So you go to NYU. You start a little label called Def Jam out of your dorm room. Your first single, “It’s Yours” by T La Rock and Jazzy Jay, is a big underground hit. Then Russell Simmons seeks you out and you team up.
When I met Russell, he was shocked that I was white. Shocked. Because I had made this single he really loved.
Your debut release together on Def Jam was “I Need a Beat” by LL Cool J. This was 1984. When you first heard LL, what was your reaction?
I laughed because he sounded really young. He was 16, and he was using all these big words. But he sounded like he knew what he was talking about.
Where was this?
In the dorm at NYU. It was a cassette he had sent us. Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys recognized it and was like, “You gotta hear this.” And he played it for me.
What was the next step? Did you say, “we have to sign this kid”?
No, I called LL and said we should meet. I remember being in the dorm and going through his notebook. This was before rap songs really had structure. Often they could be eight, nine minutes long—one entire side of a 12-inch. So I would go through LL’s lyric book and say, “Let’s use these eight bars as a verse, and let’s use these 16 bars as a verse, and this phrase here is going to be the hook, and that will be repeated.”
That was a fairly revolutionary approach.
It hadn’t really happened before in rap. And I think the reason I did it was really just my having grown up with the Beatles. That’s how I heard music—in a song format.