Tags and topics realted to this article include Jam Master Jay and Russell Simmons.

Rap and fashion impresario Russell Simmons claims the sports gear behemoth Nike is trying to steal his employees. Simmons says Phil Knight, aka Phil Nike and CEO of the $11 billion company, has sent an executive headhunter to raid the comparatively tiny Phat Farm Footwear Collection. The headhunter has apparently obtained employees' personal cell phone numbers and is calling around trying to recruit Phat Farm talent.

"Phil Nike should not get in a fight with me!" Simmons shouted at his 43rd-floor headquarters overlooking Seventh Ave. "He can kiss my a—. No one ever heard of him in the ghetto. No one ever heard of him in the trailer parks, either, for that matter."

Nike spokesman Scott Reames responded: "We're always looking for talented people. I assume they have their talented folks locked up with noncompete clauses. It's flattering that Russell Simmons is paying so close attention to us."

Meanwhile, nearly a year after the slaying of Simmons' close friend Jam Master Jay of Run-DMC, he isn't holding his breath for an arrest.

"We don't know who the murderer is," said Simmons about the events of Oct. 30, 2002, when two men burst into Jason Mizell's Queens recording studio and shot him at close range with a .40-caliber semiautomatic. "We don't know who the murderer is in any of these cases: Tupac [Shakur], Biggie, Q, nobody knows! I don't care who the murderer is, speaking personally."

The 45-year-old Simmons, whose younger brother Joe was "Run" in the group, explained, "They write about Jam Master Jay, but they don't write about the 14 kids who were killed in Hollis [Queens] yesterday."

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