In 1975, when he was eighteen, Simmons began taking classes at Manhattan City College. He found a job at an Orange Julius outlet in Greenwich Village, but at some point he also financed his club-going lifestyle by selling fake cocaine. If he was caught by the police, he reasoned, he was not doing anything illegal, but Simmons of course faced a bigger threat from angry customers. During these years he hung out at the dance clubs of New York’s outer boroughs, where the music was predominantly disco. But then a new movement filtered in, one that had come out of the roughest Bronx and Harlem neighborhoods: performers sang their own rhymes over a classic track, such as “Flashlight” from George Clinton. Simmons was at one such club in 1977 when he saw how wild the crowd went over one song from an early rapper and DJ named Eddie Cheeba, and he decided that this was the sound of the future.
His future, in particular. Simmons quit the fake drug business, and eventually left City College just a few credits short of a degree in sociology. He began promoting concerts, and then formed his own management company for artists, which he called Rush Management, after his childhood nickname. Some of the first rap songs ever played on radio were from his acts, including “Christmas Rappin'” from Kurtis Blow. He also managed Whodini, but it was the group that his teenaged brother, Joey, joined back in Hollis that put Simmons and his company on the map.
