Between Russell Simmons and The World and Oprah

By Staff
article image



Between Russell Simmons and The World and Oprah

by Kevin Powell, special to Utne Reader



Left: Russell Simmons, photo via Wikimedia Commons/Brett Weinstein, cropped; Right: Oprah Winfrey, photo via Wikimedia Commons/vargas2040, cropped.
















Cause we’re alone now




And I’m singing this song to you


—Donny Hathaway, “A Song for You”


Take 1



The godfather of hip-hop, Russell Simmons, sits at a table with two elderly White men on either side of him, holding court in the lobby of New York’s Mercer Hotel, just days before Christmas. The Mercer is an epicenter of power and wealth, less a lobby than an exclusive living room for Simmons and other visitors.

Once you push past the heavy black drapes that separate the outside world from this living room, there are art-deco shelves and tables filled with all kinds of books and high-end magazines; there are immaculately scrubbed white walls and comfortably elegant sofas; and there are young, chic, multicultural staffers rocking all-black gear while attending to the godfather of hip-hop and others milling about.

Simmons, with no security detail, is dining on a vegan burger, a salad, and a glass of water, totally at ease, his toothy grin engraved ear to ear, sporting his usual uniform of a New York Yankees fitted cap, a colorful button-up shirt, chiming prayer beads around his neck, blue jeans, and white-on-white Adidas sneakers. There is a sun-baked glow to Simmons’ copper brown skin, the product of several years of daily yoga and meditation, and every kind of self-care activity at his well-manicured fingertips. Given what is hovering all around Russell Simmons’ life this very moment, his Zen-like state is unbelievably jarring in its calmness.

A child of blue-and-white-collar Queens, New York, Simmons and his journey have been a testimony to the surge of hip-hop, the governing culture on the planet since the early 1980s. His vast and layered business interests have grown to include music, film, management, comedy, finance, television, books, fashion, media, technology, the visual arts, yoga, and poetry. There are few in pop culture who can say they have not been affected by Russell Simmons and his monumental reach. 

I count myself among the nation of millions. When I was a teenager in the 1980s, I danced to—and worshipped—several of the hip-hop acts Simmons either guided via his firm Rush Management (like his younger brother Joseph’s rap group, Run-DMC), or had on his now-historic record label, Def Jam (like LL Cool J, The Beastie Boys, and Public Enemy). In the 1990s, I was a senior writer at Vibe magazine, which Quincy Jones owned, and Simmons considered joining as a partner.  When I was fired from the publication in 1996, it was Russell Simmons, while having a sidewalk lunch with the writer Nelson George at Greenwich Village’s Time Cafe, who told me to get over the firing and “go franchise yourself.”

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In the late 1990s, I wrote cover stories on iconic figures like Lauryn Hill and Chris Rock for Simmons’ One World magazine, although I never interacted with him directly. A year or two later, when I helped produce the very first exhibit on the history of hip-hop, with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Brooklyn Museum, it was Russell Simmons who I sat down with, along with the director of the Brooklyn Museum, to get his stamp of approval. And into the 2000s and 2010s I have become both a vegan and a yogi myself, due in no small part to the health-and-wellness preaching of individuals like Russell Simmons. But the only other time I can ever recall interviewing Russell Simmons was during the 1990s, as he was walking on a treadmill in his home in Manhattan. I have no clue who or what that interview was for, and my only recollection is him telling me I should try yoga. 

Russell Simmons and I are not friends and have never been. But there has always been mad respect, and through the years, I certainly was in awe of him for curating a soundtrack and a culture that I grew up with, one that provided spaces of expression for me and Black and Brown boys like me from America’s ghettos.

Because no Russell Simmons for hip-hop is like no Rosa Parks for the Civil Rights Movement, like no Frida Kahlo or Jean Michel-Basquiat for avant-garde painters, like no Michael Jordan for basketball or Nike, like no Beatles for innovative song-writing and sonic twists and shouts, like no Meryl Streep for method-inspired actors, like no Kardashians or Jenners for reality television and Instagram, and like no Oprah Winfrey for emotion-packed TV talk shows and teary-eyed confessional interviews.

His presence has been revolutionary and deeply transformative for multiple generations of hip-hop heads, a railway bridge between people and possibilities, making Simmons a very potent and very rich tastemaker in the process. As a matter of fact and keepin’-it-a-hundred mythmaking, Russell Simmons is the walking, breathing logo of manifesting something from nothing, of winning on his own terms—the very definitions of hip-hop.

As Simmons sits there with his vegan burger in the lobby of the Mercer, several people, mostly White, stop to pay their respects, to ask how he has been, to say it is good to see him, to shake or touch his hands. You can tell that these admirers have not encountered Simmons in a long while, or are surprised to see him, by their words, by their body language. That is because the godfather of hip-hop no longer lives in New York, or in America, but has resided, since February of 2018, in Bali, in Indonesia, in Southeast Asia, a nation-state that is a safe and extradition-free haven 9,000 miles away from the allegations of approximately 20 women who have accused Russell Simmons of, among other things, rape. 







Take 2



The allegations began in late 2017, just as the #MeToo movement dramatically shifted conversations around sexism, around manhood, across America, across the universe. Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein went down first, fast and hard in October 2017, an avalanche of 80 allegations of rape, sexual harassment, and other sexually oppressive conduct. Mere weeks after Weinstein’s fall from grace, the first wave of Russell Simmons accusers came forth, as published in the New York Times in December 2017.

Say her name: Drew Dixon, a well-regarded music executive who says that in the mid-1990s, Simmons sexually harassed her during her employment at Def Jam Recordings, exposing his erect penis on several occasions, speaking explicitly to her on work calls, and eventually raping her at his Downtown Manhattan apartment. Close friends of Ms. Dixon have corroborated that she immediately told them about these allegations and left Def Jam with a “settlement” of $30,000—only $3,000 of which went to her directly, legal fees swallowing the rest of it.

Say her name: Sherri Hines, also known as pioneering female rapper Sherri Sher of Mercedes Ladies, the first all-women’s rap group. In the early 1980s, Hines says, Simmons pinned her down on a couch in his sparsely furnished new offices and “violated” her sexually, after which she left in tears. Sheri Sher told close friends at the time, but never said anything publicly, for fear of being shunned in the music industry, and because she did not want to bring a Black man down. (Years later, in 2008, Ms. Hines wrote a novel based on the real lives of Mercedes Ladies, which depicts a businessman named “Ronald” who rapes a member of the women’s rap group.)

Say her name: Sil Lai Abrams. A former model and currently a long-time domestic violence awareness activist, she says that she dated Simmons off and on for a few years, from the late 1980s through the early 1990s, but one night, while not in a relationship with him of any kind, he took advantage of the fact that she was drunk, and instead of having his driver take her home, she was brought to his residence. There, Abrams has alleged, Simmons raped her, as she laid on her stomach in his bed. It has been reported and confirmed that she was so distraught about the incident she immediately told close friends; the next day, Abrams says, she downed pills and wine in a suicide attempt.

These three women appear in the soon-to-be-released documentary film On The Record focusing on the allegations around Simmons, which recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to sold-out crowds. All told, there are numerous allegations and complaints against Russell Simmons: everything from rape to sexual harassment, according to various sources. Most of the allegations fall outside the statute of limitations for sex crimes, which is 21 years for New York State, where much of this is said to have occurred. While the pattern of allegations ranges from the 1980s to the 2010s, many episodes share a common thread: Simmons maneuvering women into compromising spaces like an office or an apartment, alone, where they have no escape route. 

However, Simmons’ supporters—ex-wife Kimora Lee Simmons, and about a dozen family members, and his past and present friends, colleagues, and business partners I spoke with—believe that some or all of these women are lying, that Russell Simmons would never be violent toward women. “I have known Russell for over 25 years,” Kimora wrote on Instagram in the aftermath of the allegations. “We were close friends, married, divorced, and have remained friends, co-parents and partners throughout it all. These allegations against him are nothing like the person I have known in all that time. I have known him to be a caring and supportive father and someone who has worked tirelessly to uplift disenfranchised communities.”

I do not know which men are or are not rapists, sexual harassers, abusers, and batterers of women. What I do know is that my friend and fellow activist Tarana Burke coined the term “me too” in the first years of this twenty-first century as she was working with young Black and Latinx girls, and noticed that many of them, barely into their teens, had already been raped by a male figure—a man, a boy, or both. I did not know Tarana was doing this when she and I crossed paths doing relief work in the Deep South in the heartbreaking fog of Hurricane Katrina. By the time actress and singer Alyssa Milano encouraged legions of women to use #MeToo on social media on October 15, 2017, in response to the Weinstein revelations in

The New York Times

and

The New Yorker

, hundreds of thousands of women and girls had posted their own responses.



Yet, when Russell Simmons was accused, he employed a different hashtag: #NotMe. The backlash was swift from women, and men sympathetic to women, on Twitter, condemning Simmons for not taking sexual violence against women and girls seriously. What he does own, is his past womanizing: “I’m in this mess because of the amount of whoring I did,” he says to me. “I am one thousand percent comfortable taking responsibility for what I have done, but I absolutely don’t want to take responsibility for what I haven’t done and that is that I’d never been violent, I’ve never been forceful, and [it was] never my intention to hurt anyone.”

When #MeToo first exploded, there was no way to predict how many women would step forth to speak of being survivors, to name the men who had assaulted and or harassed them. Dozens upon dozens of men—executives, elected officials, journalists, names like Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer and Al Franken—have by now been accused of sexual transgression in one form or another. The #MeToo movement has forced a renewed interest in the cases of men like Roman Polanski and Woody Allen, and it landed Bill Cosby in jail. “This is going to go on for years,” a famous actress friend told me at the start of the #MeToo movement. “Men being accused and held accountable.”

Perhaps this is why so many men are frightened, in entertainment, in music, in sports, in politics, in corporate America, everywhere—just like some White Americans were scared, during the Civil Rights Movement, as racism was being tested at every turn. Power forever panics under siege.


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If we are to be honest, then we must acknowledge that America was founded not just on racism, but also on sexism. There has scarcely been a time from the beginning of this social experiment in “democracy”
that our society has granted any women and girls value equal to men and boys—let alone to Black women and girls. The habitual and continuous rape of Black women by White male slave masters and White male overseers was not merely a passing feature of slavery, but a foundational weapon in its arsenal of dehumanizing tactics.

(If you think otherwise, then peep the many colors and complexions of Black folks in this fair land and ask, How did that happen? Rape and sexual violence are tools of control, of oppression, of power gone insane.) 

In her film NO! The Rape Documentary, Aishah Shahidah Simmons asserts that Black male slaves consciously and subconsciously absorbed that mindset and began to view Black women and girls as little more than sexual toys, caretakers, or punching bags, just as the White male slave masters and White male overseers did.

This was in spite of the fact that Black women and Black men were kidnapped from Africa together, put at the bottom of those slave ships together, worked in the fields and in the master’s house together, celebrated emancipation together, fled white masks and hanging nooses together, and marched and got water-hosed and clubbed in the head together at civil rights protest after civil rights protest. 

Evelyn and Daniel Simmons, Russell’s parents, civil rights workers themselves, were together as they raised him—the middle child—and his two brothers, Danny Jr. and Joseph. But, according to Russell, “my parents fought all the time.” He adds that his mother was fiercely independent, and “was the most nurturing person in my entire life. No one was more supportive of my dreams and my spirit like my mother, no one.” Evelyn, a small woman in stature, worked for the Parks Department in Queens while Daniel Sr. was a history teacher, but her true passions were the arts, as she was both a painter and a poet (Danny Jr. would too become a painter and poet).

College-educated and a dreamer like her son Russell, Evelyn would divorce her husband in the 1970s when Russell was a teenager, on the heels of Civil Rights, Vietnam, women’s rights, and the flowering of major Black women writers like Ntozake Shange. 

Russell does not know fully why his parents split, but coupled with the sexism and male privilege that all women have endured in this country, and the many movements, from suffrage to equal rights to #MeToo, that have pushed back on those hateful dynamics—imagine being a Black woman who not only has to deal with racism, but also sexism as well? This is why Gloria Steinem, a pioneer for equal rights for women for over 50 years, has said, loudly, that Black women in America are the original feminists. Because Ms. Steinem, and progressive White women like her, are clear that Black women have had to deal with an extraordinarily disproportionate amount of venom and violence because of their skin color and their gender.

Later, as hip-hop was being birthed by poor African-Americans, poor West Indians, and poor Latinx folks in the Bronx, it overlapped with the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, neither of which would have happened without Black women front and center, but both of which witnessed men perpetrating sickening sexism and violence against Black women. I can’t begin to articulate the number of Civil Rights-era Black women who have told me of the hate and brutality they endured fighting for a freedom that did not seem to comprise them. Over the past decade or so, I’ve been working on a biography of Tupac Shakur; Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur, was one of the few women who fought back—and was vilified for it, her contributions minimized by those men who feared and loathed an outspoken woman.

We know there would be no hip-hop being officially born on a muggy August day in 1973 in the South Bronx if Cindy Campbell had not produced the very first event at which her brother Kool Herc deejayed—thereby pre-dating Russell Simmons’ party-promoter hustle by half a decade. But hip-hop would certainly allow and encourage foul behavior toward women and girls, just like rock and roll before it. Giants named David Bowie, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, and members of Led Zeppelin have all been accused of an assortment of things, like sex with underage girls, like domestic violence, like rape. Hip-hop is merely the most recent pop culture phenomenon that is representing what has always been there: unapologetic sexism. 

I did not know any of this as a boy who fell in love with hip-hop in the late 1970s. But even if you listen closely to that first major hip-hop hit, “Rapper’s Delight,” it is riddled with sexism and the objectification of women: I can bust you out with my super sperm. From childhood on, we learn much of what we know about manhood from music, from television, from movies, from sports, from male-centered spaces. In a call after he had returned to Bali, Russell Simmons speaks directly to these influences, saying “We grew up watching The Mack, I saw so much stuff, and so many people were living in a culture where they devalued women.” 









As a result, young males, generation to generation and culture to culture, were and are clueless about the male policing we do to each other “to prove our manhood,” the sexist or homophobic words we toss at each other like verbal grenades, our brazen grabbing and touching of girls as if their bodies are our playgrounds.

We do not know this is assault. We teach each other there is something wrong with you, sexually, as a boy, as a man, if you do not get sex, if you do not talk or brag about your sexual conquests, whether real or imagined. No, not all of us go on to rape and assault women once we became men, but rape culture lurks all about us, in language and in deed—

Add to this the fact that most of us learned little to nothing about the history and contributions of women and girls in school, in the mass media culture, in our religious or spiritual spaces; it is little surprise that many of us men and boys are entirely clueless about women and girls, about rape culture, about domestic violence, about gender discrimination.

It becomes quite easy, with that enthusiastic ignorance, to blame women and girls for everything, to diss them, to never think twice about how they were treated, in my ‘hoods in my hometown of Jersey City, right through my college years at Rutgers University. 

For me it was not until my early twenties in July of 1991, while living with a girlfriend in Brooklyn, that my awakening occurred. How it happened was pitiful and toxic. During an argument, I didn’t like a response from her—and pushed her, in a fit of rage, into the bathroom door. I cannot recall what the argument was about, but I do remember feeling a sense of powerlessness as my girlfriend challenged me, so I responded with violence. She bolted from the apartment barefoot, crying, and screaming. I stood trembling, mortified at what I had done.

The pathetic thing would have been to say she caused me to do it, or that what she said happened did not actually happen. But I could not lie. My single mother had raised me to always tell the truth, and I thought often of her saying to me, to not be like my father. I was never clear what ma meant until that incident. Do not become an abuser. Do not hurt women. 

I went for therapy, I consulted both women and men for guidance, I wrote an essay for Essence called “The Sexist in Me,” apologizing for the incident and taking ownership for it. Years later I would apologize to my ex-girlfriend directly, and I have never put my hands on a woman in any un-welcomed manner since that day, but I would be lying if I said I have not said disrespectful and dishonorable things to women since, or that I have not been sexist. Because I have been; I am very clear about that, because all men are either sexist or are easily capable of being sexist instantly. 

I struggled mightily, through the 1990s, through the heyday of my years at Vibe, as I participated in a culture that I knew was loaded with disgusting examples of manhood, such as Dr. Dre’s savage beating of Dee Barnes, or rappers and crews punching hip-hop journalists who had given them negative reviews, or the bottomless survey of songs that called women every kind of name or curse word imaginable, or depicted every kind of sexual aggression, including rape, gang rape, and domestic violence.

And just like rock and roll before it, sex, drugs, and liquor were as central to our culture as breathing. While this was happening, women in and around the music industry talked. They talked about rumored assaults and harassment by record executives, including Russell Simmons. They talked about rappers with terrible sexual assault reputations. I just was not aware of much of this back then, but now I know, because several anonymous women have said this to me while writing this piece.


“There is not a music industry executive who did not sexually harass me. They used their power, their money, and their resources, and the things that they can offer; they trick us with the glitz and the glamour, and then they use their dicks to try to manipulate the situation. They come off as wanting to help you, but when you do not do what they say,
they take everything away.”


—Black woman (name withheld) who has worked in the entertainment industry for over two decades

This is the culture that spearheaded scenarios of rape and abuse and sexual harassment over and over again, in songs, at concerts, in hotels, in studios, while many of us turned our heads, or enabled it, or acted like it was not happening. Perhaps the most profound thing Tupac Shakur said to me after he was sent to prison for an alleged sexual assault incident with a young 
woman is that while he maintained his innocence, what he was guilty of was not thinking of her safety as he fell asleep, and as his friends pounced on her.

Take 3





Louis C.K. Brett Ratner. Dustin Hoffman. George H.W. Bush. Morgan Spurlock. Ben Affleck. Casey Affleck. James Franco. Aziz Ansari. Kevin Spacey. Robert DeNiro. Antonio Brown. Donald Trump. 

These are some more names of famous men accused of one sexual misdeed or another. It is an unofficial but very much alive boys club that thrives in the corporate and creative worlds, in academia and entertainment, in politics and media, and that has always been the case. There are long days, longer nights; the divisions between work and play are blurred, and if you suffer from an acute case of male privilege, then you believe that everything is yours to take, including women’s bodies without permission.

This is why the #MeToo movement is necessary. This is why I never thought I would ever see anything like it when I confessed those years back to my own toxic manhood, or as I have worked with men and boys to re-define manhood throughout America and globally. Because there has been a staunch resistance to the truth, an allergic reaction, if you will, to viewing women as our equals.

So we go out of our way to deny their voices, to silence them, to say they want money and fame, that they are haters, that they are trying to destroy men. This is what Russell Simmons tells me time and again during our many interviews about the “files” he has on the women accusers.

This is what men do: Men re-assert manhood, if you are Harvey Weinstein or Russell Simmons, to highlight the good things you have done for others, for women, while ignoring the fact that doing great things for others does not preclude monstrous acts. Gangsters and drug dealers give away turkeys at Thanksgiving, toys at Christmas, while still damaging the communities they give back to. Because this is about power, and that is what the #MeToo movement is challenging—the unchecked and abusive power of men—just like the Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter came to challenge the unchecked and abusive power of White supremacy.

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I wonder about all of this as I am now the one sitting next to Russell Simmons with a vegan burger and fries and a glass of water in front of me. Russell casually reaches across me several times to grab a couple of french fries from my stash. I barely eat my burger, because I want to focus on every word he is saying. I have known him for half my life, but I realize I do not know Simmons, do not know what might have happened with him and women behind closed doors, as he keeps talking: “So anyway, then #MeToo happened, I lost my five charities. … I mean I’m happy to live where I live. … So I have a job and purpose, and I’m thrilled where I am. I don’t need to ‘come back’ as a lot of men do …”



I believe the women,


Russell Simmons, I believe you raped them, I believe you sexually assaulted them, is what I want to say to him. Then he says “I don’t want to be an advocate for men. I want to be an advocate for change. And I certainly want to be an advocate for the shift in consciousness. I think it’s more inclusive and has women’s energy and in our governance of our planet.” I wonder if he realizes he is in fact an advocate for men only, for toxic manhood, every single time he says the women accusers are only doing this for fame and money, every single time he smears their characters, be it publicly or privately.

I wonder if he realizes that you just cannot skip from women saying you raped or assaulted them to becoming a spiritual guru on Instagram, using that very spiritual practice as a way not to deal with the reality of damage that has been done to these women’s lives. 



FROM: Russell Simmons Silence Breakers and Survivors



We are more than victims of rape. We are Black women. We are mothers, daughters, sisters and friends insisting on our right to live and work free from sexual violence and abuse. We will not back down, and we will not be silenced. We are not afraid. When we raised our anguished voices to say, “No! Stop! Don’t!” to Russell Simmons, he ignored us. Now, as we raise our voices in defiance of a culture that protects abusers and their enablers, he has tried to discredit us and to deny our truth. Russell Simmons and his enablers cannot intimidate us, bully us, or ignore us. Unyielding as a force, united in our resolve, we are Black women standing with survivors of all colors and we will not be silenced. #silenceisviolence #ustoo #lifteveryvoice #metoo












Take 4



When Simmons and I move to a sofa in the Mercer Hotel lobby, I question silently how many men actually know what “consent” means, as discussed in NO! The Rape Documentary and on many college campuses I have visited; that having sex with someone who is drunk or high is rape; that having sex with someone who is saying yes but is drunk or high is rape; that having sex with someone who is sober or high or drunk who says no or maybe or I don’t know is rape; that someone who resists at first, then gives in, does not necessarily give consent, which equals rape. 

While the legal terms may vary state to state, morally and spiritually clear consent by a woman is something rarely considered by men of all ages who are later accused of rape.

I ask Russell Simmons what he thinks rape is, and his response is wildly unsettling, naively revealing, and I am both saddened and disgusted that a 62 year old man with his wealth and power would say these words, referencing the polygraph tests he submitted to regarding the accusations: “I think a lot of people are guilty of a lot of things. What we used to call rape was violent. I took all my tests, one of my tests was, I’ve never been violent. I thought that was the answer. I said no, no. And then the detective thought—and he had been a detective and he had also worked for the FBI and he was one of the best polygraph people in the country. He explained to me what the definition of rape was.”


“What is required now is a much deeper dive on the part of men. Men have to say, What is sexual abuse? What is harassment? What is domestic violence? What happened in my childhood that made me the kind of man who is capable of degrading a woman, demeaning a woman, beating a woman, hurting a woman, raping a woman? What happened in the culture? What was I taught in the culture? What did I learn? Why? Why am I doing this? What’s driving me?’”


—Eve Ensler, author of The Apology and playwright of The Vagina Monologues

The fact that he, like many men, still does not know what rape is, speaks volumes about what may have happened to the women who accuse Russell Simmons of that sexually violent act. My mind is a sagging load of emotions as he continues to talk, nervously, about the many allegations against him, about the “files” he has on his accusers that he insists will prove his innocence.

I attempt to tune out some of the things he is saying about the women—about this one having a drug issue, about that one who says she was raped by her father, about her and her and her wanting money and fame—because this is a recurring thing with so many men: to never look inward at themselves, but to instead point fingers outward. This is how power operates inside the music industry, inside any and all spaces where men run things. If men are questioned or prodded, the knee-jerk reaction, time and again, is to say that the woman accusing is wrong, that it cannot possibly be men with the problem, but the women, for even daring to mention ugly and toxic behavior.

Take 5



On another early evening inside the Mercer Hotel, I am with Russell Simmons and two of his longtime associates. Kevin Leong is Russell’s close friend and creative director and is helping him to reboot the Phat Farm clothing line. Hasaun Muhammad is a confidant, friend, and associate. Both men have hung for about 25 years with Simmons, since the 1990s.

We go riding in Simmons’ super-sized black SUV, to a Uniqlo clothing store, to a cold-pressed juice bar, to a cryotherapy center where he and Leong get a quick treatment, to Simmons’ favorite Indian restaurant. We conclude the night at The Roof, a boisterous sky lounge atop Ian Schrager’s Public Hotel. 

Everywhere we stop, people know Russell Simmons, ask him how he is doing, greet him with reverence. He appreciates the love, is thankful for it, as he sips on a glass of red wine at The Roof. But he is ready to go to bed. The man who has been partying and jet-setting for much of his adult life is more interested, the past several years, in rising early, to meditate, to practice yoga, to teach anyone who will join him, about wellness. Meanwhile, I feel as uncomfortable here as I did at the Mercer Hotel, wondering how someone accused of rape and assault and harassment by approximately 20 women could so effortlessly move from place to place, including this lounge, like there are no eyes whatsoever on him. Guilty or not, this is what extraordinary wealth and power, in the hands of a man, look like; no matter the storm, just keep going.


“I have many prayer beads that I use for meditation. They all include the image of the holy sound. In the beginning was vibration and that sound was is ‘ohm.’” 




Russell Simmons, in a text message to me about his daily spiritual practice

I watch Simmons’ regular Instagram Live chats where he leads dedicated followers in meditation, waxes poetic on the wonders of yoga and his vegan lifestyle, proclaims his love for truth, and seems to relish the chance to be his other self, the higher-consciousness self—”Uncle Rush”—who he says he has evolved into. I wonder how Simmons’ soul juggles these two dangerously conflicting realities: the old Russell who is accused by a number of women of rape and sexual harassment; and the new Russell who proclaims he wants to be a part of the women’s movement that will change the world, who is proud of the fact his two teenaged daughters with Kimora, Ming Lee Simmons and Aoki Lee Simmons, ages 19 and 17, know what consent is. 

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I have spoken with Russell many times over the past two months, in person, by cellphone, and I have read and watched and listened to virtually everything attached to these accusations about him. He mentions his daughters regularly, how proud he is that both are in college, what they mean to him. The last time I spoke with Russell was just a couple of weeks ago, one early morning, now that he is back in Bali after spending time both in New York City and St. Barts during the holiday season.

He sounds very much like a man who is afraid and confused, his spirit broken in some ways because of the documentary film that is coming. Once more, he says the words “I am sorry”—this is in relation to being “insensitive” to one of the accusers, Jenny Lumet—but, still, he maintains he never raped anyone. “You know what Ashley Judd told me?” he says. “I was really upset. I called her because I know she’s one of the leaders of the movement. I said, ‘This is crazy. I would never harm anybody.’ She said, ‘Revolution is bloody.’”

“I’m interested in not having my kids think I’m a rapist,” he says.
Every time he references his daughters, I think back to something I said a year ago to a group of students at James Madison University in Virginia, where I was a visiting professor: that men need to understand that all women and girls are our daughters, mothers, sisters, aunts, grandmothers, nieces. Afterwards, a young woman came up to me and corrected me, rightfully. “It should not matter if men have daughters or see any women as someone close to them,” she said. “We should not have to say that all women are this or that. Women and girls should be honored and respected just because we are human beings.”

The young woman was correct, is correct: Do men value women and girls as human beings, or not? And it is not enough to listen to women when they make statements, when they say they have been raped or hurt in some way. Sexism will not end until men are actively engaged in helping to make it end.


That is not to say that men cannot grow, change, or at least begin to re-think and re-define manhood. I think of the crisis that unfolded between Beyoncé and JAY-Z when her video album Lemonade dropped, an undisguised and public challenge from Bey to JAY to do the right thing, due to his cheating and lack of respect for her. Equally important was JAY’s response album, 4:44
.

Perhaps with the exception of the evolution of John Lennon from violently abusive boy-band member to grown man proclaiming his love and reverence for Yoko Ono, we’ve rarely seen a male public figure with such a massive platform 
openly apologize the way JAY did. Between Russell Simmons and the world and Oprah, this is what the women I know, including my mother in her 76 years of life, have been looking for. A humble, genuine apology, an effort to heal, to grow up—to be, as Lizzo’s words are re-remixed, great—especially when we men need to be great.



?

This, I believe, is what Oprah Winfrey was trying to say as early as 1991, when she featured the rapper Ice-T on an episode of her talk show. It was a combative segment, when guests and audience members went back and forth, talking over and through each other, dissing each other; you can tell by Oprah’s body language and frozen facial expressions that she either hated or strongly disliked hip-hop. I think it no coincidence that through the years hardly any rappers have ever been in her orbit, except for the transcendently wealthy and successful ones, like JAY-Z.

In one infamous episode, Oprah welcomed the cast of the film Crash, then used it as an opportunity to lambast the rapper Ludacris about his lyrics. And there has been a running beef between her and rapper and actor 50 Cent. All of which is why many in the Black and hip-hop communities called foul when Oprah Winfrey announced that she and Apple TV+ were jumping aboard Amy Ziering’s and Kirby Dick’s On The Record documentary featuring at least three of Simmons’ accusers. In a society where Black people in general have been historically dissed just for being Black, it is easy to understand why we are hyper-sensitive to any critiques of, say, Michael Jackson, or Russell Simmons, why we are quick to say What about the White men? as if we Black men should get a pass, just because we are Black, for equally bad behavior. 

The way the story goes, Oprah was blown away by a screening of the documentary and instantly jumped on board as executive producer, using her Apple TV+ partnership to leverage distribution. The documentary’s credibility was already high—Ziering and Dick are Oscar-nominated filmmakers—but Oprah’s involvement devastated Simmons, who had considered her a friend. Black people, seemingly spurred from a post by 50 Cent on Instagram, accused the billionaire media mogul of only going after Black men.

A social media pile on followed, with commenters on Instagram and elsewhere questioning Oprah’s allegiance to the Black race, calling her an “Uncle Tom,” and even suggesting she be canceled permanently. An Instagram post by Russell Simmons:



 
 
 
 
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Dearest OPRAH,you have been a shining light to my family and my community. Contributing so much to my life that I couldn’t list a fraction of it in this blog.Ihave given you the gift of meditation and the groundbreaking book”THE POWER OF NOW “we bonded to say the least. This is why it’s so troubling that you choose me to single out in your recent documentry. I have already admitted to being a playboy more (appropriately titled today “womanizer”) sleeping with and putting myself in more compromising situations than almost any man I know. Not 8 or 14 thousand like Warren Beatty or Wilt Chamberlain, but still an embarrassing number. So many that some could reinterpret or reimagine a different recollection of the same experiences. Please note that ur producers said that this upcoming doc was to focus ONLY on 3 hand chosen women. I have refused to get in the mud with any accusers, but let’s acknowledge what i have shared. I have taken and passed nine 3-hour lie detector tests (taken for my daughters), that these stories have been passed on by CNN, NBC, BUZZFEED, NY POST, NY MAG, AND OTHERS. Now that you have reviewed the facts and you SHOULD have learned what I know; that these stories are UNUSABLE and that “hurt people hurt people”. Today I received a call from an old girlfriend from the early 1980s which means that they are using my words/evidence against me and their COMMITMENT/ (all of the claims are 25 to 40 years old) It is impossible to prove what happened 40 years ago, but in my case proof exists of what didn’t happen, mostly signed letters from their own parents, siblings, roommates, band members, interns, and in the case of 2 of your 3 accusers,their own words in their books. Shocking how many people have misused this important powerful revolution for relevance and money. … In closing, I am guilty of exploiting, supporting, and making the soundtrack for a grossly unequal society, but i have never been violent or forced myself on anyone. Still I am here to help support a necessary shift in power and consciousness. Let us get to work on uplifting humanity and put this moment and old narrative behind us

A post shared by Russell Simmons (@unclerush) on


  • Published on Sep 18, 2020
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