LL Cool J releases 'I Need a Beat' — the first 12-inch on Def Jam

Why it matters

In 1984, a New York University undergrad named Rick Rubin and his Long Island roommate's friend, a Queens teenager named James Todd Smith, recorded a song in a dorm room and pressed it on a 12-inch single. The label, which Rubin had started in his dorm and named after a stamp he had been using on demos, was Def Jam Recordings. The song, "I Need a Beat," was the first record Def Jam ever put out. The teenager went by LL Cool J. He was sixteen. "I Need a Beat" eventually sold about 100,000 copies, mostly out of suitcases and in mom-and-pop record stores in the five boroughs. Those 100,000 copies funded the rest of Def Jam's first year, which is the year they signed the Beastie Boys, the year they almost signed Public Enemy, and the year they released LL's debut LP. None of the next forty years of Def Jam, which is to say a substantial chunk of recorded rap history, happens without this 12-inch. You can find it on YouTube. You should listen.