GQ Magazine has a huge excerpt from the upcoming book of Def Jams history. Starting in Rick Rubins dorm room with Adam Horovitz reminisce about the birth of artists such as LL Cool J. A bad ass strut down memory lane with some fantastic bits of trivia
Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock, Beastie Boys): People started sending demo tapes to Rick [Rubin]'s dorm room after he made T La Rock's "It's Yours." He didn't really listen to them—at least not that I ever saw. So I listened to a lot of them and heard LL's.
LL Cool J: I started hearing rap recordings when I was about nine years old. There were different tapes circulating from groups like the Cold Crush Brothers. When "Rapper's Delight" and that whole wave began coming out in 1979, it drove me up the wall, it was awesome, it was the first time I heard guys like me sounding powerful—The Funky 4 + 1, the Treacherous Three, the Crash Crew, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
I was about twelve when I started writing my own rhymes. One day in junior high, there was this lone kid, wearing a knapsack, walking about twenty or thirty feet in front of me. It was just the two of us in the hallway. He was kind of diddy boppin' and singing his version of the children's song "This Old Man"—"This DJ, he gets down, mixing records while they go round." I couldn't see his face, but I could hear the echo in the hallway. It was as if he was in another dimension, in slow motion, like a dream. But the way he did it, I was, like, "I wanna do that right now!" After that, I was writing, writing, writing. At fourteen, I started sending out demo tapes.
When I heard "It's Yours," I sent a tape to the address on the cover of the single: 5 University Place. And his phone number was on the label: 212-420-8666. So I called Rick every day for, like, two weeks. "Rick, you get the tape yet?" "Nope." "Yo, Rick, you get the tape yet?" "Nope." But Ad-Rock listened to my demo, and he let Rick hear it.
Adam Horovitz: You could tell that LL was in school. I was in high school, too, so I recognized all these weird science words that he was saying. You could see that he was probably doing homework, then writing rhymes, then doing homework. His rhymes were recorded over "It's Yours." I thought it was great, so I played it for Rick.
Rick Rubin: This was the summer when Horovitz kinda lived in the dorm with me. We started getting demo tapes as if we were a record company, and one of the tapes was labeled Ladies Love Cool James. I think Horovitz might have heard it first, then called it to my attention. We listened to it and laughed…and that was always a good sign.
This book looks pretty interesting and I love the Q&A format. The books release date- 10/11/11. Check out more excerpts at http://www.gq.com/entertainment/books/201110/def-jam-recordings-first-25-years-last-great-record-label-book-excerpt?printable=true