New Delhi, May 21 -- Ten minutes into our interview, Lyor Cohen pulls out his phone and opens YouTube to play Fight for Your Right to Party. I hadn't heard the popular 1986 Beastie Boys track-one he backed in his early 20s, when hip-hop was still new and major labels had dismissed the song as "scraping the bottom of the barrel." Cohen bobs his head as the Google India rep and I listen to the party anthem of the late 80s America that climbed to rank 7 on Billboard Hot 100 in 1987.

Now 65, Cohen has spent over three decades in music, repping acts like Run-DMC and labels like Def Jam that helped define the '80s hip-hop era. He later led the Warner Music Group for nearly a decade, and for the past eight years, he's been the global head of mu...