Hip-hop’s first don was Russell Simmons, who in the early ’80s partnered with a longhaired student named Rick Rubin and converted the latter’s NYU dorm room into a makeshift recording studio and office for their joint venture, Def Jam Records. Before long, they’d salvaged an LL Cool J tape from the demo pile and brought the Queens whippersnapper in for a session. It was the start of a 15-year run of almost unrivaled commercial success in the hip-hop industry. True to his impresario image, though, Simmons soon removed himself from the musicmaking side of Def Jam, preferring instead to politic at parties and talk up what his partner was doing back in the lab. (Disclosure notice: I work for a company founded by Simmons — 360 Hiphop.com — though it’s no longer owned by him.)

Throughout the ’80s, a number of indie hip-hop labels — Wild Pitch, Cold Chillin’, Sleeping Bag, Macola — came and went. But no other label boss had the charisma of a Simmons, which is a key reason many of those indies remained independent. Def Jam, meanwhile, signed a lucrative distribution deal with Columbia. Indeed, it wasn’t until the mid ’90s that a pair of labels worthy of the Def Jam legacy emerged along with two entrepreneurs who had what it took to lay claim to Simmons’s throne. In Los Angeles, a former bodyguard named Suge Knight made a major splash with his Death Row records, the first label other than Ruthless to capitalize on gangster rap’s soon-to-be-nationwide popularity. And across the country in New York, Sean “Puffy” Combs answered back with his Bad Boy label.

But what might have been a bicoastal alliance turned into a mob war. Knight’s friend Tupac Shakur, who would later sign with Death Row, was robbed while entering a New York recording studio in 1994. Knight called Combs out on the carpet at the 1995 Source Awards for soaking up a bit too much of his artists’ shine. One of Knight’s associates, Jake Robles, was shot in Atlanta, allegedly by a former bodyguard of Puff’s. In 1996, 2Pac recorded the scathing Death Row single “Hit Em Up,” a mentally unhinged tongue lashing directed at anyone with a zip code under 30000. In it, he claimed, among other things, to have slept with Faith Evans, the wife of Bad Boy star Biggie Smalls. Soon after, Pac was killed on the Las Vegas Strip. Six months later, Biggie Smalls was shot dead in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, down in Louisiana, Master P was building his No Limit empire, almost as if he’d anticipated the impending fall of Puff and Suge. P was himself dealing with a small-scale civil war, a longstanding violent beef with another New Orleans label, Big Boy (former home of Mystikal). But as east and west were tearing each other down, P moved beyond local skirmishes and began to attack the mainstream. By 1998, he’d secured for himself a place on the Forbes list of the highest-paid entertainers in the country, and his No Limit army had permanently altered the accent of urban radio.

Today, Suge is in prison, Puff has just narrowly escaped a sentence of his own, and Master P has gone from classy to ashy in a frighteningly brief span. What happened to hip-hop’s leading men? The idea of a true hip-hop don seems almost anachronistic right now. With the genre so stratified and localized, no one individual could hope to achieve the widespread notoriety and respect of a Russell Simmons in his prime.

And yet of all the would-be dons, Suge’s got the most promising future, even though he’s still behind bars. His release, originally scheduled for early this summer, is far from confirmed (it’s dependent upon good behavior), but Death Row is alive and kicking. The label’s most recent release, a double CD of previously unissued 2Pac material called Until the End of Time, debuted at the top of the pop charts a month ago, moving more than 400,000 units in its first week. Other recent Death Row releases — a collection of previously unissued Snoop Dogg material called Dead Man Walkin and a label comp, Too Gangsta for Radio — may not have sold as well, but they have helped get the Death Row name back out there. And the new tell-all documentary Welcome to Death Row, which exposes the connections among Knight, his lawyers, and LA drug kingpins, doesn’t appear to have hurt the label one bit. Next month, Death Row is planning to reissue its entire back catalogue with enhanced video content. Not bad for a label controlled by an imprisoned don who can’t have any input into his company’s business affairs.

Whether or not the Death Row empire rises once again, Suge, Puff, and P are proof that staying on top in the game of hip-hop isn’t as easy as it was in Simmons’s day. In light of Death Row’s recent Suge-less re-emergence, perhaps some kind of hiatus — forced or not — is key to long-term survival. Puff, take note — next time, take the rap, or go do yoga with Russell.