One-on-One with Entrepreneur & Activist Russell Simmons
Moderator: Michael Connor, Editor, Business Ethics & The CRO
MOD: Russell, thank you for being here. You started out your career, you were very independent doing rap, hip hop. Now you’re working with a lot of big companies, Time Warner, HBO, and Universal. Any different?
Russell Simmons: I’ve always been a creative person, not so much a business person. I think business came as a response to me having all these ideas and no one really wanting to help me execute on them, to get the ideas out so as a servant and a culture on the creative side I had to create various different businesses and partnerships and so forth, so the difference is, I think, as we become more relevant to try to, we’ve only been in communication, the idea I think of collaboration is key to the difference and maybe there’s a bigger collaboration, more powerful, I guess, people but I guess it’s all the same. The investment is to keep furthering opportunity for the people I serve so I’ve been serving the hip hop culture from the beginning. I still work for these guys, this community in various different things whether it’s in philanthropic and social and semi-political endeavors or enabling or empowering them in their industry, various different industries that we’re in.
MOD: In doing some research, one of the profiles I saw of you said that for Russell Simmons, business is politics and politics is business. How much of you is a business man? How much of you is involved in social activism?
Russell Simmons: I try to make all of my business investments ones that have a real meaning these days. It always has. I mean everything is selling. If I need money, it makes people happy, right? So we start there. Buy a bomb, they’re happy. Buy drugs, they’re happy. And more and more I try to make sure the happiness that I promote, are lasting stable kind of statements of happiness. I really know that although we all operate under the comic laws, sometimes we start to really, as we get older, we read them somewhere. They kind of reaffirm that truth in you, that you operate under these laws, unbreakable laws that we all live with. So now I’m more concerned, and I always have been very concerned would the people like what I’m giving them but like it for a long time, and it’s really meaningful over a period, so every time I always liked what I sold, but I think now what I like are things I think that, lots of times more useful over a longer period of time. That’s the simplest way I can put it. I think that’s what corporations and everybody has to think about whether or not you’re giving somebody something that’s really useful. You know, you sell a bomb. The drug dealers die before the drug addicts, I’m talking about drugs for instance so karmically you want to give people things that are really uplifting and lasting and significant so that’s a simple way to say for all businesses, you want to have that.
MOD: A lot of the people you’re trying to reach are young urban youth. Again, I tried to do my homework here.
Russell Simmons: 80 percent of the people that buy our music are not young urban. They’re not urban. If you think urban means black.
MOD: No.
Russell Simmons: Well, good. That’s very important because people think of hip hop as some black phenomenon, but eighty percent of the people who buy it are not black.
MOD: One of the pieces called you the patriarch of a generation, and I didn’t think you were that old. I guess my question is because I know that a lot of what you’re trying to do is reach out to young people, urban, non-urban and all the rest. The question is what does that group want or what is it you’re trying to?
Russell Simmons: Honesty. Honesty, that’s what I think makes hip hop so special, the voices. People listen to the voices of hip hop and they scare the shit out of them because it’s their truth that they’re mostly afraid of. They’re good mirrors for our society. Poets always have been mirrors in society. Songwriters too, but mostly poets are really specific because they don’t write to music; they write to silence and that’s golden. They write things that are really heartfelt and sometimes conscious and scary because they’re, not the highest consciousness and all that, but more conscious of what they’re really actually involved in. We live in a sexist, homophobic, violent society and when rappers say things that you perceive as sexist, you get upset or when they say things that are homophobic or racist or backwards or violent, you get upset but the important point is they say things that trigger emotion because they’re telling you the truth about who you are, and I say that, I’m not trying to attack you all, violent, sexist people but there’s that truth that comes out of hip hop that people don’t like to here.
Especially to a corporate audience and we’re talking to corporate people here.
You know, I mean I think the rappers display a certain kind of consciousness that we avoid and we don’t want to deal with the choices that we make, the way we turn our back on people, so forth. We don’t like to talk about it. The rappers bring it up. Their voices fall out of voiceless people.
MOD: Since you’re talking about corporate America turning their backs.
Russell Simmons: I didn’t say specific.
MOD: You almost said it. Alright, I’ll ask you specifically.
Russell Simmons: They have a job. They give money to things and people to get them off their back or they give money to things and people to create emotional attachment to those people. The corporations aren’t here to feed anybody but themselves right, so now you’ll be conscious in that effort to feed yourself in a good way because we always have to keep reminding ourselves, how do we do that? But then we have to make it a business so you have to make it a lasting, like I said earlier, good way and there’s where the guys who created it are getting all excited to give us something good and then the people come in and run the companies and just figure how to protect it. They’re very fearful and they do things that end up sometimes being hurtful to the people in corporations.
MOD: One of the things we’ve been talking about here all day is about corporate responsibility, corporate power, how to use it, how to use it wisely. Our magazine ranks the 100 best corporate citizens every year. If you were ranking corporate America on a one to ten scale, what kind of assignment would you give?
Russell Simmons: I don’t know. I don’t want to put a judgment. The corporations are a reflection of, we have a really tough, I’m on the advisory board now in Wal-Mart and we’re talking about how we can make them better friends to their communities so I’m now talking a lot of the [Beaz] Company. We’re talking a lot about they’re scared of that movie and we’re talking about how we can empower Africans with their diamonds. I talk to a lot of Republicans, I mean no one’s bad, but I have a lot of relationships with a lot of people that kind of people perceive, some of my friends who are more liberal, they think marginal relationships. So we do the best we can out of all of them is our idea. Is that the question?
MOD: Well sort of. Tell me a little bit more about Wal-Mart for example because, again, what this audience is interested in the engagement of, you’re an NGO in effect, you’re a non-governmental organization, engagement of an NGO with a big company so you’re talking to Wal-Mart. What’s that discussion like?
Russell Simmons: Well the idea is to figure out creative ways that they can, you know the new packaging thing they announced, global warming and shelf space and plastic and all this stuff they don’t have to pay for now and save money in the prime of create a solution that one small thing is so many small things, creative things they have to come up with to figure out how not to get everybody part time like their competitors do a lot more than they do, but who’s part-time? How much does that cost? How much does it cost when people start to climb and they don’t really advance. They’re the same people but they get more money, you know, all these kind of questions that come up and how do you be corporately responsible and competitive at the same time.
MOD: Do you ever, I’m sure you have, think about or worry that Wal-Mart is using you, somebody who’s got a lot of influence with a certain audience?
Russell Simmons: Every day I get phone calls. You think John Edwards doesn’t call me, like I’m on the Advisory Board on Wal-Mart, or do you think that I don’t get a call from people about the diamond industry and they find out I’m going to take a fact finding humanitarian “mission”. I want to build an empowerment mission too with this group.
MOD: You’re going to Africa later this month?
Russell Simmons: Yeah, this month. You think that I’m sitting in Ken Melvin’s office, I don’t get a call that I support some guy running for – so I’m always marginalized. I’m always compromising in some way these people think, but I try to do what I think is right and good and helpful to other people. That’s my job.
MOD: Again, as a corporate audience, how do you think corporate America is addressing the youth audience whether it be the urban youth audience?
Russell Simmons: Sometimes they don’t know any better but they have this money so they get to figure it out quicker than other people. How can they exploit them? I mean they might find out that some low notes are good. They’re not creative enough to find out that if you sell high notes, it may do the same thing over and over again because it made money but at least if it’s making money, it’s close to the mark. If we put a rap commercial out, maybe we’ll sell more hamburgers, you know, if we can convince because people are pretty dumb down so the corporations do whatever it is that makes money so they can’t always be the leaders in lifting people up, but responsible ones who do, here’s the thing that I want to be able to say that when you are smart and creative about lifting people up and giving them lasting services and good things, Disney movies, always being a gangster movie, or the shining light on good things makes people feel better and in all kinds of entertainment and all kinds of products that last longer and make people happier and not so damaging to the community in ten different ways whether it’s environment and so forth. You find these ways and you become better in the leader and you have a better impression that lasts long and build a company that’s more stable. That’s just a basic idea. I want people to think like that and not think, cut and burn, take the money, you know.
MOD: You’ve been quoted as saying, talking about how many of these big companies look at the youth market, the urban youth market, you said "the arrogance of white men", this is what you told 60 Minutes, "the arrogance of white men is why I’m here today. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be here."
Russell Simmons: The guys in office; let me clarify. Guys in office who sees a trend coming and don’t know it’s a lasting, stable thing that’s going to happen in our culture and so here comes a new company. That’s how all new companies are formed because the big companies don’t know any better so when it came to hip hop, they didn’t know it was going to be a big pop phenomenon. There weren’t any black people at all on MTV when (Rundemes) got on MTV except Michael Jackson so now it’s a totally integrated space and it’s a different phenomenon. It’s a mainstream American phenomenon but it still comes out of the trailer parks with M&M or projects with Fifty Cent or still about poor people which is what is so attractive to me. I think, still poor people expressing themselves and telling us the truth about –
MOD: Let’s talk about the poor people, but you, yourself, are a pretty wealthy man. You’ve made a lot of money.
Russell Simmons: Some circles. Some people think I’m so rich. I think it’s so rude. They sit me up front like window dressing for rich people and there are all rich people behind me, lots of rich people out here, depending on how you view, I mean rich is where you’re happy with your portion.
MOD: Let’s talk about poor people. Your philanthropic arts, one of the big projects that you’re focusing, you do a number of things.
Russell Simmons: I’m in a lot of philanthropies. I’m the Chairman of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding and we promote religious and racial tolerance and that thing I think is very important because it’s the lack of dialogue dangerous, and always lack of dialogue between people and people lash out at each other and don’t have dialogue so we do that and Rabbi (Snyder) is the President and I’m the Chairman and that’s something we do and then the Rush Philanthropic Art Foundation which Tanji is here
MOD: Tanji Murray?
Russell Simmons: Tanji, stand up. We underwrite education opportunities for inner city school kids, you know, education and practice you know so people can - - and I think it’s very important to cultivate creativity with young people. How else - - how we figure our way out of a situation that we’re in you know. It is very important; art is very, very important expression. You have scholastic achievement, you have to have artistic achievement as well and opportunity and so we try to underwrite programs where there are none. Tanji had a specific project. She wanted to talk about a building that we had donated to us by Ron (Hershkel) and this company is United Homes and they gave us a building in Brooklyn and it’s a new project. We need seven hundred fifty thousand dollars, isn’t that right, just to complete and build out and education programs.
MOD: So you’re looking for seven hundred fifty thousand.
Russell Simmons: In case you have it sitting in your pocket somewhere, but that’s a very important Rush Foundation and then we have also the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network and we do financial literacy. We’ve done sixty summits in this note here. Hip-Hop Summit is about empowering hip-hop artists with their vehicle, the grace of power which is their cachet so M&M hosted four summits for instance in Detroit. Thousands of kids, ten thousand kids at least at one time and did various different times, different numbers, the kids would come out for that and Nelly hosted his summits, three summits in St. Louis and Snoop Dog did two in LA, Will Smith did Philly. All the artist come out and they have thousands of kids come out and they talk about lately financial literacy. Before that was voting and it’s good because you know you can from the profit all day long. You can hear it from Mohammed, Abraham, Lord Buddha, Jesus Christ, and then when M&M says it, this shit’s true. Hard work and dedication and so that’s what made him get ahead and that’s like in the yoga sutras but not when M&M said it and he said he comes out of the same trailer park you came from then suddenly you believe it. That’s why hip-hop is used in that kind of way for education.
MOD: Does it have an impact do you think? Does it sink in?
Russell Simmons: It sinks in when M&M says it more than for instance if you were to say it.
MOD: I’m sure they wouldn’t listen to me.
Russell Simmons: I’m just saying it’s true; I know it’s true and I’ve seen it done you know. Thousands of kids come out with their pen and paper, they get a big, big booklet and the Chrysler Financial Funds and they learn about what a Fical Score is and how to manage their credit and how to manipulate it and so forth and how to build their lives up and they see a hero who came from the same place they came from and proved to them that it is true that all this stuff your mother told you is true and if you work hard it will - - because you don’t see people practicing it so when you see somebody who practiced it like a rapper, you get inspired and that’s what it’s about.
MOD: What could companies be doing? There are two things companies can do; one is philanthropy, write a check, seven hundred fifty thousand - -
Russell Simmons: I think it’s very important now a new trend is emotional connections that you make though good efforts in your community. You know I don’t want the money to keep me off your back. That’s good money; give that to whoever you give it to. I want the money that makes you look good. You want to underwrite a program like the Brooklyn Steppers; it’s called the Pepsi Brooklyn Steppers. Let’s put them all over T.V. and promote them. Let’s see what you’re doing to make a community thing or let’s - - you know if you want to do, [inaudible words] let’s start a green initiative and promote it all over – that’s the idea I had today. Green initiative, vote all over America and let that thing be about empowering them for education so they can now cut and polish their own diamonds and maybe make some money off their own resource. Let’s do something that makes the BS look good because now the movie is coming out and making them look bad, so now let’s do it now before the movie comes. Let’s do things that people are proud of you for that promote an emotional attachment between you and your consumer so that way you can justify it and that way you don’t have to call it a hand out. The red initiative is something Bono a buddy of mine and Bobby (Strodder) runs that thing.
MOD: That’s on the cover of a magazine this month.
Russell Simmons: Good and the idea of doing - - that’s why we’ve come with the green because they had red. Bobby is a dear friend of mine but that’s about giving people a handout and making sure they get what they need. Now I want to do something in conjunction, I’d love for Bill Gates’ Foundation to give us some money for that. It would be great but we’ve got to get it started first before he - - and get everybody to put in some money and build and green initiative. Let the BS do that rather than spend fifty million dollars to fight a movie. Let’s do something positive and let everybody see that you’re doing something good and educate people and give people opportunity which would really make a lasting impression instead of you know the window dressing thing. That’s what the advertising campaign let’s talk window dressing for something you’re selling when you can instead do good and promote something grass roots and meaningful and better than just pure advertisement you know, to manipulate people. I think that’s kind of what corporation can think about. It is one of the things - - and so when you sit in a room you don’t have to always have the philanthropic, how much is it? A tiny percentage and the advertising how much money? It would be three, four, eight, ten percent depending on the business and fragrance is fifty percent you know and spend all this money. So like for instance Atman my fragrance I put out with Coty, I’m giving away all my money because I’m not really a perfume dude. I feel uncomfortable doing it but it’s spending all this money on Atman, if we make it about something better than maybe you know - - it’s selling good but it’s a good example of - -
MOD: So you’re giving all that money away?
Russell Simmons: That’s not a good example; a business initiative, red is a better initiative because hopefully people will make a lot of money. GAP should have a great success story from their red initiative and that would be a good example so that’s what I want the corporation to do, stuff like that.
MOD: If you can, spin this out into the future a little bit two, three, five years again, try and address or describe corporations and how they can play a part in the kinds of issues you’re talking about.
Russell Simmons: My issues specifically?
MOD: Yes, you’re the guy who’s here so it would be your issues.
Russell Simmons: Well it’s kind of rude; I would like people to see what the foundation for the understanding or the Hip Hop Summit Action Network or the Happy Hearts Foundation. I’ve been a senior member of the board there or the chairman of - - what else?
MOD: Rush Philanthropic East New York, right?
Russell Simmons: I would like for people - - you’re willing to distribute stuff about that aren’t you?
He got me here so I’ve got the Rush Foundation under my, or education at inner city schools and we have a building that was donated and we want to finish the building which is being completed but now we need to get the classroom is the last thing that’s not built, right?
And that’s a good thing; art education for inner city kids is a very, very important thing and really we have all kinds of research that tells us that it makes kids smarter in every other way besides just painting and stuff like that.
MOD: Do you ever worry that you’re spreading yourself too thin, trying to solve too many problems?
Russell Simmons: I’m always spreading myself too thin but it’s important that when I take on I have smarter people than me in every single - - I have Doctor Ben Chambers running the Hip-Hop Summit. This guy worked for Doctor Martin Luther King and - -
MOD: Former head of the NAACP.
Russell Simmons: NAACP and did the million man march. He did all kinds of shit with kids. He’s a real - - he’s been in jail fifty times. I can talk about that; five years he went to jail so the kids could go to the library. Amnesty International got him; he’s a very serious guy and he’s - - and the hip-hop kids know him because he’s in the hip-hop movie, Belly but he is an excellent - - Stan Lathan one of the film and television initiative and Tanji runs at it and Rabbi Snyder runs it, Larry Cog runs it and different people run the different initiative and I try to plug in where I’m useful. The idea is DefJam is a good example or the clothing company PhatFarm is a good example where the people get so smart you don’t have to do much and then after a while they don’t want to see you at all and that’s the idea to back yourself out and when you’re useless then you know you’ve done a good job.
MOD: Okay, maybe we’ll take some questions. I suspect there might be a few in the audience. Any questions? Up here and if you can wait for the microphone and tell us who you are.
MALE: Hi Russell; I teach at City Tech in Brooklyn where there are thirteen hundred of the most versed students in the country, studying advertising, design, graphic arts, and I’d like to invite you to Brooklyn first. Dell and you will just get on perfectly. My question is, as you’re engaging in social venture, what some people are calling social venture, how do you make connections within corporate America? I mean where is your connection point? Who touches you? What is the title or the name of the type of person that tends to reach out to you? Is it the CEO? Is it the head of marketing, the head of advertising?
Russell Simmons: Depending on the industry I mean we have a company called Rush Synergies that ties us in for different - - it says what it says, Rush Synergy, synergistic operations that benefit corporations and ours. Chrysler Financial loves to work with Hip-Hop Summit on our financial empowerment summit or Allied ?? liked to work with us in the Baby Phat, PhatFarm fashion show and Motorola likes to work with us on - - so different companies depending on what it is but we go out to them sometimes and we - - well it depends you know.
MALE: Is it typically like a senior - -
Russell Simmons: I know a lot of senior people. I’m senior; I’m old so I know a lot of people in the senior level. Sometimes I make mistakes by not contacting the right person or I bump into people and I get to talking about an idea and like I’m a social enough person, I know enough people. You know I bumped into a guy in Fabrican on the plane. Simmons Jewelry was started. On the plane coming back from St. Barths he starts talking you know and I said my wife buys so many f**king diamonds I can’t take it. That’s what I told him and he was talking and we start talking and the next thing you know I have Simmons Jewelry. Now I’m in Africa, I’m building factories and schools I hope you know, so that’s how it starts. It starts different ways but that’s one good example.
MOD: Let me ask, to what degree are some of these things licensing arrangement and - -
Russell Simmons: Lots of business licenses. I’m not smart enough to build infrastructure for all these different industries. I mean we’re into bedding and fragrance and clothing and you know, jeans and sneakers and outerwear and suits. They’re all different licenses. Simmons Jewelry we have to invest in the company and try to own a piece because of the kind of initiatives that we’re trying to build. It depends on the company you know. Sometimes if no one likes your idea you’ve got to build it yourself. That happens a lot. A record company, I had to start a record company myself and eventually it became a partnership. The clothing company I had to lose a lot of money. I went to India and Hong Kong and China and lost money every place you could possibly lose money, making clothes until eventually built up a big enough company image wise that people wanted to be a partner.
MOD: Clothing is a big thing. Let me ask you an example; you’re on the hot seat. Do you worry about supply chain management; do you worry about where your clothes are made? Are they made in sweatshops and?
Russell Simmons: Well now I’m with a public company and - -
MOD: So the deal was with?
Russell Simmons: The license - - Kellwood Industry; I sold them the company a couple of years ago so now I just run the company and I don’t have the same worries. I still have that concern but I think they - - people sign a bunch of contracts, we like to make sure that what they sign is true. The people, their job is to protect us from making those obvious mistakes and so yes we worry, of course.
MOD: Another question? Over here? Yes, you.
MALE: Corporations are motivated by fear and greed, fear and greed. What is the - - if corporations have - -
RS: They are not built with that idea; they’re not built from people who have fear.
MALE: No, that’s motivation, universal motivation is fear and greed. So if you had to paint the scariest picture you could for the corporate audience what would be the scariest thing if corporations just decided not to do much, to do good, to give back, what would be the scariest scenario you can think of?
MOD: American corporations today?
Russell Simmons: Oh you want me to elaborate on that? No, I mean they’re motivated by fear and greed. Fear and greed and they have to continuously do more. Based on our system the way it is they have to keep raising their profitability and growing or we’re not good or we have to figure out new ways to exploit people rather than new ways to be innovative and we have to figure out new - - and it really is - - you know unless they’re a brand new company with a brand new idea that wants to give the world something that the world is missing and do something creative which is how the companies all started but when they get to be big they want to just figure out how to protect that shit and they’re scared and they take advantage and they’re not taking advantage because of any other reason but that’s what this system promotes; that’s what they’re in and they just - - you know there are not too many creative people who can think outside of what they’re trained to do, protect the bottom line. So we all have to always sit back and say how can we be better and knowing that you can become the corporation that excels a lot of times and has a bigger impression and more lasting impression and more - - like I said that’s - - but yes, we’re pretty twisted I think.
MOD: A follow-up question then; what is sort of the flip side of that question? What’s the best example you can think of a company that has done something that’s just fan-bloody-tastic out there?
Russell Simmons: If I can think of one because there are so many. If I can think of one.
MOD: Then something really unique and good.
Russell Simmons: Oh my God what a blank; too much meditation. I can never do it when I’m meditating. Well now I’m blank you know. Everything at once, you think I’m blank. Who’s done a good job, anybody?
MOD: Well the product Red.
Russell Simmons: That’s not a corporation. That’s an idea for corporation. But it’s a GAP, Giorgio Armani, American Express, all those people who have faith in that idea, are working with it and I hope it worked out. So there are lots and lots of good and creative initiative everywhere. The ones that work and last are usually that, gave somebody something that they really like and they keep buying it over and over again because they really like it, that’s good a lot of times. I can’t think of one though. You said all the corporations investing are right who had vision.
MOD: When you look at the role of corporations in America now - - I don’t know if you were joking before or not. Are you an optimist or a pessimist?
Russell Simmons: I’m an optimist always about everything but I don’t have any optimistic things to say.
MOD: What are you?
Russell Simmons: The role of corporations is trying to figure out creative ways to make people better, to serve people whatever your product is in a way that really is you know goo
MOD: You obviously think that can be done?
Russell Simmons: Of course it is, can be done, yes all the time.
MOD: Okay, another question?
MALE: So you are clearly one of the new American Heroes and there are young people all across this country who are White and Black and Latino and Asian who look to you and that must mean that you bear a certain amount of responsibility and probably wear that very - - that’s a great sort of pressure that I’m sure you conduct yourself in a way that you want to be responsible and we talk about corporate responsibility and individual responsibility and standing up for those who cannot stand up for themselves so the they can stand up. How do you take on that responsibility every day when you evaluate what you are going to do and what businesses you are going to be associated with and how they conduct themselves? I’ll sit down now.
Russell Simmons: They got yoga at four thirty? I make class every day. I try to do the best I can. We’re all doing the best we can all the time. I don’t carry that much weight and pressure if I can help it. I try to spend a lot of time on figuring out how my companies can serve people better and how not to be too greedy and I don’t let people pressure me into doing short sighted, greedy things if I can help it and that’s just the best that I can do you know? I mean all the time reminding myself that I want to do something that is good. I want to be able to sleep at night. They’re never going to pay you - - I remember that I dare to remember to remember as friend says always. You’re only going to be here a short time and it’s best to give - - you wake up in the morning and decide on what you’re going to give and receiving is getting inside out, giving inside out kind of thing and that rap, all that stuff is in all the scripture from all the religions and all of the you know, prophets said again and again, you want to live by those codes as much as you can. Very important for your own - - so you can sleep. You start to practice it more and you start getting a little less fearful and you do fewer things you know based on the anxiety of performing up to somebody’s short sighted view of what you’ve done. You know what I mean; do the best you can.
MOD: Do you feel the need to be more successful?
Russell Simmons: I feel a need more now to - - yes, Reverend Run, my brother says you can’t help the poor if you’re one of them. You know I made a lot of commitments. Some of the years the commitments jump up, in years I sell the company so I start promising a lot of money to a lot of people and I want to give the same amount of money every year and then find out - - I want to stop buying junk I don’t need. I don’t eat any animal products if I can help it. I don’t want to do things that - - I want to practice all the time at what we call hymns that are non-harming that make you make choices every day that hopefully will be less harmful to mother earth and the animals and the people. Every day you try to practice so each of us you know, we’re all doing it but some of us we’re conscious of that has some purpose and we think it will make us happier. In the end result you know how much money you get has nothing to do with happiness; we all know that and how much success, worldly success you know has really nothing to do with being happy. We all should know that. If we get - - once we start to really accept that and we know that maybe you become more successful because you do good things that are meaningful and people pay for it, you know whatever good thing you do. So look, I’m rambling.
MOD: Barbara?
FEMALE: Yes, I’m from NGO as well Russell. Oxfam and Fairtrade. With your experience in recent years with helping with the young voting population, we all know that very few, well relatively fewer young people vote and I was just very complimentary of all the work I’ve seen you do on that, what can we do? What of your work has been most successful? What can we learn from what you’ve experienced in getting the vote out and - -
Russell Simmons: I think that the voting thing is you know, you remind people it’s their investment, their tax dollar, they have to direct their investment on karmic thing. You know they let people bomb innocent people as we do all the time or take advantage of the poor, ignore the poor or you know, watch twenty thousand Africans die every single day and still complain about all three thousand - - very sad situation. I won’t say anything but you know three thousand people died the last few hours. Young people are smarter about this. They feel that, they believe that. You tell them the truth; they don’t just block it out like adults.
FEMALE: You think we can get them to vote?
Russell Simmons: We remind them that being connected is important. You say it in the right way and they digest it. All of us need to be reminded all the time. Being connected is our only - - isolation is a sickness, you know and being part of the whole you know, that rap about needing change and all that, to figure out ways to say it. I think they get the message about voting because of it. Puffy said vote or die and that was a good campaign.
FEMALE: Yes.
Russell Simmons: We registered a lot of, lot of people and at the end of the day they found that they did vote. A great, great number of them voted; it was a very significant change from what it had been from the previous so that was good. We just have to figure out ways to package the message, to be connected. It’s just that they watch adults fuck everything up so bad. They watch it you know and so they’re afraid. They see all the hypocrites and people promoting all this stuff and telling them why they’re wrong and pointing the finger at them all the time and they don’t see all the good examples that they need to see and so they - - you know that’s why they feel disconnected. Just try to keep inspiring them and keep giving them ways to - - you know, why it’s important personally and how you vote and come out of the booth you feel like you’re not connected. This is your only way out; one step you know, voting makes you feel like you - - because the whole thing is a collaborative effort. Everything that you do, every business you want to start, every job you want to take on as a servant, to be a good leader and let them know that and you can say it in a way, not the same as the way the teachers and the preachers and the parent say it but the way the rappers say it or we do because they say it to people who are really living examples who come from their same mind set and are inspirational to them.
FEMALE: Trusting.
Russell Simmons: Yes, people they trust.
FEMALE: I’m Janice Warren from Nasari Well Group and I’m curious; there has been a lot of discussion today about how companies measure the success of their CSR initiatives. From your perspective how do you judge the success of your corporate initiatives and your philanthropic ventures?
Russell Simmons: The obvious you know, cost of the analysis that everybody does you know, paper analysis and stuff like that, obvious. Then you go and visit the programs. If it’s a philanthropic endeavor and you see the kids and you see how cost effective and smart and creative your program is and you actually go on the ground. Lots of people can justify their work on paper. Now business, the bottom line is a big thing for a lot of people and that’s how you get your more investment, now you go to your company, bottom line. When you’re promoting a lasting, stable growth cycle or you’re doing short sighted, greedy stuff and you can’t sustain you try to analyze that as best you can. There’s a million - - I mean there are so many ways to figure out whether you’re doing a good job. You walk the street; I’m a financial service company, it’s a new idea that came to me - - it’s not that new but we were first that Visa allowed to do this particular initiative. It’s a virtual bank account; non-bank account required debit card. I can’t even count; why am I in the financial service business? Because people came to me and said we want to do you a card for phones. They want to use the artists to promote them. We said, really? Phone cards, years ago, five years ago, six years ago if you will. Give the gift of communication. I’m getting the same idea, let’s do something good. Then we figured out the gift of communication is very expensive, was abusive and not really good but it was all they had. I said how can we figure out a cheaper way to have a phone card? The phone card became a full service virtual bank account, a black Visa Card that works in all the locations and now the next day every phone call takes off the card a penny but now becomes a credit card or debit card. So now people who have to go to the bank can’t go to the bank. Maybe they don’t have a bank account so they don’t get robbed at the check cashing place now because they wake up in the morning it’s on the card. They don’t have to get on line to pay their bills because now they can pay more bills with their card. They can rent a hotel room now because now they have a card. They can use the internet now; they have access to America now through this card and we can loan them money without charging a thousand percent. We can wire money without charging the ridiculous fees. So they have this innovative card, now we figure out it’s such a great service, people walk up to you in the street and say oh my God, you changed my life and you say yes but I’m not making any money yet. We’re now starting to make money over the last - - I don’t know how long but almost a year now we’re starting to make some money because you have to promote the thing, you have to build a sustainable business out of it, which is like the Red. You have to do something. You can’t just make it - - so now other people are doing it; lots of people are doing it and it’s a new industry and the world needs plastic and those people who don’t have bank accounts, fifty five million Americans for instance, don’t have any access to a bank account, have no plastic, can’t do anything, are locked out of the American dream. This care enables them now. You know they have the dignity of a Black Visa Card walk in the place and people treat them - - you know now you can manage your money instead of paying these big fees.
MALE: Do you have one chief operating officer or somebody who reports to you in all these various ventures and tries to keep - -
Russell Simmons: I work for a lot of people in different companies. I have one person who is kind of helping me with a lot of them now but he’s really now in the digital business, he’s left everything alone because he sees some real business. Different people run different stuff. I talk to Tanji every day about you know - - I talk to Doctor Chambers every day or Rabbi Snyder every day or Stan Lathan every day or different people at different companies but they don’t - - and don’t report to anybody else. They mostly talk to me.
MOD: Another question?
FEMALE: Hi, I’m Angela with a company called Working Values. I was interested in hearing your feelings about companies like the original Napster that made music universally accessible to the masses at the cost of royalties to the artists?
Russell Simmons: I don’t think it’s a good idea to steal them but if you’re asking if I think - - I’m not a rebel like let’s just take their shit. I don’t think that’s good but I don’t you know, the thing is that the music was too expensive, the artists were not making any money and the corporations weren’t making any money so they needed to figure out another way to monetize the music and that kind of made them start to realize that there is such a thing as a digital distribution that makes the industry see something new and that’s why these things come I guess, to teach you that you should pay attention and not be stuck in the old conventional ways and there are new ways. That is why the bank card comes. This card comes to teach us that they don’t have to charge people thirty-five dollars every time they overdraft. They pay five hundred dollars a year to manage a bank account. The banks like that you know or that you don’t have to wire your money and pay all that money every week, down to Mexico and get mobbed or you don’t have to get you know, so these new innovations come to teach people better ways I think or give these - - to be creative so I guess it’s good for that but I don’t think it’s good to steal.
MOD: One final question.
FEMALE: My question is about celebrity and how celebrity, the face of celebrity is useful in helping to drive issues in society. A lot of people complain when they see a celebrity get involved politically. I think more celebrities should be involved politically and on social issues but what happens is for example, you see a lot of celebrities who decide now to drive a PRIAS because they are concerned about the environment but they drive the PRIAS to the airport to hop on their private jet which is not very environmentally sensitive.
Russell Simmons: We’re all living in conflict, all of us. You know I drive a bug but I also I mean - - I try to drive a bug but sometimes I get on a corporate jet too.
FEMALE: Right so how do you drive that desire to have a role, of a celebrity to have a role in helping to you know, get the rest of us to do what we can do?
Russell Simmons: I call them all the time for that subject you know what I mean? Empowering others because of their celebrity; it’s a very big deal when a celebrity makes an endorsement for ?? or I know they’re not involved in the same - - you know what the politicians are involved in so you have some guy comes out and says you know what? I think this guy is fighting poverty in a meaningful way. I trust him; I want to endorse him and pay attention to him since he bought my records and people do so the best you can - - I always call them up every time I can and get them involved in everything that will lift people up, if they can they’ll do it because I have, that’s because I have my own selfish agenda. I think it’s good if you use your cache; it’s the only thing you have. Bono is using his cache you know? Bono is good; he got the President on the phone. I saw Bill Clinton last night. Everybody in the room, all the money they had, I talked to him longer than anybody else last night and everybody in the room had more money than - - I keep saying that because it’s just so incredible how rich people - - anyway. But because you have a celebrity and you have a certain kind of relationship with the community maybe you can be useful to them in their agenda and vice versa so you hopefully can use that in a responsible way. Use your celebrity as good as you can to lift people up.
MOD: I guess that’s it; Russell, I want to thank you for being with us.
Note: This transcript has been edited slightly for clarity and grammar in order to improve the reader’s experience. The context and tone have not been changed.