Lyor Cohen: 'Steve Jobs was a seductive and profound bully'

He made his name with Def Jam and came through the ‘Greek tragedy’ of Napster. The mogul tells the Guardian why Apple’s svengali was difficult to work with and how he’s survived in the music business

Lyor Cohen has something of a reputation in the record business. He’s not on the same scale as David Geffen, who spent most of the 1970s on the phone screaming at people, or Walter Yetnikoff, who spent most of the 1980s inebriated and howling at the moon. Rather he is known for a curt business style, honed through three decades in the business that began in hip-hop management and touring, and was followed by a move into the label system (both independent and major).

He entered the music business just as rap was exploding and the new CD format was promising to make everyone very rich. He joined the major label system, as chief creative officer at Warner Music Group, in 2004 as the floor was falling from under the feet of labels in the wake of Napster. He left Warner just as streaming was starting to have an impact, seeing his company 300 Entertainment as a nimbler craft upon which to sail the choppy waters that the record business finds itself in today. “We have some wonderful artists that are performing at Reading & Leeds Festival in the UK this August – like The Hunna and Highly Suspect,” he says of the steady international expansion of his roster. “Fetty is going to be there and Young Thug is going to be there too. We are building, brick by brick, a roster that hopefully the gatekeepers and the fans can respect.”

Related: Fetty Wap: ‘I didn’t even get to use no bed – I was lucky to have a carpet’

I will be remembered by the fact that I protected my artists. That I cared and wasn’t flippant

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