What's your experience with Def Jam Recordings? Tell us in the comments section. This Def Jam mix is by no means definitive, but it reflects my experiences with a label that will always be, as Nice & Smooth once put it, for 'Hip-Hop Junkies.' Club bangers like Sisqo's 'Thong Song' could share shelf space with political flamethrowers like Public Enemy. The genius of Def Jam lay in its ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still sell tons of records.

Of course, this was also the label that gave us Jay-Z, Kanye West and countless other game-changers. (Yes, I eventually got a real ticket out.) More recently, Ghostface Killah's FishScale was the killer soundtrack for my daily subway commute in Brooklyn. In college, when I was working a crappy restaurant job, we used to blast DMX's 'Ruff Ryder Anthem' as we closed down the kitchen. LL Cool J's 'Around the Way Girl' (on cassette single, no less) got me hyped for my first junior-high dance. Looking back, I'm struck by how often Def Jam tracks were lurking in the background. Or remember the bedtime stories of the eyepatch-wearing Slick Rick? Sick. Songs from The Cactus Album like 'The Gas Face' and 'Brooklyn-Queens' were my personal anthems. Everyone talks about The Beastie Boys (and where would they be without Def Jam?), but the white boys of 3rd Bass were my heroes.

The smuggled tapes from a friend's older brother, the after-school ritual of Yo! MTV Raps - this was my salvation. Def Jam 25 is stronger on the early phase of the labels history, from its founding to the rele Full of oral histories by key players and cool imagery, photography, logos and other marketing, PR and promo ephemera, this book is a must-read for hip hop neophytes and music industry aspirants but even OGs might learn a thing or two as well. I grew up amid the Great Plains, and hip-hop always felt like my ticket out for a while, it seemed I marched to the beat of a different Def Jam record every week. A new glossy coffee-table book, Def Jam Recordings: The First 25 Years of the Last Great Record Label, reveals that aspect of the label's legacy in vivid detail. What you may not know, unless you lived outside of New York (like me), is how instrumental it was in bringing hip-hop to the masses. You know the little story of Def Jam Recordings, started way back in history by Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons. With Rick and Russell in an NYU dormitory Now, here's a little story I've got to tell Music Interviews Rick Rubin, Russell Simmons: Def Jam's First 25 Years

Def jam 25