Yoga inspires music mogul Simmons to activism.

HIP-HOP entrepreneur Russell Simmons, ho launched the careers of rap artists L.L. Cool J, the Beastie Boys and Will Smith, hovered a foot above the floor, his legs twisted to his left, ins arms holding him aloft.

"Just keep breathing and smiling," he advised the yoga neophyte beside him as he hopped back and folded into a "downward dog," his torso at a 90-degree angle to his legs.

Simmons, chairman of Rush Communications, a music, film and fashion company, easily contorts into various shapes in the yoga studio. He has practiced similar shifts in life, transforming himself from a party promoter to a recording entrepreneur to a millionaire businessman. Then he found yoga and became a vegan who meditates daily.

He's now seeking to recast himself as a political leader, fighting urban poverty and racial inequality. He wants to do that by turning his target audience--the 45.3 million people worldwide who, according to his Simmons Lathan Media Group, spend $12.6 billion annually on hip-bop music, fashion, films, television and publications--into a grassroots political-action network.

"I want to fight poverty and ignorance and give opportunity to those people who are locked out," said Simmons. Most corporate executives, he said, only "want to see the bottom line. Do the numbers get better that way? I don't think so."

'Consumer audience'

Still, marketing politics along with sneakers, jeans and soda is also good for business, said James Peterson, a hip-hop scholar and media coordinator of Harvard University's Hip-Hop Archive.

"He knows that the hip-hop audience is a consumer audience," Peterson said. "Rappers are always talking about products. They have always mentioned brand names in their records, to reach people with shared knowledge and also to show off--'I have a million-dollar watch.'"

Simmons, 45, has based his corporate strategy on marketing urban trends to mainstream America. He built a multimedia conglomerate valued at $300 million, he said, on the notion that street culture could be packaged for mass consumption.

One of his first big rap hits to promote a product was "My Adidas," a 1986 single by the rap group Run-DMC, headed by Simmons's brother Joseph, Darryl McDaniels and Jason Mizell. The single, which topped the R&B charts that year, praised Adidas sneakers and boosted sales among hip-hop listeners.

"Now, he's taking it in reverse," Peterson said of Simmons. "He said his money is cool, but being in political power is even better. Simmons is starting to taste that power, he can sense that it's significant."

In 1984, Simmons and Rick Rubin founded the Def Jam music label with a $4,000 initial investment and unknown tappers. Those performers became top-selling artists--Kurtis Blow, the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy. Simmons and Rubin sold Def Jam in 1999 to Universal Music Group for an estimated $130 million, according to The New York Times.

Using those profits, Simmons created Phat Fashions LLC 11 years ago. The company now produces Phat Farm men's wear, Baby Phat women's wear, sneakers, backpacks, leather goods and a limited edition pearl-pink cell phone made by Motorola Inc. Simmons said he lost money on the venture for the first six years and now annual revenue is about $300 million.

'NUtty Professor'

He's looking for a larger clothing company to either buy or distribute the clothing line. Simmons says he has spoken with Gap Inc., Liz Claiborne Inc., Tommy Hilfiger Corp. and Levi Strauss & Co. and said he thinks he could sell the business for $200 million to $250 million. "What I need is an expansion--any scenario that allows me to make Phat Farm bigger is what I'm looking for," Simmons said.

Simmons has also launched film and television ventures, including "Def Comedy Jam," a television show featuring stand-up comedians such as Chris Rock, Chris Tucker and Martin Lawrence, for the HBO Network. And his film division produced the "Nutty Professor" movies, starring Eddie Murphy.

Russell Simmons's newest entrepreneurial venture is DefCon3, a blue carbonated beverage sold at 7-Eleven stores. He has pledged 2 percent of profits to the Hip Hop Action Network to build organizing headquarters across the U.S.

He decided to get into the business after a publicity battle last year with PepsiCo Inc. The second-largest soft-drink maker had pulled an ad featuring Ludacris, one of Def Jam's rap artists, after complaints that his lyrics were offensive.

A few months later, PepsiCo ran ads featuring rock star Ozzy Osbourne, angering Simmons, who argued that Osbourne, who used to bite the head off live bats in his rock concerts and starred in a profanity-laden reality television show on the MTV Network, was just as offensive.

"It had cultural overtones, cultural insensitivity," Simmons said, because Osbourne is white and Ludacris is black. He organized a rally of his Hip Hop Network and called for a boycott of the company. PepsiCo negotiated with Simmons to end the action, and promised to donate about $3 million over three years to youth charities involved in arts and music education.

But Simmons also has critics among political activists. "This is about ego for him," Randy Credico, director of the New York Disappeared, a non-profit group that advocates for inmates. "If he wanted to do something useful, he could move his Phat Farm line of clothing out of China where they use slave labor and create factories in communities of color."

Simmons didn't comment on his factories or manufacturing plants, and he dismissed Credico's suggestion: "Am I not supposed to be competitive like everyone else?" he asked.

New wealth

When he was about 17, Simmons started promoting dance parties featuring rap performances by Run-D.M.C. and a young rap artist named Kurtis Blow. He attended the City College of New York and continued to focus on music. He was also dealing marijuana and fake cocaine, Simmons recounts in his autobiography, "to support my taste for flashy clothes."

In 1984, Simmons and Rubin, then a student at New York University, spent $700 to produce L.L. Cool J's first single, "I Need a Beat." It sold more than 100,000 copies and launched Def Jam Records. With new wealth, Simmons attended parties, dated models and bought a mansion in Beverly Hills and three Rolls Royces.

"He would go to Upper East Side parties in sneakers," said Nelson George, author of the book "Hip Hop America." "Through models he got into fashion, through fashion he got into a different world of New York celebrity."

It was his interest in "pretty girls" that led him to a yoga class in Los Angeles, Simmons said, which he said was the first step toward a different lifestyle.

Simmons said his yoga practice inspired him to create the Hip Hop Summit Action Network. Benjamin Chavis Muhammad, a civil-rights leader and former executive director of the NAACP, heads the group. Chavis said he wants the organization to register 20 million voters in the next five years, and work to "change the conditions of poverty."

Other political efforts haven't taken off. In 2001, Simmons and Chavis announced the creation of a national hip-hop action committee, the Nu America PAC, to back political candidates who support its agenda, which includes education and social programs in poor neighborhoods and racial equality. Federal Election Commission reports show that the PAC hasn't raised or distributed any funds since then.

Meanwhile, Simmons hasn't sacrificed his worldly possessions. He and his wife, the former supermodel Kimora Lee, are completing a 30,000-square-foot house in Saddle River, N.J. with an indoor pool, a movie theater and a meditation studio. He has a second home in the Hamptons on Long Island and attends polo matches with Kimora, who now is creative director of the Baby Phat division of Phat Fashions and has her own Rolls Royces.