphy’s The Nutty Professor and worked with quirky geniuses like Abel Ferrara. He also tells the story of Phat Farm, the wildly successful pioneering urban clothing label whose origins lay in Russell’s longtime fascination with fashion (and fashion models). Simmons’s story is also one of personal transformation, from the driven man who in the heady days of early success indulged himself with drugs, sex, and world-class decadence to the husband and father he is today, a man who has found meaning in activism, philanthropy, and spiritual practice while never losing his passion for the social, political, artistic, and commercial potential of hip-hop. Through it all he relates telling anecdotes about the characters he’s dealt with: models and gangsters, street poets and gurus, and major players like Donald Trump, Sean Combs, Jon Peters, and Tupac Shakur. Full of advice, opinions, and behind-the-scenes scoop, Life and Def is the story of the quintessential hip-hop life.

Download or read book My Infamous Life written by Albert "Prodigy" Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-02-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A memoir about a life almost lost and a revealing look at the dark side of hip hop's golden era ... a story of struggle, survival, and hope down the mean streets of New York City"--Dust flap jacket.

Download or read book Sellout written by Dan Ozzi and published by Mariner Books. This book was released on 2021 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From celebrated music writer Dan Ozzi comes a comprehensive chronicle of the punk music scene's evolution from the early nineties to the mid-aughts, following eleven bands as they dissolved, "sold out," and rose to surprise stardom. From its inception, punk music has been identified by two factors: its proximity to "authenticity," and its reliance on an antiestablishment ethos. Yet, in the mid- to late '90s, major record labels sought to capitalize on punk's rebellious undertones, leading to a schism in the scene: to accept the cash flow of the majors, or stick to indie cred?Sellout chronicles the evolution of the punk scene during this era, focusing on prominent bands as they experienced the last "gold rush" of the music industry. Within it, music writer Dan Ozzi follows the rise of successful bands like Green Day and Jimmy Eat World, as well as the implosion of groups like Jawbreaker and At the Drive-In, who buckled under the pressure of their striving labels. Featuring original interviews and personal stories from members of eleven of modern punk's most (in)famous bands, Sellout is the history of the evolution of the music industry, and a punk rock lover's guide to the chaotic darlings of the post-grunge era. "--