Various ArtistsDef Jam 25: DJ Bring That BackReview

It’s perhaps necessary to overstate the importance of Def Jam in an urban music context. Motown receives plaudits aplenty, the subject of insightful documentaries and anthologies, its discography a who’s who of soul. But it’s the New York label launched by Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons in 1984 whose voice is surely loudest amongst the contemporary pop crowd.

With hip hop an unpredictable, though powerful, movement in the mid-80s – popular in pockets, but by no means the force of the 90s onwards – Def Jam blazed a trail by opening its independent doors to the machinations of a major label. With Columbia on their side, the label moved from singles – one of their first, LL Cool J’s b-boy-friendly I Need a Beat, props this set up – to long-players, and it was this transition that would properly attract the white-dominated music press, and subsequently the all-classes, all-creeds mainstream.

“The ultimate suburban label,” is how Melody Maker critic Frank Owen described Def Jam around the time of the emergence of one of their most important signings, Public Enemy. Owen continued: “[The label is releasing] the first black music that hasn’t had to dress itself up in showbiz and upwardly mobile mores in order to succeed.” His point: hip hop artists could succeed on their own terms, with their own (then fresh) styles, and ultimately away from their home turf. While Public Enemy struggled initially to break free of their Long Island base, once they’d properly bum-rushed the show, the pop landscape was irreversibly altered.

The label’s first album hit shelves in 85 – hence these 25th anniversary celebrations carrying on for another year – and their release schedule has grown more and more hectic. The line from Radio, LL’s ‘Beat- and I Can’t Live Without My Radio-housing set, to the RnB-kissed, super-slick fare of 2009/10 isn’t an entirely straight one, but influence is evident. Mix a little of Slick Rick’s narrative style on Children’s Story with Montell Jordan’s rousing New Jack Swing – the latter sampled the former for This Is How We Do It – and you land close to the socially conscientious but highly stylised work of Kanye West, whose Jesus Walks is one highlight of Def Jam’s post-millennium output.

Its roster isn’t without fault, but if this set proves one thing it’s that Def Jam significantly changed the world as we hear it. Recognise, respect and, as Flav instructs: get up, and get down.