Russell Simmons Calls Geraldo Rivera “Talking Head” Over Hip-Hop Comments

Russell Simmons, co-founder of hip-hop music label Def Jam, responded to Geraldo Rivera’s recent comments that hip-hop “has done more damage to black and brown people than racism in the last 10 years” and he was not too pleased.

“He lost on ‘[Celebrity] Apprentice,’ man, I can’t respect that,” Simmons first joked to TMZ. “After losing he needs to just talk. He needs to get himself relevant.”

But then he continued in a more serious tone: “Geraldo, the prison industrial complex got people so twisted. For 40 years, they’ve been locking up diseased drug addicts, educating them on criminal behavior and dumping them back in the hood. The poetry and the reflection [in hip-hop] are what come from that jail culture; that’s obvious…The media is really dumb to let that man [speak]. He needs to be progressive and do good work to help people. And now he’s a talking head.”

“He never did sh– to help nobody, not in a very long time,” Simmons added. “But he used to do something 30, 40 years ago, but he’s not relevant no more.”

Earlier this week, in an interview with HuffPost Live, Rivera slammed rap music’s effects on minorities. “Hip-hop has done more damage to black and brown people than racism in the last 10 years,” he said. “When you find the youngster, a Puerto Rican from the South Bronx or a black kid from Harlem, who has succeeded in life other than being the one-tenth of one-tenth of one percent that make it in the music business, that’s been a success in life walking around with his pants around his ass or with visible tattoos.”

Rivera also mentioned Simmons in the interview, saying, “This whole ethos, and I love Russell Simmons – he’s a dear friend of mine, I admire his business acumen – at some point though, those guys need to cop to the fact that by encouraging this distinctive culture that is removed from the mainstream they have encouraged people to be so different from the mainstream that they can’t participate other than the racks in the garment center and those entry level jobs,and I lament it. I really do. I think that it has been very destructive culturally.”