How did Interscope become involved with some of the premiere and most successful artists in rap?
Jimmy always had this affiliation with black music philosophically because, in his opinion, white music particularly white pop music always has its roots in black music. Whether it was the blues bluegrass is a form of that, country music is a form of that they are all integrated. It’s all a complicated web. Black music is where the rhythm and the sexiness of rock and pop music come from. So Jimmy saw a great opening for rap. At that time, rap was not selling huge amounts of records. It would sell a few thousand. Run-DMC was probably the biggest selling act at the time. Jimmy thought if he could find a great rap act, it could be like Guns N’ Roses. You could sell like 10 million, because white kids and black kids want to buy this stuff. It could be packaged, and marketed and done right like it was done in the ’60s with Leiber and Stoller, Motown, Phil Spector and all these people. They marketed black music. Historically in the music business, there has always been that involvement of wh
