Russell simmons biography entrepreneurial center

A former New York street hustler turned promoter, artist manager, record producer, and label owner, Simmons also added business magnate and self-help guru to his resume. Simmons suddenly announced he was stepping down from his companies after being accused of sexual assault in late , but continued to face new allegations of assault.

Russell Simmons was born on October 4, He was the second of three sons whose parents — Daniel Sr. His parents were hardworking and aspirational, but the wider community in Queens was "destroyed by drugs," Simmons told The Guardian in Simmons also sold drugs for a time and ran with a street gang, the Seven Immortals. His concerned father made him get a job at Orange Julius in Greenwich Village, in an attempt to steer him away from trouble — but Simmons got fired after a month for throwing oranges at people.

He finally got his wake-up call when one of the Seven Immortals was murdered — after which he dropped out of gang life, winding up at the City College of New York in Harlem, where he majored in sociology.

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It was Simmons' first brush with hip hop, and he felt like he'd "just witnessed the invention of the wheel. Inspired by the success of "Rappers' Delight" in , they recorded a single together, "Christmas Rappin. So he pressed vinyl copies of "Christmas Rappin'" himself and gave them to DJs to play in clubs, sparking the interest of retailers who were led to believe that they could buy the record from the Polygram label they couldn't.

When Polygram began receiving calls, their interest was piqued and Blow got his record deal — a masterstroke by Simmons.