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From Rick Rubin to Doja Cat, Jews have helped shape the first 50 years of hip-hop
(JTA) — Like many parents, Mickey and Linda Rubin indulged their only child Ricky’s various hobbies — magic, photography, music — while he was growing up in the 1970s on Long Island. Ultimately, they hoped he would set his artistic interests aside and choose the sensible career of an attorney.
Ricky famously stuck with music.
In 1983, when he was a junior at New York University, he borrowed $5,000 from his parents to record a song by a local rapper, T La Rock, and release it on his new label, Def Jam. The song, “It’s Yours,” was a hit and caught the attention of a businessman, Russell Simmons. The two would join forces and turn Def Jam into a hit factory. As a producer, Rick Rubin would go on to work with some of the most celebrated rappers of all time, including LL Cool J, Run-DMC, and Public Enemy.
“When I started Def Jam,” Rubin told the New York Times Magazine in 2007, “I was the only white guy in the hip-hop world.”
He certainly was not, but he was one of the only white Jews making rap records until Michael “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “MCA” Yauch, and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz — better known as the Beastie Boys — burst onto the scene. Rubin produced and released the group’s 1986 debut album, “Licensed to Ill,” which became the first rap album to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.
“If you want to talk about a singular Jewish contribution to hip-hop, it’d be Rick,” said Dan Charnas, a journalist and arts professor at Rubin’s alma mater, in an interview. “Instead of hip-hop being rapping over disco instrumentals, he conceived of it as sonic collage art.”
Fifty years ago, on Aug. 11, 1973, hip-hop was born (or so the origin story goes) when Jamaican Americans Cindy Campbell and her brother, a DJ who went by Kool Herc, hosted a back-to-school dance party in the recreation room of their Bronx apartment building. In its early years, rap was dismissed as street music by most music industry gatekeepers. It would take six years after that Bronx party for a rap record to get airplay on pop radio (Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight”).
Fast forward to 2023, and hip-hop is ubiquitous — not just on Spotify and TikTok, but across pop culture, from television to fashion.
Over the last five decades, many Jewish rappers from different backgrounds and nationalities have left their mark on hip-hop culture, from Drake to Doja Cat to Mac Miller to Nissim Black, to name just a few. In the early 2000s, religiously-observant artists such as Y-Love and Matisyahu carved out a niche for rap infused with Jewish wisdom and spirituality. Today, there are a number of rappers who make Judaism a prominent part of their stage personas, from Kosha Dillz to Lil Dicky to BLP Kosher; the latter dropped an album on Aug. 4 titled “Bars Mitzvah.” There is also a vibrant, multilingual hip-hop scene in Israel.
RELATED: The 10 most influential Jewish rappers of the past 50 years
But the biggest contributions that Jews have made collectively to hip-hop may have been on the business side, as managers and record label executives.
“White people have played more of a role on the business side than as artists because hip-hop is, for the most part, a Black art form,” explained Charnas, who worked in A&R (which involves seeking out new artists to sign) at Rubin’s American Recordings label in the early 1990s.
In his 2010 book “The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop,” Charnas shares the stories of the record label executives who commercialized hip-hop, including several Jewish ones: Roy and Jules Rifkind, owners of the label that released one of the first rap records in 1979, “King Tim III (Personality Jock)” by Fatback Band; Aaron Fuchs, founder of Tuff City Records, the first rap label to secure a major-label distribution deal; Tom Silverman, founder of Tommy Boy Records, whose roster of musicians included Queen Latifah, Coolio, De La Soul, and Naughty By Nature; Jerry Heller, co-founder of Ruthless Records with rapper Eazy-E; and Julie Greenwald, Def Jam’s head of marketing in the ’90s (who now runs the Atlantic Music Group).
Fuchs, who launched Tuff City in 1981, said by phone that he began working with hip-hop artists such as The Cold Crush Brothers at least a year before Rubin started Def Jam.
“I left my career as a writer and decided to run a record company on the belief that this Black music, like every other Black music in history, would be worth codifying,” he said. He later mentored Rubin and even produced some songs himself using the pseudonym Oliver Shalom, a play on the Hebrew honorific for the dead, “alav ha-shalom” (“peace be upon him”).
At 75, Fuchs still runs Tuff City and plans to release a four-part vinyl compilation of classic rap songs to which he owns the rights later this year. He described hip-hop as “a very, very, very important American expression.”
“I knew it would last, but I didn’t know that it would revolutionize music the world over,” he said.
In response to a direct message on Twitter, Chuck D of the influential group Public Enemy shared the names of the Jews he believes have made the biggest impact in hip-hop, in addition to Rubin: the Beastie Boys; MC Serch of interracial rap group 3rd Bass; Lyor Cohen, the son of Israeli immigrants who started as Run-DMC’s road manager and went on to run Def Jam after Rubin’s departure; and Bill Adler, Def Jam’s onetime director of publicity who helped Public Enemy weather an antisemitism controversy in 1989.
Def Jam Records publicist Bill Adler introduces Rapper Chuck D, left, of Public Enemy, as the latter prepares to fire bandmate Professor Griff for making antisemitic remarks, June 21, 1989. (Al Pereira/Getty Images/Michael Ochs Archives)
“What was interesting,” Chuck D wrote in a direct message, “was that everyone didn’t necessarily get along.” He described the 1980s rap scene as a “melting pot of personality, ego, pioneering, money, race, and everything else.”
Beyond the boardroom, Jews have also played a significant role in hip-hop as talent managers. Among the best-known are Heller (N.W.A.), Paul Rosenberg (Eminem, as well as Jewish rappers Action Bronson and The Alchemist), Leila Steinberg (Tupac Shakur, Earl Sweatshirt), and Todd Moscowitz (Gucci Mane).
Managers both inside and outside of hip-hop have long been vilified for profiting off of their artists’ creativity and labor, or worse. Some believe Heller stole from the members of N.W.A., but there is no evidence to support the claim. Steinberg’s story is different: She accepted very little money while working as Shakur’s first manager in Northern California because she did not want to be perceived as a white person taking undue credit for a Black person’s achievements.
“Back then, I really wanted to participate [in hip-hop] as an activist and couldn’t make sense of this being about money and business,” she said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency earlier this year. “I’ve reshaped a lot of my thinking — if you’re not making money, you can’t make change in the world.”
In the realm of hip-hop media, two Israeli cousins — Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus — were responsible for producing the classic breakdance-themed musicals “Breakin’” and “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo” in 1984. Keith Naftaly was the program manager who turned Bay Area radio station KMEL into the best place to hear new rap music in the late ’80s (he is now the head of A&R at RCA). Peter Rosenberg’s voice can be heard every morning on one of the biggest rap stations in the country, New York’s Hot 97.
Many of the culture’s most enthusiastic chroniclers, it turns out, are members of the tribe: Jonathan Shecter and Dave Mays, who co-founded the groundbreaking hip-hop magazine The Source — the most popular music magazine in the United States in the late ’90s — as undergraduates at Harvard; DJ Vlad (born Vladimir Lyubovny), whose YouTube channel features interviews with numerous rappers and has 5.5 million subscribers; Nardwuar (John Ruskin), a Canadian journalist whose unpredictable interviews with rappers receive millions of views on YouTube; and ItsTheReal (Eric and Jeff Rosenthal), who recently released a deeply-researched podcast about the heyday of rap blogs. And then there’s Charnas himself, who is 55 and was one of the first writers at The Source and a founding father of hip-hop journalism. (The album that made him fall in love with hip-hop: Public Enemy’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.”)
Charnas connects Jewish involvement in so many different aspects of hip-hop culture to the historical alliance between Jews and Black people.
“I think we were around because of our place in the American totem pole, and because of our cultural affinities,” he said. “We had geographical proximity to each other, so that has a lot to do with it. Obviously, Blacks and Jews were aligned politically.”
He added there has never been a “Jewish cabal” running the show — a charge that a small number of big-name rappers, including most recently Ye, formerly known as Kanye West — have made. In 2008, Jay-Z and Russell Simmons recorded a PSA about antisemitism geared toward hip-hop artists and fans that was produced by Rabbi Marc Schneier’s Foundation for Ethnic Understanding. Since then, Ice Cube, Nick Cannon, Jay Electronica, and, yes, even Jay-Z have all found themselves at the center of antisemitism controversies. (On a track on his 2017 album “4:44,” Jay-Z asked rhetorically, “You ever wonder why Jewish people own all the property in America?” He defended the lyric as an obvious exaggeration.)
“Jewish people have found important places and purchases in the business, but no more so than any other white folks,” Charnas said.
Y-Love, the trailblazing Black and Jewish rapper who is known for rhyming in Hebrew and Aramaic — and who, at age 45, calls himself “the OG of Jewish hip-hop,” meaning “the original gangster,” or the elder statesman — said the rappers who have been accused of antisemitism are not saying anything original. They are simply parroting ideas circulating in American society at large, he argued.
“There needs to be a moratorium on the phrase ‘Black antisemitism,” he said. “It’s the same antisemitism.” The best response to the hate, he said, is for Black Jewish rappers with huge fan bases such as Drake and Doja Cat to stand up and say publicly: “When you talk about Jews, you’re talking about me.”
One of the positive legacies of hip-hop, he noted, is that it has allowed Black Jewish rappers like himself to get on stages and screens and show the world just how diverse Jews are. “I think that through embracing hip-hop, the Jewish community added a lot to its own continuity,” he said.
Where is hip-hop headed in the next 50 years?
“As the barrier to entry to putting music out there gets lower, we are going to see more and more people putting tracks out that speak to them, and more managers that are willing to help them do it,” Y-Love said, adding, “Maybe one day we’ll see a Jewish hip-hop category at the Grammys.”
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The post From Rick Rubin to Doja Cat, Jews have helped shape the first 50 years of hip-hop appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘Serve the Nation, Kill a Jew’ Graffitied on Buenos Aires Monument Just After Oct. 7 Anniversary
Argentina’s President Javier Milei attends a commemoration event ahead of the anniversary of the 1994 bombing attack on the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) community center, marking the 30th anniversary of the attack, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 17, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Martin Cassarini
The antisemitic slogan “Serve the nation, kill a Jew” was graffitied on a prominent monument in Buenos Aires on Wednesday, just two days after the one-year anniversary Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
The timing of the vandalism was intentional, according to the executive director of Argentina’s Jewish umbrella organization, the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA).
“It is no coincidence that these antisemitic demonstrations appear 48 hours after the first anniversary of the Hamas attack against the State of Israel, because they express the same terrorist ideas: eliminating the Jewish people,” Victor Garelik said in a statement.
Jews in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires marked the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack with an event organized by the DAIA that drew 15,000 attendees, according to the Israeli embassy in Argentina.
Two days later, however, “Serve the nation, kill a Jew” was written onto a column of a monument to Simon Bolivar, historically considered “the Liberator” of South America, in Parque Rivadavia in Buenos Aires. A Jewish star replaced the final word of the slogan, which has a long history in Argentina.
La DAIA manifiesta su preocupación frente a la aparición de una grave pintada antisemita en el monumento a Simón Bolivar, ubicado en el Parque Rivadavia de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.
La entidad presentó la denuncia en el Ministerio Público Fiscal de la Ciudad con el objetivo de… pic.twitter.com/UxJN6HlE0l
— DAIA (@DAIAArgentina) October 9, 2024
As the Jewish Telegraphic Agency noted in a report on the graffiti, a close variant of the antisemitic phrase was used by the Nationalist Liberation Alliance, a World War II-era Argentine movement affiliated with the Nazis. It was later used by Tacura, a fascist movement that was active in Argentina in the decades following the war.
Then about 10 years ago, residents in the town of General Paz received tax bills with the slogan printed on them. The city official responsible was sentenced to a suspended jail term and ordered to apologize and learn about the Holocaust.
The DAIA, which condemned the “serious antisemitic graffiti,” said it filed an official complaint with the City’s Public Prosecutor’s Office “in order to find those responsible for this anti-Jewish act.” The local government quickly cleaned up the graffiti after it was discovered.
This week’s incident came less than a month after the DAIA presented a report to the Buenos Aires City Legislature showing Argentina experienced a 44 percent increase in reported antisemitic incidents last year, mostly after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
According to the report, a total of 598 complaints of antisemitism were registered in 2023, and a staggering 57 percent of all such antisemitic cases occurred in just the three months after the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7.
“There was a significant rise in Judeophobia in universities, and anti-Zionist rhetoric increased by 380 percent compared to 2022, across the country,” the DAIA said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the report found that some 65 percent of antisemitic acts occurred in the “digital space,” while the remaining number of incidents in the “physical space” marked a significant increase from the prior year.
“The [Oct. 7] massacre increased the number of [antisemitic] complaints, far from generating empathy and condemnation,” Garelik said during the presentation, according to Argentine media.
The DAIA report found that visceral hatred of Israel was a major source of the surge in antisemitism, causing 40 percent of last year’s antisemitic incidents in Argentina compared to just 11 percent the prior year.
Twice as many in-person antisemitic cases occurred after Oct. 7 in Argentina last year than during the prior nine full months of 2023. One such incident after the Hamas massacre was a building that hung a sign reading, “Zionists out of Palestine. This did not start on 7/10. Hitler fell short.”
The uptick in anti-Jewish outrages appeared to have continued unabated. According to the DAIA, this week’s graffiti was one of more than 500 antisemitic incidents the organization had recorded this year.
Amid such a surge in anti-Jewish acts of hate, Argentina has become a key player in organizing efforts to combat antisemitism in recent months. In July, for example, more than 30 countries led by the United States adopted “global guidelines for countering antisemitism” during a gathering of special envoys and other representatives from around the globe in Argentina.
The gathering came one day before Argentina’s Jewish community commemorated the 30th anniversary of the 1994 targeted bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. Argentine President Javier Milei, a vocal supporter of the Jewish community, promised to right decades of inaction and inconsistencies in the investigations into the attack.
In April, Argentina’s top criminal court blamed Iran for the attack, saying it was carried out by Hezbollah terrorists responding to “a political and strategic design” by Iran.
Iran is the chief international sponsor of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terrorist group with weapons, funding, and training.
Argentina has a Jewish population of nearly 200,000, the largest in Latin America.
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Kamala Harris Vows to Do ‘Whatever Is Necessary’ to Prevent Iran From Acquiring Nuclear Weapons if Elected
US Vice President Kamala Harris. Photo: Erin Schaff/Pool via REUTERS
US Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday vowed to ensure that Iran never obtains nuclear weapons if she wins the White House in November.
“Make no mistake: As president, I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend American forces and interests from Iran and Iran-backed terrorists, and I will never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon,” Harris said in a conference call with Jewish American supporters marking the Jewish High Holidays, according to a White House transcript of the conversation.
“Diplomacy is my preferred path to that end, but all options are on the table,” she added.
Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, also lambasted her opponent, Republican nominee and former US President Donald Trump, arguing that he was not tough enough toward the Iranian threat.
“I am clear-eyed. Iran is a destabilizing and dangerous force,” Harris said. “When Donald Trump was president, he let Iran off the hook. After Iran and its proxies attacked US bases and American troops, Trump did nothing. And he pulled out of the nuclear deal without any plan, leading to an unconstrained Iranian nuclear program.”
“On the other hand, our administration struck Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria when they attacked American troops, and we are the first administration to ever directly defend Israel,” Harris continued, referring in part to the Biden administration in February ordering strikes against Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria in response to a drone strike attack on American soldiers. The strikes successfully neutralized over 85 targets.
The administration also helped Israel defend itself against Iran’s unprecedented direct attack on the Jewish state in April.
When Trump was president, he withdrew the US from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which placed temporary restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions, and reimposed harsh economic penalties on the regime.
The US sanctions levied on Iran under the Trump administration crippled the Iranian economy and led its foreign exchange reserves to plummet. Under Trump, the US also killed Qassem Soleimani — who was the head of the elite Quds force, which is responsible for Iran’s proxies and terror operations abroad — in a US drone strike in Iraq in 2020. Soleimani is revered by the Islamic Republic as a martyr and is commemorated across the country.
Trump and his Republican supporters in the US Congress have criticized the Biden administration for renewing billions of dollars in US sanctions waivers, which had the effect of unlocking frozen funds and allowing the country to access previously inaccessible hard currency.
US intelligence agencies have for years labeled Iran as the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism, noting it devotes significant sums of money and weapons each year to supporting proxies across the Middle East such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Many observers have suggested that the unfreezing of Iranian funds allowed the country to ramp up its funding of terrorist groups, potentially facilitating the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel.
“And then, of course, last week, on Oct. 1, I was in the Situation Room for more than three hours coordinating in real time with our military leadership as our forces intercept missiles over the skies of Israel,” Harris said during her call, referring to Iran’s most recent missile barrage targeting Israel.
Since launching her presidential campaign in July, Harris has scrambled to shore up support among Jewish voters, repeatedly vowing to defend Israel if elected in November. While accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, Harris reaffirmed her commitment to ensuring Israel’s security. She has also denied rumors that she would impose an “arms embargo” on the Jewish state.
Though Harris has repeatedly issued nominal support for Israel, supporters of the Jewish state have raised concern that she might not defend the Jewish state as vigorously as previous administrations.
Harris does not have the decades-long relationship with Israel that US President Joe Biden does. Harris also harbors close ties to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which has become increasingly hostile toward the Jewish state. The vice president has been under pressure from pro-Palestinian activists to break with the Biden administration by adopting a more adversarial posture toward Israel.
Harris previously urged the White House to be more “sympathetic” toward Palestinians and take a “tougher” stance against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a Politico report in December. In March, White House aides forced Harris to tone down a speech that was too tough on Israel, according to NBC News.
Later, she did not rule out “consequences” for Israel if it launched a large-scale military offensive to root out Hamas battalions in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, citing humanitarian concerns for the civilian population.
Harris initially called for an “immediate ceasefire” before Biden and has often used more pointed language when discussing the war, Israel, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Harris has also expressed sympathy for anti-Israel protesters on US university campuses. In an interview published earlier this year, Harris said that college students protesting Israel’s defensive military efforts against Hamas are “showing exactly what the human emotion should be.”
Iran is Hamas’s chief international backer.
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Top US Lawmaker Threatens to Revoke Federal Funding From Harvard University Amid Campus Antisemitism Crisis
US House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) during press conference at the US Capitol in Washington, DC on Sept. 24, 2024. Photo: Jack Gruber/USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
US House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) cautioned Harvard University and other elite institutions of higher education that their official accreditation could be in jeopardy if they did not do more to combat surging antisemitism on their campuses.
“Your accreditation is on the line,” Scalise said last week in a meeting in Washington, DC with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an influential pro-Israel lobbying organization, according to recordings acquired by The Guardian and reported on Wednesday. “You’re not playing games any more or else you’re not a school any more.”
Scalise reportedly singled out Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University, all of which have come under scrutiny for not doing more to combat increasing antisemitic incidents and rampant anti-Israel demonstrations since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7. The lawmaker’s threat could potentially saddle the embattled Ivy League institutions with another crisis as they grapple with simmering antisemitism controversies.
Scalise added that conservatives in the US government are considering targeting the federal funding of Harvard and other schools, indicating that the relationship between the Ivy League institutions and US federal officials could continue to worsen if former President Donald Trump were to retake the Oval Office in November.
“We’re looking at federal money, the federal grants that go through the science committee, student loans,” Scalise continued. “You have a lot of jurisdiction as president, with all of these different agencies that are involving billions of dollars, some cases a billion alone going to one school.”
Six US congressional committees have continued investigating Harvard as part of their probe into campus antisemitism in higher education. The committee chairs have warned that the university’s federal funding could be imperiled if it does not provide a safe environment for Jewish students.
“The House of Representatives will not countenance the use of federal funds to indoctrinate students into hateful, antisemitic, anti-American supporters of terrorism,” the committee chairs wrote to Harvard in June.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to install accreditors who would revoke accreditation of universities that do not handle campus antisemitism seriously.
In the year following Hamas’s brutal slaughter of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel, Harvard has become a hotspot for protests against the Jewish state. In the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, a slew of campus groups issued statements blaming Israel for the massacre and rationalizing Hamas’s atrocities, which included systematic sexual violence. In addition, anti-Israel protests immediately erupted across Harvard and other elite universities.
The anti-Israel statements and protests drew the ire of elected officials, causing lawmakers to summon former Harvard President Claudine Gay to testify in front of the US Congress in December. Gay resigned from her post in January amid uproar over her congressional testimony, in which she said calls for genocide against Jews may or may not violate campus conduct policies depending on the “context.”
Rep. Elise M. Stefanik (R-NY) released a statement this week condemning Harvard for not doing more to tackle campus antisemitism.
“Harvard University has once again refused to condemn and discipline the pro-Hamas mob on campus, instead inviting another school year filled with antisemitism and anti-Israel hate,” she said.
Harvard isn’t the only university at risk of having its accreditation threatened by Republican lawmakers. Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania are among those that could face funding cuts over their response to anti-Israel campus protests, which have included threats of violence against Jewish students.
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