YOUNG, MOBILE, Def

American Demographics, Nov 1, 2004

Byline: Jason Ankeny

RUSSELL SIMMONS IS A BLUR, IN A STATE OF PERPETUAL MOTION: One minute he's at the MTV Video Music Awards, rubbing shoulders with a new generation of pop music elite weaned on the hip-hop of his pioneering Def Jam label. Next, he's at Fashion Week, mixing with the beautiful people and promoting Baby Phat, the women's wear line he launched with his wife, supermodel Kimora Lee Simmons. An instant later, he's speaking to college students in support of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, the nonpartisan organization he co-founded with former NAACP executive director Dr. Benjamin Chavis to promote voter registration among young adults.

Wherever Simmons goes, whatever he does, he's talking. Sometimes it's with his wife, other times it's with his close friend and business partner, Kevin Liles, and sometimes it's with his mentor, Donald Trump. (Hell, maybe even all three at once.) Moving and talking, moving and talking - Russell Simmons is the quintessential wireless user.

"I live wireless," says Simmons, CEO of Rush Communications, the $330 million company that controls his myriad entrepreneurial pursuits. "Right now I've got a phone in my ear, a phone in my lap and a BlackBerry in my left hand. That's just what I do."

What Simmons does is stay connected - to family, friends, associates, an array of powerbrokers from all walks of life and, impressively, culture at large. Simmons has remained a tastemaker for two decades, a merchant of cool, synonymous with the hip-hop lifestyle that Def Jam mainstreamed. Music, film and television, fashion, politics, even financial services - Simmons has done many things, almost all of them very well. And now he's making the leap from wireless maven to wireless magnate.

This month, Simmons and Liles will launch Def Jam Mobile, a wireless content platform created in partnership with AGmobile, the wireless services division of greeting card giant American Greetings. The new venture will target a generation of wireless subscribers for whom hip-hop is an unequivocal "life soundtrack," such as teens and twentysomethings raised in the urban sprawl of New York and Chicago, as well as products of the farms of Nebraska, the swamplands of the Mississippi Delta and the manicured lawns of Beverly Hills. Def Jam Mobile will deliver not only traditional content like ringtones and SMS news alerts, but also Simmons' Laws of Success and even daily affirmations from his kid brother Joseph, better known as Reverend Run of the legendary rap group Run-DMC.

"There's all kinds of sh*t," Simmons says. "We can provide a lot of content and give it a label - brand it - so people know where to go to get what they need."

What separates Def Jam from the other mobile content developers entering the wireless arena is an already powerful brand, not to mention the buying power of the culture it reflects. When Simmons and Rick Rubin founded Def Jam Records in 1984, few recognized hip-hop's staying power, its potential to cross cultural divides or the extent to which it would redefine what young Americans say, wear and purchase. But according to yet another Simmons-backed venture, the Simmons Lathan Media Group, hip-hop now represents a $10 billion industry whose audience includes an estimated 45 million consumers between the ages of 13 and 34, 80 percent of them white, with a cumulative annual spending power of $1 trillion.

It is the same demographic that the wireless industry that research firm the Yankee Group currently values at $91.7 billion has coveted since its inception: young, hip consumers flush with disposable income, a hyperspeed culture quick to seize on how and how much mobile communications can enhance their lives. For young consumers, Def Jam Mobile promises carriers cultural entree. Traditional wireless brands signify little beyond their core business.

"For 20 years, we've not only been making music, but building a lifestyle," Liles says. "We never felt we were a record company. We always felt we were a lifestyle company. And if you wanna be the cool kid, then you wanna have access to Def Jam Mobile services and whatever we're providing."

The first building block in Simmons' lifestyle company was Def Jam Records. The label's superstar acts like Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys expanded rap into uncharted creative and commercial territory, exerting a chokehold on global teen culture that the music maintains to this day.

"Def Jam is part of a movement," Simmons says. "Hip-hop is the most powerful social, political and cultural force African Americans have ever seen, and it's a great opportunity for them to change the world. Music is a small part of it."

Music was always just part of it for Simmons himself. Also in 1985, he produced Krush Groove, a feature film loosely based on Def Jam's origins. Made for just $3 million, Krush Groove earned about $20 million at the box office and established Simmons as a force in Hollywood. From there he moved into television, creating Def Comedy Jam and Def Poetry Jam for HBO, followed by excursions into fashion (Phat Farm and its sequel, Baby Phat), magazines (One World) and financial services (Rush Cards, a prepaid Visa card for Americans with blemished or nonexistent credit histories). Before Def Jam Mobile, he even dabbled in the wireless phone business, creating a signature handset in partnership with Motorola.