Lyor Cohen
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Lyor (Elroy) Cohen (Born 1959) is the Chairman and CEO of U.S. Recorded Music for Warner Music Group (WMG) where he is responsible for all aspects of WMG's U.S. recorded-music operations, including the U.S. labels groups -- The Atlantic Records Group and Warner Bros. Records; WEA Corp., the U.S. distribution company; and Rhino Records, WMG's catalog-marketing division. Cohen joined the company shortly after Time Warner's sale of WMG to an investor group led by Edgar Bronfman, Jr.
Cohen is the son of Israeli immigrants and the grandson of an Israeli Army general.
Cohen entered the rap business in the mid-80s after booking a performance by the seminal rappers Run-DMC at a club Cohen was running in Los Angeles. He soon became the group's road manager, sharing a room with MC Darryl McDaniels (aka DMC) on the road. He began working in New York for Def Jam's co-founder, Russell Simmons, in the early part of 1985, after Simmon's original partner Rick Rubin, headed out west to start his own label 'Def American'.
Lyor Cohen's first public impact came with the de-emphasis of the Def Jam name & logo & the forming of 'RAL' in 1990, which was an informal in-house acronym for 'Russell And Lyor,' but officially stood for Rush Associated Labels.
Over the years Cohen's influence grew, to the point where he personally earned $100 million from the sale of Def Jam to the Universal Music Group in 1999. He was then made head of a key part of UMG subsidiary, Island Def Jam, where he led the growth of its roster of artists and record labels, including Def Jam, Island Records, Roc-A-Fella, Lost Highway, The Inc, American, Def Soul, Def Soul Classics to Roadrunner records and whose units achieved phenomenal growth and earned almost $700 million a year.
Cohen left IDJ/UMG in January of 2004 for a position with the Edgar Bronfman, Jr. investor group financed Warner Music Group, now officially spun off from Time Warner. Joining Cohen at Warner are his former co-workers at Island Def Jam, Kevin Liles and Julie Greenwald, as well as a trio of older industry figures like Elektra founder Jac Holzman, Atlantic's legendary Ahmet Ertegun and Sire's Seymour Stein. Another industry success who has rejoined the Warner family is Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin.
Cohen announced he would take part in an online reality show about starting a label to be webcast on AOL called The Biz in October 2005.
