The word according to Simmons -- Hip-hop mogul

By AL HUNTER JR. - Philadelphia Daily News

WEARING A maroon warm-up suit and white sneakers, Russell Simmons saunters into the Merriam Theater's lobby, munching on a veggie chicken salad pita sandwich.

He's not happy.

As he walks through the theater's double doors, he wonders aloud, "Couldn't they at least let me finish eating in the limo?" He hasn't even touched the spicy soup inside the brown paper bag he's carrying.

Simmons is late, but measured in C.P. time - that's "celebrity personality" time - he's early. It is 10:45 a.m.; he was scheduled to arrive at 10:30.

Already this morning, Simmons has crisscrossed the city talking up his new project, a touring version of the Tony Award-winning "Russell Simmons Def Poetry on Broadway." He sat in with the Dream Team at radio station Power 99 FM, then appeared on NBC 10's TV magazine show "10!"

At 46, Simmons is a multimillionaire hip-hop impresario who has found success in music (Def Jam Records), a clothing label (Phat Farm) and television (HBO's "Def Comedy" and "Def Poetry" series), as well as on Broadway. And though he's here to pitch "Def Poetry," which features Philadelphia poet Black Ice in the cast, he's talking politics.

Hip-hop style.

Simmons has been trying to bring change by working through the political system. As chairman of the Hip Hop Summit Action Network, he's getting young people to register to vote at nationally touring concert events that combine music with activism.

The Hip Hop Summit Action Network came to Temple's Liacouras Center in September, with LL Cool J, Wycliff Jean and Freeway as draws. To get in, attendees had to show a voter registration card or register on site - which 11,000 people did.

Simmons has also been throwing his fortune - his combined companies generate annual revenue of $260 million, according to Black Enterprise magazine - behind various causes, such as an effort to overturn New York State's Rockefeller drug laws. Opponents such as Simmons and Hip Hop Summit Action Network president Benjamin Chavis say the laws are unfair because they require harsh prison sentences for minor drug offenders, a high percentage of whom are African-American or Hispanic.

Simmons has spent $250,000 fighting the laws, created in the early 1970s. The state requires anyone who spends more than $2,000 trying to influence the governor or legislature to register as a lobbyist, which led the state Lobbying Commission to begin investigating Simmons, who is not registered and contends he's no lobbyist.

On Oct. 3, a federal court judge ordered the investigation halted until she determines whether it violates Simmons' First Amendment rights.

"You don't have to beg the government or sign any paperwork with the government to have any opinion," Simmons said at the Merriam, two days before the judge's ruling.

The investigation has "boomeranged," he said, keeping the issue "in the media a lot longer and [in] a lot better light than it would've been if they had not made this attack."

Simmons was one of the artists who fired hip-hop's expansion out of the inner city and into the mainstream. Now he wants to raise the political consciousness and voting power of the hip-hop generation.

That makes some folks uneasy. He's well-known and understands how to work his fame to create political connections. (Simmons has contributed to all of the Democratic presidential hopefuls except Joe Lieberman, who met with Simmons "a few times" but failed to impress him.)

He's outspoken and has the potential to influence thousands of young people.

And, oh yeah, he's rich.

"The only person who has to be afraid of me is [President] George Bush," Simmons said. "Of course, I should be afraid of him, too."

He doesn't want to give his enemies anything to use against him. "I double- and triple-check my taxes. I only go from work to yoga to home," he said. "If I thought about doing anything wrong, I would never do it."

Hip-hop has become a "relevant political force," Simmons said, because at its core is the plight of poor people.

"The one thing we know for a fact about most hip-hop, whether it's Eminem or 50 Cent, is it's about poor people," Simmons said. "Even the kid in the trailer park and the projects are connected, but the kid in Beverly Hills is riding around understanding the plight of the poor by listening to the music and being sensitized to the struggle."

The message that comes across in "Def Poetry Jam" is that young people of all stripes want to make changes in this country, he said.

The Def jam poets include blacks, a Palestinian, a Jew and an Asian, "but they're all about struggle. And they're all hip-hop," Simmons said. "They all talk about making America better and they all talk about it from the standpoint of people who are pretty much locked out."