Hip-hop’s master impresario brought marginalized voices to a mass audience — and cross-marketed a youth cultural movement in music, comedy, fashion, poetry, and social action. Born to middle-class parents in 1957, Russell Simmons grew up in Queens, New York. He flirted with gang life, but changed his focus after he heard rap music. In the mid-1970s, its arresting, novel sound — just beats and rhymes — was emerging from New York’s grimmest African American neighborhoods. 
(Source: pbs.org — http://to.pbs.org/1W0e0YN)
