Speaker 1: Welcome to Drink Champs, the production of The Black Effect
Speaker 1: and I heart Radio and his Drink Chess motherfucking podcasts.
Speaker 1: A legendary queen's rapper, He's Segre. It is your boy
Speaker 1: in O R. He's a Miami hip hop pioneer, is
Speaker 1: d j e FN. Together they drink it up with
Speaker 1: some of the biggest players in the most professional, unprofessional
Speaker 1: podcast and yet number one sorts for drunk fast drinks.
Speaker 1: Motherfucking is New year' z that's time for drinking Champs.
Speaker 1: Drink up, motherfucking mother. What did Goold be hoping? This?
Speaker 1: This is your boy in O R? What up? Is
Speaker 1: d j e f N And this is Drink has
Speaker 1: motherfucking Happy Hour mass Up And one of the our
Speaker 1: guests today. One of our best things that I started
Speaker 1: to do if and was to do research right. And
Speaker 1: when I researched this strong woman, I really like, you've
Speaker 1: never seen the X Man and you've seen Storm because
Speaker 1: Storm was the strong woman of X Man that can
Speaker 1: turn into anything that she wanted to. And when I researched,
Speaker 1: I felt like I was researching Storm. Nobody else watched
Speaker 1: Red Common Books. Here it's said Storm, It's mystique. And
Speaker 1: when I tell you from her first store in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: to her conquering the world, there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: who cannot say I worked with Biggie and Tupa. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of people who cannot say I worked with
Speaker 1: one E MC and Jay Z. There's not a lot
Speaker 1: of people period in those categories. And when you google
Speaker 1: and when you understand the line that it meant to
Speaker 1: the culture, and do you understand that she stood back
Speaker 1: and said, you know what, I want the line to
Speaker 1: speak for herself. For years I said I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: the step back. And then now years later you see
Speaker 1: what it involved to what clothing means to hip hop,
Speaker 1: how artists actually gets signed and hires a stallus. If
Speaker 1: this woman that we have today wasn't here and didn't
Speaker 1: take the forefront of you know, we had the fooboos,
Speaker 1: we had the car canas, we never had a woman
Speaker 1: just running the forefront. And in case you don't know
Speaker 1: how proud we are of this history, In case y'all
Speaker 1: don't know, y'all need to stand up and make some
Speaker 1: noise for the honorable, the impeccable. A wow, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. I mean I'm just humbled by that. No, no,
Speaker 1: you know what what's crazy is obviously I had to
Speaker 1: do my research, so I went and what documentary you
Speaker 1: told me to watch Fresh Dressed? Fresh Dress? We watched
Speaker 1: watched Fresh Dress, but before I watched Fresh Dress, I
Speaker 1: watched the remix. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it was basically you,
Speaker 1: Misa and that documentary. In my opinion, I did not
Speaker 1: realize because to me, as an outside of looking in
Speaker 1: as an insider, I just thought, you guys Gucci send
Speaker 1: you guys clothing, and you guys just cut it up.
Speaker 1: No listen, I was old, naive. I just thought that
Speaker 1: you guys had it made like I thought that if
Speaker 1: he was a designer, you basically got the fabric, you
Speaker 1: cut it up, um and just get to I had
Speaker 1: no idea of the struggles, the flights, and when I'm
Speaker 1: researching you, because I know when you come out saying
Speaker 1: Holy ship, I was ashamed of myself because here I
Speaker 1: am as a person that's in the culture, a part
Speaker 1: of the culture, but I had no idea of what
Speaker 1: you guys went through. I was just gonna say, like,
Speaker 1: that's why it's important for this show. Look, you're telling
Speaker 1: our stories and we can't count on other people to
Speaker 1: tell our stories. We have to tell our own stories.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the reasons I wanted to be here,
Speaker 1: Thank you God. A little problems, and I've been listening, like,
Speaker 1: not just this story. You tell so many important stories
Speaker 1: and unsung heroes that really have really done a lot
Speaker 1: for the culture, but people might not know. So the
Speaker 1: fact that you dig in like that, it's priceless. No, no,
Speaker 1: I love it. So you know what I want to
Speaker 1: go first? I want to go to your first store,
Speaker 1: um Fashion in the fall, right, yep, that was fashion
Speaker 1: and Effect. Ye Clinton hill Brooklyn. Okay, I just want
Speaker 1: you to understand because a lot of y'all didn't make
Speaker 1: noise when she said Clinton hill Brooklyn because you're probably
Speaker 1: thinking of Clinton hill Brooklyn now. But back in the days,
Speaker 1: Clinton hill Brooklyn was very rough. I'll pack that picture
Speaker 1: so right. I started in eighties seven. So when I
Speaker 1: first started, you gotta think Reaganomics crack error. You gotta
Speaker 1: think New York City was different, right, So the hustlers
Speaker 1: were hanging with the seals, The seals were hanging with
Speaker 1: you know, it was just like you go to Bentley's.
Speaker 1: You can see everything at the bar together. Okay, tell
Speaker 1: me just case y'all don't know. Bitley's was one of
Speaker 1: the gloves in New York City, by the way, she
Speaker 1: flost from us by you heap. So when you think
Speaker 1: about the eighties, right, we're talking about it was electric
Speaker 1: in New York. It was like the hustlers. No disrespect
Speaker 1: to artists and rappers and mcs. But a lot of
Speaker 1: that what you see in videos comes from that eighties
Speaker 1: period on the streets of what was happening, right, like you,
Speaker 1: that's very real. Yeah, that's so. So it was just
Speaker 1: like this period where you were hustling trying to figure
Speaker 1: it out. And then at the same time I was graduating.
Speaker 1: I graduated high school. I went to Lackland Bishop in
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Tech. Oh my god, no, no Bishop Lloyd. Okay.
Speaker 1: My other friend who sold cracks went to I went.
Speaker 1: I went to school with Mark Jackson, my Queen's basketball players. Okay.
Speaker 1: So then and Kenny Smith went to Malloyd because we
Speaker 1: were both here. You were right there, um, But that
Speaker 1: whole period was electric because that was to me, when
Speaker 1: a commercialization like it started, the spirit of entrepreneurship kicked
Speaker 1: in hard for hip hop you think about fresh Fest,
Speaker 1: you think about run DMC my Adidas, you think about
Speaker 1: like it's becoming a commercially viable business. Right, and then
Speaker 1: Public Enemy came out that that Oh my god, they
Speaker 1: shut it down and they were speaking to us. Right,
Speaker 1: it was everything we were feeling. So one night at
Speaker 1: the Apollo, after the Apollo, me and my girls went
Speaker 1: to Dapper Dance that nighttime, right after amateur night at
Speaker 1: the Apollo at night at there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: going on there. Right, we walk at Fabric everywhere, he's hustling,
Speaker 1: he's out there like he has lines here. His cheapest,
Speaker 1: the Lord sweatsuit at that time we're talking in the
Speaker 1: eighties was three hundred dollars. You know what that is
Speaker 1: now that's like three g's right, you know what I
Speaker 1: mean from the eighties, that's without anything on it. So
Speaker 1: automatically I just was seeing, Okay, hold on, when you
Speaker 1: say without anything on the logo, without logo s nothing
Speaker 1: three hundred, right, And then it went up from there,
Speaker 1: Like I remember Diane Dixon, right she ran track Olympics.
Speaker 1: Started shout out to Diane. We both were cool, but
Speaker 1: like I remember, and she bought that jacket she bought
Speaker 1: and he was making meat coats, reversible, Gucci everything. He
Speaker 1: was doing it better than they were at that time.
Speaker 1: So for me, the light bulb went off, like, we
Speaker 1: have nothing like this in Brooklyn for us, because y'all
Speaker 1: have to understand, Brooklyn was very different than harlemm was
Speaker 1: very different than Queen's. Burrows were everything, and Queen's we
Speaker 1: had the Coliseum are Harlem you had Dapper Dan. Brooklyn
Speaker 1: you had I'll be square More. Yeah, we have, We
Speaker 1: definitely had that. But that was the only known for girldfronts. No,
Speaker 1: I mean Conda. We we we used to go to
Speaker 1: Canal Street and we used if we went to Canal Street. Look,
Speaker 1: he's still got to Canal Street right now. You look
Speaker 1: at her. I think a lot of people that and also, um,
Speaker 1: the Diamond Exchange, you know. So it was a few options.
Speaker 1: But some cats went to let me ask you something,
Speaker 1: growing up in hip hop, what was the first hip
Speaker 1: hop brand that actually hit mm hmm was it fool? No?
Speaker 1: So for us it was it was For me, I'm
Speaker 1: an answer Walkerware, but I'm gonna say like we were
Speaker 1: so cross colors. So what happened was just the timeline.
Speaker 1: So I opened Fashion and Effect and Carl had Carl
Speaker 1: can I had a tailorship and Flatbush called um it
Speaker 1: was a tailor shop. And then it was him and
Speaker 1: a Z And then in another part of flat Bush
Speaker 1: there was Miguel Navaro, God blessed the Dead, and it
Speaker 1: was the three of us and we were making a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. Now Carl came out to l A
Speaker 1: to try to to get out the production. I'm still
Speaker 1: at Fashion and Effect. And then during this storm growing
Speaker 1: course colors started bubbling Cross Colors and damage was they
Speaker 1: both black old? Cross Colors was damage. Damage was in
Speaker 1: black You're working on my childhood right now. Damage was
Speaker 1: not always stood. Damage was looking at you ross my mind.
Speaker 1: Yeahs doing it was damage to right. So damage was
Speaker 1: not black old. That's not to my knowledge, Holy molo. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, they did a lot of damage in the
Speaker 1: everybody board, like you know, I just like everybody. Cross
Speaker 1: Colors was though. Cross Colors was they were if you remember,
Speaker 1: they were the first brand to be on Black Enterprise
Speaker 1: as the first one hundred million dollar brand it sales,
Speaker 1: So that was like the first one to like break
Speaker 1: through the who's created cross Colors? Carl Jones and TJ.
Speaker 1: Walker to to this. So now what they I mean?
Speaker 1: I was too young at that time to think about.
Speaker 1: I was. I was born in seventy seven, So I
Speaker 1: wore across colors, but I didn't know what the culture
Speaker 1: actually accepting it seems like. So we had this, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had this conversation on the plane. I flew in
Speaker 1: with Cliff. Cliff Love shout out to Cliff. He's saying
Speaker 1: what he actually danced with Houdini and then went on
Speaker 1: to do all this amazing product placement in the field.
Speaker 1: But we were talking about it, and the East Coast
Speaker 1: didn't really wear a cross colors too hard. It wasn't
Speaker 1: it wasn't like um a disk, but they were very colorful.
Speaker 1: And you gotta think early nineties, late eighties New York
Speaker 1: wasn't doing colors like that in a big way, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. It was more the West Coast,
Speaker 1: but some people did wear it, and they wore the
Speaker 1: black red and girl of like sitcoms and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had this product place where strong to me, cross
Speaker 1: color was lit. But I was like eight years old
Speaker 1: and it was cool. It's just different. So I wonder,
Speaker 1: because when we google your name, so many pictures come on,
Speaker 1: so many beautiful pictures of artists that we can never
Speaker 1: ever interview, We can never speak to them. So I
Speaker 1: would like to go to a couple of your pictures
Speaker 1: and ask you, this is the story that you remember
Speaker 1: from this. Obviously were gonna start with Tupac, the Tupac picture.
Speaker 1: When we google you, a Tupac picture comes up. There's
Speaker 1: a couple, isn't There's no there's more than one, but
Speaker 1: it's that one one with the with the jersey on.
Speaker 1: I wasn't there that day. How does this picture happen?
Speaker 1: Did he buy it? Did he call you? Did you
Speaker 1: send it to him? What does this? How does this happen?
Speaker 1: So ed lover mark sex. There was a crew Mark
Speaker 1: Sex was part of No Face. No Face was under
Speaker 1: the umbrella of deaf Jam. Deaf Jam. They had a
Speaker 1: label out of queens right, so like they were at
Speaker 1: lovers people like stretched right. So I knew all of them.
Speaker 1: So I started styling like they had b WP bitches
Speaker 1: with problems um and I was styling at this time too, right.
Speaker 1: I started styling from fashion and Effect. My first styling
Speaker 1: job was with Audio two. I don't care that crashed
Speaker 1: up Bends. That was us and shirt Kings. We did
Speaker 1: that together. So that was their first name's dropping to
Speaker 1: my signs. Let me just let me just for the
Speaker 1: for the for the listeners that don't know, I'm from
Speaker 1: Queens born and raised. At one point, if you didn't
Speaker 1: have a shirt from Shirt Kings, it wasn't flocked. You
Speaker 1: have to actually go there and get your shirt spray painted.
Speaker 1: Absolutely shot, what's your name on it? And you had
Speaker 1: to go back to the hood, like you had to
Speaker 1: go all the way the air and go back to
Speaker 1: the and have your shirt spray painting and be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: le's my name. So yeah, I just wanted we can
Speaker 1: continue shout out to Shirk for sure. They were one
Speaker 1: of the first two. When we talk about first, right,
Speaker 1: shirt King, you can't say not then we gotta say that, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I never looked at shirt King's merchandise. Yeah, but they
Speaker 1: were kind of like they just don't get that credit.
Speaker 1: You're right, they really did everywhere everywhere. But I'm saying
Speaker 1: people were copying that style of the right yeah, so
Speaker 1: um so yeah, so stretching um poc started hanging out
Speaker 1: and I don't remember which came first, but I remember
Speaker 1: seeing him on a set when I was styling b
Speaker 1: WP and then um another time. I think it might
Speaker 1: have been when I went to try out for Juice
Speaker 1: UM in the movie. I just really wanted At this time,
Speaker 1: I was still doing fashion and effects, so I wanted
Speaker 1: to get my clothes out there so anyway I could.
Speaker 1: I was tumbling, so I wore a customed to Lord
Speaker 1: sweatsuit that was crazy with the bucket hat, and I
Speaker 1: had my cards. I didn't matter matter. But I remember
Speaker 1: him stopping me like, yo, where you get that? And
Speaker 1: I was like, I made it and when you say him, yeah,
Speaker 1: gave the card and so um. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if that was the first or the second time, but
Speaker 1: we kept seeing each other to the point where, um,
Speaker 1: but your brand wasn't known yet when you meet, it wasn't.
Speaker 1: I was. I was still doing a lot of styling,
Speaker 1: and I was making suits. At this time. I was
Speaker 1: doing something called the rough and Rugged suit, which was
Speaker 1: like I got that in my notes. Okay, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a heavy denim suit, rough and rugged suit. Cool,
Speaker 1: go ahead, Yeah, but this rough suit caught fire. So
Speaker 1: like crossover, you think about the video with E. P.
Speaker 1: M D. They went like all black with the lord
Speaker 1: like that was that suit. But then we started doing
Speaker 1: it and Denomen just a lot of people started wearing it,
Speaker 1: so that gave me the gumption to start walk away.
Speaker 1: But Pop, it was me seeing him styling a lot
Speaker 1: of different people because we started styling a lot of
Speaker 1: people as well from the store. From the store, so
Speaker 1: what happened was what had happened was we're at the store.
Speaker 1: This is still the eighties and we didn't have the internet,
Speaker 1: we didn't have anything, so word of mouth was the credible.
Speaker 1: So I remember Milking is coming in light and Swatch
Speaker 1: told Milk and he was doing in out and they
Speaker 1: were like, I want in em c light mild milk,
Speaker 1: Milking gazz and Milk is em like brother and then
Speaker 1: Shaggy shine Head right. This is old school but their
Speaker 1: classic and they are legends in Brooklyn. So Brooklyn was
Speaker 1: final in Brooklyn. And then one day a little round kid,
Speaker 1: Biggie Smalls, fifteen years old, he walked in. We had
Speaker 1: the airbrushing, we were doing airbrushing. We were doing a
Speaker 1: crilege fashion and effect. Now Bige was from my neighborhood,
Speaker 1: so I had always see him on the corner coming
Speaker 1: out the train. We'd always not but I didn't know him,
Speaker 1: but this air brush shirt stopped him. Came in the window,
Speaker 1: found out he was you know, his love was hip
Speaker 1: hop and he was still like trying to get some
Speaker 1: He wasn't, he was just wrapping and he was like
Speaker 1: talking to me and real cool. And that's that he
Speaker 1: started supporting us, and that's how we built those relationships.
Speaker 1: So from that, Milk came back. That's how I started
Speaker 1: finding out about Stilin. After we did that cover, he
Speaker 1: was like, can you guys style our video? And I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I didn't even know what Stalind was,
Speaker 1: but I was like, yeah, if we get paid for
Speaker 1: it too. So we styled the video and um, it
Speaker 1: wasn't that one um. But from that I saw, wow,
Speaker 1: that's another revenue stream branch and we needed them all.
Speaker 1: So I was like, we're gonna start styling, and uh,
Speaker 1: that's how we started Stalind. We did um Shock, we
Speaker 1: did um everybody's from Shock took like with his VIDEOSO nickings,
Speaker 1: UM like they a lot of walk away and that
Speaker 1: we said, Um, we did a lot. We did l
Speaker 1: Cool Jas Tour. We did like from one end of
Speaker 1: it to the that all naughty by nature. I stowed
Speaker 1: them for years, one dmc um and only walk Away. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was very ambiguous on purpose because I remember having
Speaker 1: a conversation with my father when I was first decided
Speaker 1: I was gonna go for it with walk Away, and
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't know if they'll accept a
Speaker 1: woman making men's clothes, you know, And he was like, well,
Speaker 1: if you got a chance that, don't do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I just was like, let the productly, just make
Speaker 1: dope product, put it out there, Let that be the
Speaker 1: star and let people rocket. Like we never had official ambassadors.
Speaker 1: It was just love at that time with hip hop,
Speaker 1: Like hip hop was energy feed energy, and we were
Speaker 1: all building and growing at that time. So it was
Speaker 1: just like I believe in you, you believe in me.
Speaker 1: Less rock, but you were officially styling them, right, I
Speaker 1: was styling some of them and then some wasn't. Style.
Speaker 1: Was the first first bird, first one giving the flowers
Speaker 1: right now, very first one that was famous or a
Speaker 1: couple of the first Okay, So I would say milk,
Speaker 1: I would say audio two, I would say Sean had
Speaker 1: and Shaggy damn Sean, and let's make And then right
Speaker 1: after that pop and just like all the you know,
Speaker 1: like the ground. I met him when he was a
Speaker 1: roadie and then he became that and then he kept going.
Speaker 1: Then when he did Above the Ram, he called and
Speaker 1: he was like, Yo, I'm doing this movie. I want
Speaker 1: you to do the clothes for the movie. So I
Speaker 1: remember him. I met him and we went to the trailer.
Speaker 1: I met the costume designer the costume war job, but Karen,
Speaker 1: and he was telling her I want her to do
Speaker 1: all all and she was like, she can't do everything.
Speaker 1: He was like, well, I want all black designers. M h.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I got to do um the camouflages outfit
Speaker 1: in that that's walk away and also that hooked vest
Speaker 1: that's seen with him in the grave with the pants
Speaker 1: and the shirt. I did that and then I was like,
Speaker 1: if you need more black designers, call five thousand and
Speaker 1: one Flavors. That's how they got in it to night Yoke.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie like I said, Um, I always
Speaker 1: thought you had it. I don't want to say like
Speaker 1: a given. I thought you hadn't made. I thought if
Speaker 1: you was a black designer like you came, you came
Speaker 1: with l L like like you walk in well, just
Speaker 1: get a deal. Don't walk aware, Um, you just just
Speaker 1: had tupac and just walk and you guys just had
Speaker 1: a deal. I had no idea to struggle that you guys,
Speaker 1: I mean researching you like it was a better sweet
Speaker 1: because some of it. I cried and I was like, really,
Speaker 1: this is what black designers go through. And and when
Speaker 1: you hit Kanye going on the rant and you just
Speaker 1: like like, well, you don't know what's going on. And
Speaker 1: then and then you actually listen to the names that
Speaker 1: he was saying and you go back and research a
Speaker 1: little bit, You're like, he has a point. I had
Speaker 1: no I fucking did. It's been it's been a journey
Speaker 1: for sure, add putting a woman into that equation and
Speaker 1: then being Blexican black in Mexican and not being and
Speaker 1: I was black in Mexican or black and for the weekend,
Speaker 1: Oh she said Plexican. I've never heard that term that
Speaker 1: had put it in a drink champ. So wait a minute,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, hold on home, because I before we
Speaker 1: get into the woman far because we have to get
Speaker 1: into the world park, right, But I just want to
Speaker 1: people you to describe how hard it is for a
Speaker 1: designer this period yeah, first, and then I want to
Speaker 1: get it designed to end in being a woman. So
Speaker 1: just okay, because this is us from the outside looking
Speaker 1: at this is early before hip hop fashion is you
Speaker 1: got to realize if we see it on video music box,
Speaker 1: we think it's it Like, it doesn't matter if it's
Speaker 1: a headband, if it's if it's if it's a pouch.
Speaker 1: If we see it on video music box, we're saying,
Speaker 1: these people made it. So starting your brand, first of all,
Speaker 1: we had the store. The store was to keep people fresh.
Speaker 1: Then you started styling. How much courage did it take
Speaker 1: to say, you know what, I don't want to be
Speaker 1: I don't want to be competing because I think you
Speaker 1: said you had a fashion show and Jimmy Jazz you invited.
Speaker 1: I don't. They invited. But that's a lot of courage.
Speaker 1: So how do you develop that hervish to say, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm going from? Stalin took this is this
Speaker 1: is me and I want to invite these people. So
Speaker 1: I think that honestly, I had a as I was
Speaker 1: naive to fear, and I think my parents and I
Speaker 1: now had a good support system. When I say that,
Speaker 1: I mean I grew up my father was in the
Speaker 1: music industry. So my father I grew up as a
Speaker 1: jazz baby. He managed a lot of jazz grades, like
Speaker 1: we called Tyner Gary Bart's, and then by the time
Speaker 1: I was a teenager, he started managing d Train, Jazz
Speaker 1: jay Z, all these people my pops was working with.
Speaker 1: So I grew up watching him literally danced to his
Speaker 1: own beat, Like, Okay, I think what you just said
Speaker 1: just went over my head. Did you say jazz jazz
Speaker 1: z like jazz? Oh do my jazz music? Okay, alright, cool? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he just so my pops. Right, we were in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: and I used to hanging Marcy and I heard about
Speaker 1: these kids that could wrap their ass off and and
Speaker 1: um yeah, I gave my father his demo and then
Speaker 1: they started and we were all cool, you know, because
Speaker 1: you also got jay z and so walk away. That's
Speaker 1: how that all happened, you know what I mean. It
Speaker 1: was just like a family affair. And then um guru
Speaker 1: Ye moved in and was my next door neighbor right
Speaker 1: there when he first came to Brooklyn from huh, And
Speaker 1: so that's how we got cool premier all of us,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, he was Keith Okay, he was Keith
Speaker 1: and yeah and so and then context wise, Keith lived,
Speaker 1: um easy mobile living next door to me in the
Speaker 1: next building. So when Park was doing that because I'm
Speaker 1: giving this, I'm giving you Hill like Rosie Perez lived
Speaker 1: on next block and she still does, you know, still
Speaker 1: black Knock. So like the neighborhood was very creative and
Speaker 1: we were all like on this, like Voltron is this
Speaker 1: is what do? The right thing was based out of
Speaker 1: that the area because Spike was right there too. Crazy
Speaker 1: This is crazy a documentary about that neighborhood. In that neighborhood,
Speaker 1: Wesley lived over there. Like I love how everywhere it
Speaker 1: was a special time, right yeah, Like I wasn't trying
Speaker 1: to name drop seriously, I was trying to give you
Speaker 1: context of like what was happening that energy. But getting
Speaker 1: back to what you said, I think that, um yeah,
Speaker 1: it just was that time and um it was special.
Speaker 1: So just this just this commercial, right, this is where
Speaker 1: I think hip hop took a turn in fashion. L
Speaker 1: does his commercial for Gap I've been leaving this but
Speaker 1: again and Gap blue shirt on or was it a
Speaker 1: football has? Yeah? So me as an outside of looking in,
Speaker 1: did that help the fashion industry? What kind of message
Speaker 1: was that when he did that, because obviously you know,
Speaker 1: especially now now you see Gap doing business with Kanye West,
Speaker 1: but this was actually the first time we've seen Gay
Speaker 1: do business with people that look like us. But then
Speaker 1: the business that did it look like us. He sent
Speaker 1: a message to us, whether it was the shirt that
Speaker 1: we still for us by us, what kind of message
Speaker 1: did it send into the fashion industry? And we had
Speaker 1: damon and yeah, I'm gonna answer that first, and then
Speaker 1: I want to double back to how hard it was
Speaker 1: as a designer, because I don't think I gave that
Speaker 1: due justice an answer if that's cool, man. The message
Speaker 1: was so strong, it was everything. That commercial was everything.
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I saw it, I was like,
Speaker 1: yes for the win for us, because you talk about
Speaker 1: how hard it was. We had to figure out ways
Speaker 1: to make something out of nothing every time because we
Speaker 1: didn't have the same dollars marketing dollars as Ralph Lauren
Speaker 1: as Tommy Hill figure, so we had to fit in
Speaker 1: the culture however we could get it, You're gonna get it,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So that was brilliant to me,
Speaker 1: and it was so clever because they let it happen
Speaker 1: and they were so clueless to the culture that they
Speaker 1: didn't but they didn't know whoever whoever did that add
Speaker 1: I'm sure that commercial they probably got fired after, but
Speaker 1: it was it was brilliant for Foobil and it was
Speaker 1: just like such a message to the culture like we're here,
Speaker 1: went on apologetic and the best, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It was so dope to me because that was like
Speaker 1: the first time that we actually I felt like because
Speaker 1: now people started to research food, you will see us.
Speaker 1: That was regardless, you're gonna get this work and a
Speaker 1: gap ad or not, you know right. So so a
Speaker 1: lot of people started to realize at that very moment
Speaker 1: that rappers are not just brand ambassador's just people that
Speaker 1: is promoting the product, but rappers are actually a part
Speaker 1: of the brand absolute and if we if we if
Speaker 1: we have to talk about that, we cannot say that,
Speaker 1: um we can't say fool without because he was to
Speaker 1: meet the foundation, I still have their first act with
Speaker 1: them in front of the house, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, like l L got them to the point
Speaker 1: when the world knew about them. That gap Ad was
Speaker 1: a big part of it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But like he pushed and it's almost like a nod
Speaker 1: to the culture. Right, So it was it was besides
Speaker 1: them having dope product, That's what it was. You said
Speaker 1: that first Adam, you said you got to still at
Speaker 1: the first football ad and what is that old in
Speaker 1: front of like, um, I don't know if it's Damon's
Speaker 1: or one of the queen's house. And they got the
Speaker 1: hanging out the car and it's quite too was there? Man?
Speaker 1: You gotta stop downplaying rappers influence this man. So wait,
Speaker 1: you asked me about the designer. Let me just answer
Speaker 1: that real quiz. It's hard as hell for a design them.
Speaker 1: And it's really hard because it's hard because the word
Speaker 1: it's noise of mind. Brooklyn. This is it's just Brooklyn
Speaker 1: to worry about it. She's good, she's good. It's just
Speaker 1: very it's so competitive now it's way more competitive than
Speaker 1: than when I started. When I started, there wasn't a
Speaker 1: street where there wasn't urban fashion. There was nothing. It
Speaker 1: was like going into the wild wah West, like it
Speaker 1: wasn't there. So we were literally creating it right by
Speaker 1: trusting our instincts. I started, I reversed engineered into the
Speaker 1: business because I didn't have a blueprint. I was literally
Speaker 1: feeling hip hop and like listening to how we felt
Speaker 1: and expressing that. And that's how my team was expressing it,
Speaker 1: and that's what translated into the clothing. Right. But we
Speaker 1: couldn't go in the store and buy anything that looked
Speaker 1: like us, that felt like us at that moment. It
Speaker 1: wasn't there yet. And the popping stores was A and
Speaker 1: s at that time, right, may you know about that? Okay?
Speaker 1: And that's that's was like Macy's like that, you know,
Speaker 1: So it was and that's what's the first it was.
Speaker 1: It was and that's the all Mans. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you remember the all that was on thirty fourth Street.
Speaker 1: That was like, um, that was that was like a
Speaker 1: Macy's too. But yeah, so so it was really hard.
Speaker 1: And in the beginning for us, it was really hard
Speaker 1: because nobody believed in hip hop. So the bias were like,
Speaker 1: it's a fat it's gonna go away, it's not gonna last.
Speaker 1: Why should we boy this while you have the Lord
Speaker 1: Sweats was as expensive as Felis. Who are you? You know? Like,
Speaker 1: so we had to constantly tell him, no, it's gonna last.
Speaker 1: We had to do tricks like I can remember, UM,
Speaker 1: to get in the doors. We were like one of
Speaker 1: the first all canal cross colors, UM, Triple five, Soul,
Speaker 1: P and B. There are a few of us, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Um, But we had to kick
Speaker 1: in those doors to open them up so that they
Speaker 1: became accepted in mainstream. And one of the tricks we
Speaker 1: did I can't remember. They were black Dead Dead. They
Speaker 1: have to black and brown, black and brown, UM and
Speaker 1: an Asian and a black shoutout to share and brew anyway.
Speaker 1: They they we had to really fight for that space.
Speaker 1: We had to because it wasn't accepted, Like the music
Speaker 1: was making money, but they thought it was gonna go away.
Speaker 1: They weren't believing in it yet. So I remember going
Speaker 1: to death Jam walking in one of the room's funny
Speaker 1: story and it was a room full of interns. I
Speaker 1: was working with Deaf Jahm at this time, doing a
Speaker 1: lot of styling and stuff, and I came in the room.
Speaker 1: It was all interms calling asking for a record to
Speaker 1: he played in these record stores, like the records stores.
Speaker 1: They wanted to break these records. And a light bulb
Speaker 1: went off and so I went back to the office,
Speaker 1: like find the top ten stores in the top ten
Speaker 1: cities in every hood, every hood start find out where
Speaker 1: they shop right now, like the viny styles of the world,
Speaker 1: like that, you know exactly. So we found out right
Speaker 1: with the ten cities we wanted to be in, the
Speaker 1: ten cities we needed to be in. Detroit was one
Speaker 1: of them at that time. Yeah, Detroit was one of them.
Speaker 1: Chicago was one of them. No, not then, not yet.
Speaker 1: But we we called them for like six months and
Speaker 1: then we showed up with our little sweatsuits and they're like,
Speaker 1: will you being everybody's been calling, we couldn't find you
Speaker 1: and stuff the ones that didn't accept us that. When
Speaker 1: that didn't work, we say, let's put it in the
Speaker 1: window for Look, we're gonna leave six suits with you.
Speaker 1: Just put them, give us real estate, put them one
Speaker 1: in the window, put them in the front, don't put
Speaker 1: us at the back, don't don't pay. This is what
Speaker 1: I like you to your punk up slignment. We're gonna
Speaker 1: come back in a week. If they don't sell, no
Speaker 1: harm done. And then we would saying six of our
Speaker 1: friends in that week to buy them. So just blow out, right.
Speaker 1: So between those two tricks we built our market. Because
Speaker 1: once they sell, they believe in it and they started
Speaker 1: selling it for you. But they gotta believe in it.
Speaker 1: So you know, that's some of the stuff we had
Speaker 1: to do. But we just had to create create that magic,
Speaker 1: just like hip hop. Let me. We had grand Master
Speaker 1: kaz he right, and he was talking about the commonality
Speaker 1: between punk rock and hip hop coming in in the
Speaker 1: fashion side. I'm thinking it looks like the like the
Speaker 1: skateboarding world was doing urban fashion as well. Was there
Speaker 1: ever any Yes, it was an intersection. I think that
Speaker 1: people missed that part of it in the early nineties
Speaker 1: the late eighties, like skate surf and hip hop all
Speaker 1: like think about I don't know if you remember, oppificly, yeah,
Speaker 1: we all about so you know about it. Alexander Queens
Speaker 1: que in them all, the guy lives out Here Now
Speaker 1: started specifically got to start and I think his sons
Speaker 1: and artist now but whatever. That was one of those
Speaker 1: brands that like exactly, it was a lot of them.
Speaker 1: And then it was the show called the a SR Right.
Speaker 1: A SR Show was like the Magic Show. Magic Show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a huge show that comes to everybody from
Speaker 1: around the world comes to shop that has a story
Speaker 1: in Vegas in Vegas, still in Vegas, and literally the
Speaker 1: ASR Show was like the Skate Search Show. But then
Speaker 1: hip hop was like we need to be there too,
Speaker 1: so because literally you could have on an opie shirt
Speaker 1: and then you can have more your denim overside shorts,
Speaker 1: and then you have on your kicks. So it was
Speaker 1: just like mixing it all together and everybody was vibing together.
Speaker 1: That's how the Lower east Side vibes were or you know,
Speaker 1: um Frisco Oakland like those it was. It was that
Speaker 1: was the vibe. Let me ask you a fashion tip
Speaker 1: and they're gonna go to the QuickTime with Slime. You're
Speaker 1: coming back to the Magic Show and then Vegas, Um
Speaker 1: can you We're NIKEE? What Adidas? Or is that a
Speaker 1: stuff for I feel like I don't feel right. It's
Speaker 1: all school. See I'm old school, so that doesn't feel
Speaker 1: right for me. Like it's like you gotta rocket all together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that looks wrong. I'm just saying I've been seeing a
Speaker 1: lot of my fashion novels. But it's it's there's no
Speaker 1: limits anymore. Like that's the thing the other day, sitting
Speaker 1: there with easy everything on in a Nike sock that
Speaker 1: just bother Yeah, that's serious. Yeah, that's serious. I don't
Speaker 1: even go to the gym like that. I'll be looking
Speaker 1: because I'm like, someone's gonna take a picture at me
Speaker 1: with with just sucking pull a sock on. It feels
Speaker 1: like you're set tripping or some ship. Amen, listen, that's
Speaker 1: fashion tripping. That sing for sight tripping. So you cannot
Speaker 1: do that. Let's just tell us to the young boys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you never want a knife. If that coming from
Speaker 1: from my era, it was a no no, because they're
Speaker 1: wilding out here. It depends on what you repping, like
Speaker 1: if you get money or you're getting a check from
Speaker 1: the datas or you're getting check from Mike keeping insistent. Okay,
Speaker 1: now let me let me just ask you this that's
Speaker 1: on the lower end brand. Can you wear Louis what go? Y'all?
Speaker 1: You can mix it up? Is that not racist? That
Speaker 1: sounds like a new second. I'm not asking for me,
Speaker 1: asking me, asking for somebody. I got to think about
Speaker 1: you can think about that, because this is true. I
Speaker 1: see people rock up duty Louis hat, Fendi hat. I
Speaker 1: might have did it with me, but I've seen what
Speaker 1: I've seen people repeat offenders. I'm one. I made one felony.
Speaker 1: You never said like people because my my Instagram they're
Speaker 1: very negative people. So when I post it, they're like,
Speaker 1: you're going on the Gucci belt. But I see people
Speaker 1: get away when it's designer. But if I do Adidas,
Speaker 1: I don't yes, and I put on a Jordan's hat,
Speaker 1: they're talking about my mother you what are you doing?
Speaker 1: I think that might be more men like tipping on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's probably people I know, like why are you doing this?
Speaker 1: But if they were offended hat, what a Gucci belt,
Speaker 1: they could get away with it. Well. So I was
Speaker 1: also gonna say it depends, isn't like logo logo logo
Speaker 1: because you can have one of a Gucci shirt and
Speaker 1: nobody knows it's Gucci and then have a belt on
Speaker 1: that just you know what I mean, And people are
Speaker 1: like this one part it's understated. Another part is overstay
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? You could do that like less,
Speaker 1: it's more sometimes I think you can mix it up
Speaker 1: with it's not all in your face, Lets get away
Speaker 1: with ship. Because I also heard you say that you
Speaker 1: thought that that was the person that brought out the logos,
Speaker 1: like when the logos actually came so you can't really
Speaker 1: have a real friendly and then Nike pants on with
Speaker 1: the same type of logos that just bothers you. Right,
Speaker 1: it doesn't sit right with me. But can you tell
Speaker 1: the people that did it wrong? He persisted, go hard? Right?
Speaker 1: Can you go hid? No hard? I think that, Um,
Speaker 1: so it's hard to do that. That's like what I
Speaker 1: should say to you, is it's like censorship, me saying that, Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll walk away headphones, go with T shirt. I didn't
Speaker 1: had on and didn't had on No, but the shoes
Speaker 1: wouldn't matter at that point. Then he had on car
Speaker 1: hard shorts, the car start yeah, get away. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: sunked up. I think I sunked up my analogy. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't meant to be so now the Magic Show, yep,
Speaker 1: the Magic Show was legendary. Now let me actually talking
Speaker 1: to going kind of mad, kind of connected to the
Speaker 1: Magic Show, but asking about how things evolved for you guys.
Speaker 1: I had a story. That's how we met. I opened
Speaker 1: up a store with my my partner he gives called
Speaker 1: Crazy Goods here in Miami because it was hard to
Speaker 1: get these brands. Um and even then, it was hard
Speaker 1: to get the brands down here so and we got
Speaker 1: we had where in each ye uh was some of
Speaker 1: the other brands that Echo was at that time when
Speaker 1: they couldn't with the tapes, Mecca Esco. Yeah, so we
Speaker 1: was trying to get all that stuff. But this is
Speaker 1: the problem we ran into that retail wasn't really my passion.
Speaker 1: I was doing this to create a hub for hip
Speaker 1: hop locally. But then I quickly found out I really
Speaker 1: don't like retail because the only way they were selling
Speaker 1: to us was in packs like Costco. You had to
Speaker 1: buy Impacts pre packs because we were young men with
Speaker 1: no credit in retail credit and they were and they
Speaker 1: were and they were forcing us to buy these packs
Speaker 1: in order to carry these brands, and they were pre packed,
Speaker 1: and then they were sending us all the stuff they
Speaker 1: couldn't sell that was usually sweaters and pants that were
Speaker 1: forty five ways or for whatever, forty eight ways. That
Speaker 1: and I was catering to high school kids at the time,
Speaker 1: and eventually it wasn't it wasn't even worse, you know,
Speaker 1: And then we lasted till about thousand until finally the
Speaker 1: department stores locally started buying. And then that made it
Speaker 1: even worse because then they brought down the price and
Speaker 1: we had to hike up the price because of the packs.
Speaker 1: You know. So did you guys know that that was
Speaker 1: happening and was it because it almost felt to us like, man,
Speaker 1: do these brands not know that we're all the culture here,
Speaker 1: let's let's win. So basically, what you're saying in in
Speaker 1: in a smaller fail is walk Away was priced at
Speaker 1: one price in New York City, but when it came
Speaker 1: to the South. No, no, no, that's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It made it hard for a small boutique hip hop
Speaker 1: clothing store to eat, to have to be in business,
Speaker 1: is what I'm saying. This is good. Yeah, yeah, reading people, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, did you guys, like what was your thinking
Speaker 1: knowing that that was going on? So let me explain
Speaker 1: it back into that because I definitely feel your pain
Speaker 1: for us being young designers. Um being a designer period.
Speaker 1: We needed to pay our bills, right, So black and
Speaker 1: brown designers, here's another challenge we have. There's something called
Speaker 1: minimums when you produce in fashion at the factories, and
Speaker 1: the minimums then weren't low. Just like when you go
Speaker 1: to buy a house, sometimes black and brown have to
Speaker 1: pay more and then so the same thing, like if
Speaker 1: you want to be in this business, we need twelve
Speaker 1: units per color in your order. We have to sell
Speaker 1: into that. And when you are ordering like I want
Speaker 1: one small, I want three mediums, I want it's very
Speaker 1: hard for us to do business with the factories that way.
Speaker 1: So we have to buy and bolt, and then we
Speaker 1: have to do our homework in the map. We got
Speaker 1: to look at the averages around the country and say
Speaker 1: mediums and largest are selling, the most smalls are selling,
Speaker 1: the least double x is are selling. This was the business,
Speaker 1: not just us, it's everybody, right, So you put you
Speaker 1: put together your side scale and say this is how
Speaker 1: I think my hood is gonna buy my customer um
Speaker 1: and then you say, I need to get dollars in
Speaker 1: a minimum order if you want to play, because if
Speaker 1: it's not that, because here's what was happening on our end.
Speaker 1: Like I'll give you an example I had. I had
Speaker 1: a distribution almost zeal a few times. One was with
Speaker 1: Threats for Life with Crods Colors. Mom was with um
Speaker 1: Usa Classics which they had Ever Last Dance, Scanned, Fat Farm,
Speaker 1: all these people, but when you deal with them, they
Speaker 1: want big numbers it's just like the record and you know, distributions.
Speaker 1: They want you to sell. Now I'm want to dance
Speaker 1: because it's not independent totally anymore. Right, i gotta make
Speaker 1: them happy. But at the same time, I'm not wharring
Speaker 1: my brand. I don't want to intense stores on every block.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna make sure that if I'm gonna build
Speaker 1: with you in your store, I'm treating you right. But
Speaker 1: you're gonna be exclusive in your hood. But now you
Speaker 1: gotta buy into my business and you gotta build with
Speaker 1: me invest um, and that's the only way it's gonna
Speaker 1: be sustainable. Now I have to have a conversation with
Speaker 1: the retailer because he doesn't want to sell you. He
Speaker 1: wants to sell the guy down the block that can
Speaker 1: do bigger numbers, because that's all they care about. And
Speaker 1: I have to be like, nah, he's official, We're gonna
Speaker 1: go with this guy. So we had to have minimums
Speaker 1: to pay bills. And then on the other side, often
Speaker 1: my business was percentage, so I took a loss a
Speaker 1: certain percentage. No one I was gonna take a lord
Speaker 1: because dudes were buying off their credit cards or doing
Speaker 1: C O D at that time, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people was just luck, you know, like I'm investing in
Speaker 1: the hood, like they're investing in me. I pray they
Speaker 1: pay their bills. But sometimes a lot of the times
Speaker 1: that came back, they bounced them and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So that court that's costs of business, you know. So
Speaker 1: I had to write that off, but just keep trusting
Speaker 1: the hood and then fight with the dudes that were
Speaker 1: the distributors. So all that stuff was happening. That that's
Speaker 1: the business. So as I watching the documentary, right, I
Speaker 1: seen Mesa talk about times where she styled a person
Speaker 1: and then they took the style from her and I
Speaker 1: didn't call her back and didn't when it came time
Speaker 1: for so I have to ask you the same thing.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the time you styled the artists, and the
Speaker 1: artists blew up, and then it came time for them
Speaker 1: to like show love back and say, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm doing the shoot in Paris and I can have you,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna hire pepper lip pew. Yeah, I'm sure
Speaker 1: they were. I'm because you're not drinking. So usually this
Speaker 1: is an easy question. So um, no I care say,
Speaker 1: like per se, because I did have a lot of
Speaker 1: love when it came to the tribe. But I walked
Speaker 1: away at the height of what was perceived success. For
Speaker 1: the next question, yeah, so I didn't really have that
Speaker 1: problem per se. I think that, Um, it was more
Speaker 1: problems like honestly being a woman in a man's world.
Speaker 1: Sometimes not getting paid, like trying not to pay me um,
Speaker 1: And I had to put that ugly head down to
Speaker 1: make sure I got paid, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: No one actually front I never got fronted on in
Speaker 1: that way because we leaned out of the styling and
Speaker 1: really focused on the business of walk Away after a
Speaker 1: while and did more of that than anything. Nobody gave
Speaker 1: walk Away too, and then they blew up afterwards and
Speaker 1: they didn't want to wear walk Away anymore. Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: sure that happened. I mean, because this time around it's
Speaker 1: a lot harder than it was last time. So when
Speaker 1: you asked before about designers in and designers now, there
Speaker 1: are a lot more designers and we're living in the
Speaker 1: age of technology, and so it's a d D and
Speaker 1: a lot of times the last thing you see is
Speaker 1: what you love. It's not like um, loyalty anymore. You
Speaker 1: know where I came up in loyalty in a different
Speaker 1: time of like brands meaning something of substance. I think
Speaker 1: you got fashion over, you got all this disposable clothing. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, like to me that for us by us
Speaker 1: was real. It's a different time now, Like in terms
Speaker 1: of the thought process of like I wanna I'll see you,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna wrap my people. You know, I don't see
Speaker 1: that so much anymore. You know. I think we were
Speaker 1: trending last year, but I think it's going back to
Speaker 1: business as usual, So you know, I see it. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: last year was our best year. Yet we had to
Speaker 1: kill a year and walk away, you know. But I
Speaker 1: just think that, Um, I want to see how sustainable
Speaker 1: that is for us US, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like in terms of black and brown designers. Now, you
Speaker 1: you had like to what we like to call to
Speaker 1: Dave Chappelle dro meaning you walked away at your height.
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't understand that. Like, like I
Speaker 1: was hanging with Dave Chappelle the other day and I'll
Speaker 1: never ask him this, and he'll just just voluntarily say, man,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to leave, And I just mean I
Speaker 1: was looking at him because I was such a fan
Speaker 1: what he was doing. I don't want to act like
Speaker 1: why the funk would you walk away? Or why do
Speaker 1: you do that? But I got you here so so um,
Speaker 1: because that was the rumor, like why would she walk away?
Speaker 1: The company is doing great clothing and selling you know,
Speaker 1: why did you walk away? When you walked away? From
Speaker 1: walking away? M hmm. I think that I came up.
Speaker 1: I started in this business right when it was. I
Speaker 1: was twenty one when I started with Fashion and Effect,
Speaker 1: so I was still junior in college and I literally,
Speaker 1: you still look twenty one, by the way. I'll take that,
Speaker 1: all right, I'll take that, thank you, thank you, thank you. Um.
Speaker 1: But I started at twenty one and and it was
Speaker 1: just me falling in love with hip hop literally and
Speaker 1: and no one. I didn't want to work for someone else, right,
Speaker 1: and then I found something I was like, I can
Speaker 1: definitely I was a hustler, so I knew how to
Speaker 1: elongate in this. But I want you to answer this question.
Speaker 1: But was there any other women inspirations that owned that
Speaker 1: company at the time? Yeah, it wasn't, okay, So so
Speaker 1: now fast forward. I watched it become this multibillion dollar business,
Speaker 1: and I watched a lot of designers get screwed over that.
Speaker 1: I've met with a lot the designers. I would always say,
Speaker 1: hold your trademarks. Those are your master's right. But a
Speaker 1: lot of people didn't understand it. I got sometimes, if
Speaker 1: you are in love with something and you get to
Speaker 1: see the inside navigations of it, you can fall out
Speaker 1: of love, you know. And the fashion business mirrored the
Speaker 1: music business. So to give you context, in the nineties,
Speaker 1: all the black music label divisions started closing closing up.
Speaker 1: You remember that, Yeah, And shortly after that they started
Speaker 1: saying urban fashion was going to be dead, the decline
Speaker 1: of urban fashion. I saw the writing on the wall.
Speaker 1: I started telling everybody. I had something called Alliance of
Speaker 1: Minority Designer where I brought us all together, like I'm
Speaker 1: buying ten thousand yards, you're buying ten thousand yards. Let's
Speaker 1: buying together. Let's build like yeah for like dinnim or whatever,
Speaker 1: just the power together. Like if we do this together,
Speaker 1: we will be the industry because we will all getting men.
Speaker 1: But I think early twenties, no one it was a
Speaker 1: d D without the internet. You know what they are
Speaker 1: at the bar, like let's live you know, so fast forward.
Speaker 1: This is after Mike wlling my stuff in the ring
Speaker 1: like it was at the height of Mike Tyson. Mike
Speaker 1: Tyson views a little crazy, okasticking regular microphone Psten talk
Speaker 1: about it was all these moments that led up to
Speaker 1: this space. But I felt very heavy. It was all
Speaker 1: about the business I was watching. Was it was a lot.
Speaker 1: It was a lot. It was related everything. I related
Speaker 1: everything like it was. Everyone was congratulating me, and you
Speaker 1: you can't even understand this, but literally it's gonna sound crazy,
Speaker 1: but the seasons were changing and I wasn't even seeing
Speaker 1: that because I was so focused and so like stressed
Speaker 1: on what was ahead that I wasn't seeing. I wasn't
Speaker 1: even I could see you and not see you. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't me being flaky or stuck up. It was
Speaker 1: just that my mind and somewhere else, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And I had to catch myself, like everyone's
Speaker 1: congratulating me, but I feel like sho. I had a
Speaker 1: New York showroom in l A and a Vegas show
Speaker 1: room and I'm I'm traveling all the time. Everything's it
Speaker 1: was all over the place, and I I wasn't being creative.
Speaker 1: Number One, I went to magic it looked like a
Speaker 1: ship show. It was just like a circus, everybody trying
Speaker 1: to get free product. It was just who could have
Speaker 1: a bigger booth. No disrespect to everybody, but it just
Speaker 1: became this big marketing vehicle of like who had the
Speaker 1: biggest guns. But we weren't doing business anymore. And I
Speaker 1: saw the decline coming because I had already seen what
Speaker 1: was happening in black music. It was just a ripple
Speaker 1: effect because fashion and music are the two biggest forms
Speaker 1: of inspiration and for us it's our culture. So I
Speaker 1: knew what was coming. Like I just was like, I'm out,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like, I just I chose me.
Speaker 1: That's literally what happened. Because I was almost afraid to
Speaker 1: walk away at that point because I was so attached
Speaker 1: at that moment to walk away. It's like when I
Speaker 1: feel like, it's like that sound of walk away. So
Speaker 1: let me ask you bouncing around someone coming by the brand? No,
Speaker 1: I owned it. I owned all the equity that I
Speaker 1: just shelved it to take my USA. And the way
Speaker 1: that you describe magic is the way that the music
Speaker 1: conferences started to turn into how hard so magic? You
Speaker 1: buy booth um, It's it's an approval process. You buy
Speaker 1: a booth um like the Grammys. Almost it's it's your Grammys,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, and you come and I
Speaker 1: remember the first time we did it, we didn't even
Speaker 1: have a They didn't put us on the floor because
Speaker 1: it was no street where anything. It was just like,
Speaker 1: we don't know where to put you. So it was myself,
Speaker 1: it was Karl can I and it was Cross Colors,
Speaker 1: and they gave us a conference room right outside of it,
Speaker 1: and we we made a booth. We made a booth
Speaker 1: that was a jail cell, and we sent out invite
Speaker 1: and said come serve your sentence, and we invited all
Speaker 1: the buyers and they all came. We stood like two
Speaker 1: million at that show, and then we were on the
Speaker 1: floor after that. That was like when it first started.
Speaker 1: So let me actually, was there other black designers on
Speaker 1: the floor that wasn't you all but black designers that
Speaker 1: wasn't hip hop? I had no idea. I can't even
Speaker 1: confirm that. Okay, okay, that's that's cool. I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to picture. But what I can't confirm is it felt
Speaker 1: like you can hear a pin dropt at Magic At
Speaker 1: that point, it was stepped through. It was like no
Speaker 1: disrespect used car salesman, a table, quiet his hiss a shirt,
Speaker 1: here's a jacket. You know. It was quiet. It was
Speaker 1: very wonder bread and was fooboo bigger at that time.
Speaker 1: Fool wasn't out yet, it wasn't even there yet. Holy.
Speaker 1: I remember when they first was started and they came
Speaker 1: that like I met with them. Yea, wow, it was
Speaker 1: coming to you before they started. Puffy bad Boy, Like
Speaker 1: a lot of people came and talk when they were starting,
Speaker 1: when they started their coming. Okay, how about rocket with
Speaker 1: rocker wear? Damn. A matter of fact, I told yeah,
Speaker 1: damn and me talked a lot. And when he tried
Speaker 1: to do it himself. I remember when they want. I
Speaker 1: was at John Street. They were downtown. Um, they had
Speaker 1: an office downtown, and he decided he wasn't gonna do
Speaker 1: it his his own, but he bought like seven machines
Speaker 1: and he called me like, yo, you want these seven machines,
Speaker 1: Like I'm not gonna do it myself. I came and
Speaker 1: got him and yeah, hold on, he took the machines
Speaker 1: off his hand. Yeah, I took him like he was.
Speaker 1: He was like, I can't do this myself, you know,
Speaker 1: like I guess he tried. Wait wait a minute, kids,
Speaker 1: that is clueless, clueless that wants to start fashion. Hold on,
Speaker 1: hold on, hold on. Are you saying you guys could
Speaker 1: literally have your own machines and make your own clothes yourself.
Speaker 1: That's right, Get the funk out of here. I never
Speaker 1: really kind of. I always thought, you guys will make
Speaker 1: a T shirt or something, sitting everything else to China. Well,
Speaker 1: you can do that too. But when we started, literally
Speaker 1: we started out of our I started out of my
Speaker 1: house before I had this store, and literally I made
Speaker 1: my own cutting table um. I was not sewing, but
Speaker 1: I was designing. And then our success leaves clues. So
Speaker 1: I had borrowed some adapts, tailors and some other people
Speaker 1: that I knew. Bell had people uptown in Harlem and
Speaker 1: people that were doing it, doing what we loved, and
Speaker 1: I was like, that's the formula right there, So come
Speaker 1: over here, this is how I want to design. This
Speaker 1: is what I want to do. Can you make it?
Speaker 1: So we we bought the fabric. We were the creative
Speaker 1: directors and the designers, and then we we set up
Speaker 1: the tables. We bought the machines we could see what
Speaker 1: everybody had from jukies, two singers, and we got busy.
Speaker 1: She's a success. Leaves clues when hip hop we thought
Speaker 1: we made our own music and sold our own tapes.
Speaker 1: This is the that's the real fucking ship. You can
Speaker 1: cut your own ship. Go take them six floor sues
Speaker 1: cause signment, make them make it real. Okay, First for that,
Speaker 1: what were the five hottest spots in New York City
Speaker 1: at that time when you wanted to get your clothes
Speaker 1: just to find it doesn't have to be the five boroughs,
Speaker 1: the five Simmons was one Simmons. Simmons was one for us.
Speaker 1: Simons was on Belmont in Brownsville. Okay, I definitely okay,
Speaker 1: Simmons was one Brownsville back then. Dr Jay's back in
Speaker 1: the day Dr Jameson was a spot. Um, I would say,
Speaker 1: um before that even a j Lester's uptown that um
Speaker 1: it was what else would be shopping Saunda, Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: that wasn't even out yet though. Dr Jay's, Like, there
Speaker 1: weren't a lot of hot spots in in Brooklyn to me,
Speaker 1: like we would have New York City period. You were
Speaker 1: going to Macy's, you were going to Ans, you said,
Speaker 1: a lot of them like Shirt k Oh, you mean
Speaker 1: stories like anywhere. Yeah, it was. I would say Miguel.
Speaker 1: I would say Miguel Navarro. Shout out to Miguel. He
Speaker 1: was super dope. So hey, Suss can do my son.
Speaker 1: He made clothes for all of them, like they were
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn bok of mixtapes. Um, you know, but they
Speaker 1: were legends in New York City. And and when you
Speaker 1: think about them, Peter Schoe, you know all those guys,
Speaker 1: We made clothes for all of them. And then um
Speaker 1: and and Miguel was one I made clothes. Um, I
Speaker 1: would say call his shop was a dope spot um
Speaker 1: Shirt King's definitely there was bell up Town. Shout out
Speaker 1: to bell Um. And then it was rapp and then
Speaker 1: of course goddamn, goddamn, let's make some noise for that.
Speaker 1: It's a part of our show where we play a
Speaker 1: games called quick Time with slim Um. You are not drinking,
Speaker 1: so you can pick someone out of the crowd and
Speaker 1: you can pick them and they'll drink for you. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna give you multiple choice. Let's pick the person. Listen,
Speaker 1: even though these two guys right there, which which one
Speaker 1: you feel? You know what? You can alternate shot. You
Speaker 1: could be like I feel like I feel like wrestlers
Speaker 1: deserves it, Like where's the shot glasses? We're gonna take
Speaker 1: the shots with all right, because she's not taking the shots,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna take. We're gonna we're gonna take. And
Speaker 1: you could be totally completely cook. You could say both.
Speaker 1: When you say both, that means that they drink. One
Speaker 1: of them drink both both or either. You can look
Speaker 1: and say you say both of them drink. You could
Speaker 1: say just him drink because you could not like them.
Speaker 1: It's okay, it's okay. So you asked me to ask
Speaker 1: you the question, and then you can uh do whatever
Speaker 1: you gotta do. Okay, are ready to answer? Just answer
Speaker 1: the question. If you ask them both, did they drink? Okay,
Speaker 1: you say did they drink? Okay? Come on camera, yeah,
Speaker 1: come okay, come on, you're a part of the show. Yeah, YouTube, Barris,
Speaker 1: come on, I know the first one that you should
Speaker 1: make them both drink. I'm just being honesty, but I
Speaker 1: don't want to. We gotta drink too. I forgot, forgot
Speaker 1: because actually was my sur somethe cool lata some alright, alright, cool,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty sure you're gonna make them both drink
Speaker 1: and drink for this shot. Shot. But I could be wrong. Everybody,
Speaker 1: how are you gay? Comet nas or jay z h oh?
Speaker 1: They all right? Dolly got wrong, motherfucker, April Walker, goddad.
Speaker 1: I knew she's gonna play the game. Even though I
Speaker 1: knew she was gonna be She's gonna play the game, Okay,
Speaker 1: the correct way. Respect or loyalty. M hmm, I say respect,
Speaker 1: because with respect you get loyalty. DMX or Tupac. I love.
Speaker 1: That's a hot one. Man. You ain't even got ain't
Speaker 1: even gonna do it even have both these bozo dudes
Speaker 1: take a shot. We're taking a shot to me, we'll
Speaker 1: have four if you want. Okay, so I love both.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to go with pop Okay, Okay, alright,
Speaker 1: Miami or l a m hmm, okay, this go god
Speaker 1: damn there, you're gonna got damn. I'm in cheers, cheers, cheers.
Speaker 1: Oh man, take a shot, boys, man, that's my Majuanna
Speaker 1: is not tasting, it's hitting that mal wanma huh okay,
Speaker 1: shut up, Mamajuanna. Okay, you're ready. You have to get
Speaker 1: your shot. Yeah, oh, I didn't take minds. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I'm playing the game for real. Nineties are two thousand
Speaker 1: hip hop. I expect that Farella Kanye West to take
Speaker 1: a shot because how confident she was. I respect that.
Speaker 1: I respected that. I don't even want to know why. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a new question. They added this Kanye sneakers
Speaker 1: or for real sneakers. It is a twist. It is
Speaker 1: a twist. It could be here. Yeah. Yeah, but we
Speaker 1: got a dream we need she said, neither. Holy shit,
Speaker 1: this is a fashion not on. This is y'all ship ship.
Speaker 1: I'm all school, I got all stasmus. That's right, Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, okay, you guys are assholes. Okay, eighties clothing,
Speaker 1: first nineties clothing. That's kind of hard. Both well, I
Speaker 1: mean my shot is already, bart Yo, come on, Boris, Boris,
Speaker 1: borest man, come on yo. This whole time you have shot,
Speaker 1: you're doing. You take a shot. You're not drinking, you're
Speaker 1: not drinking. Words or he's gotta drive forgot studdy. That
Speaker 1: means you gotta take double You did you didn't drive right?
Speaker 1: Or did you? Alright? Cool, I We'll take your shot.
Speaker 1: I got damn take your shot. I'm taking it to
Speaker 1: a little I'm taking the toothy took an uberman relaxed. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know where you're gonna go with this this one.
Speaker 1: I'm very very curious. One because you're a hip hop fishionado,
Speaker 1: and two because you're a woman. We asked this to
Speaker 1: a lot of men, Cardi b or Nicki Minaje, Cardy,
Speaker 1: you said that very fast and very tough. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to ask why on this one because I'm looking
Speaker 1: at the whole, the whole vibe, and I think that Cardi,
Speaker 1: we look at like what she's accomplished, like as a
Speaker 1: businesswoman who fierce. Okay, this one, I don't know where
Speaker 1: you're going puff Daddy or Dr Dre mhm mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Shot were in if you want to go shot. No,
Speaker 1: it's whatever you've been picking never it is in your
Speaker 1: mind either way. Uh. I would have to say from
Speaker 1: a music standpoint, a standpoint, I'm gonna go with Dre.
Speaker 1: From a business standpoint both, I saynds like a shot
Speaker 1: to me, she picks alright, cool, I'll have one, lady.
Speaker 1: Okay podcast or radio podcast. I think I'm taking the
Speaker 1: shot of that as well. Your problem if you go on,
Speaker 1: we didn't live together, let's do it so look. Oh
Speaker 1: that that one was a little harsh. You get to
Speaker 1: be so much. Um. Yeah, yeah, you really get to
Speaker 1: know people, Okay, major or independent? Mm hmm. Independent. He
Speaker 1: just smiles every time someone says it independent. Even if
Speaker 1: he doesn't smile, just look at his face. He's smiling.
Speaker 1: He's just he just he just feels like this because
Speaker 1: I just think, if you can survive independently and own everything.
Speaker 1: But I tell him, there's nothing against anything major. But
Speaker 1: if you own and you can survive independently, then you
Speaker 1: can take advantage. If you go to a major, but
Speaker 1: you can still maintain ownership or something go first, then
Speaker 1: you lose ownership. I don't disagree with him. What I
Speaker 1: what I do believe is still own your brand, but
Speaker 1: use that major market. But if you can usually both both.
Speaker 1: The nice part about ownership it's legacy, and that legacy
Speaker 1: you could pass on to your kids, your grandkids, and
Speaker 1: that's a nuity growth And well, god damnit, listen, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm for sure. I don't know what you're gonna say
Speaker 1: on this one. I thought I was for sure, but
Speaker 1: I don't. Queen LATIFU or MC light. M hm oh,
Speaker 1: I'm for sure. I knew she was gonna see. I
Speaker 1: was for sure, but I didn't want to say that
Speaker 1: because I didn't want to look stupid. But I was
Speaker 1: for sure. I got damnit, I'm gonna be loosing Carbones
Speaker 1: the Knight. Get dam ready he could take a shot?
Speaker 1: One shot? Letim take one shot? Got damn? How was
Speaker 1: like one of her first videos, like it's a rock
Speaker 1: paper then, because what you're telling to me is just
Speaker 1: paper the classes we need the vote on here man
Speaker 1: light and man Yeah, that would be dope. Get them on. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let you get away with this. What if
Speaker 1: Mesa calls me, I'm calling you because Googy loop or
Speaker 1: Mesa wrong or that one. I'm gonna go with vote
Speaker 1: the reason why. I'm gonna let you get away with that.
Speaker 1: But I feel like Mesa talk ruby, Am I inaccurate
Speaker 1: with that? I'm not sure a long time. I'm so sorry, Google,
Speaker 1: Please don't text me. He's don't text me in the
Speaker 1: game a long time, but he's definitely, you know, taking
Speaker 1: note for the grades, but he's been in Googy did
Speaker 1: one of my first campaigns like way back back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've been in the game. We're talking. Mmm, that might
Speaker 1: have been in like ninety two. Okay, my bad movie.
Speaker 1: I did not know that. I'm taking a shot for
Speaker 1: not knowing time anyway, So I'm taking the shop for
Speaker 1: that holy ship, all right. Ain't that was a good
Speaker 1: one though. Ah, that's that summer watermelon by the way,
Speaker 1: I listen. I just want both of these people to
Speaker 1: know that we love them both. We just always asked
Speaker 1: this question because I feel like they both a little
Speaker 1: mad at me. We keep asking this question for Foxy
Speaker 1: a little Kim. Yeah, that's for me. It would be
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a say bo Okay, April, I love
Speaker 1: Kim though, I'm gonna say I love Kim. Kim from
Speaker 1: my neighborhood, and so is Foxy, and so what they
Speaker 1: represent to the culture is priceless, and they both could
Speaker 1: spit by it. So I can't do this. That is
Speaker 1: the greatest choice, and they can't be mad at the
Speaker 1: did you drink your everybody? I try to cheat this one, big,
Speaker 1: your big punt, big. I respect that. Here is where
Speaker 1: I don't know where you're gonna go. Okay, I think
Speaker 1: we should do a drop roll Carcanal or fool. I
Speaker 1: have to go with car because what I'll call it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be Foo. I knew that as yeah, Cross Colors
Speaker 1: or Mecca. I gotta go with Mecca because Tony Shellman
Speaker 1: was my first sales god that started Mecca and he
Speaker 1: started with me, and Tony helped me get them salves
Speaker 1: out there in a huge way. Guys are doing a
Speaker 1: great Yallas fashionable. Listen. I would I want to put
Speaker 1: Cross Colors against Damnage. I know this is because we
Speaker 1: still quick time with side. But was Poco good? Poco?
Speaker 1: I like your girl, your whole girl face. Still see
Speaker 1: your faces. Floco had some fly stuff though they had
Speaker 1: some fly stuff. But I want damage too. You know,
Speaker 1: Used definitely was out there too. It was so many
Speaker 1: your friend your friends just hurt my whole childhood. I
Speaker 1: didn't own it, but I didn't like it all right.
Speaker 1: Where we got there, oh Virgin Dan, because without then
Speaker 1: there would be nothing else. I respect that they went.
Speaker 1: They went a little crazy with this one for Rapsody
Speaker 1: or Bahama dea mm hmm. That's hard shot getting ready,
Speaker 1: it's getting ready, shot ready, good, they're both fired. Alright, cool,
Speaker 1: We're taking the shot too, right, We're not just just
Speaker 1: holding it that. You guess that's how a little shot out.
Speaker 1: We don't see the shot. Okay. Last one, mob deep
Speaker 1: or m o PM. I thought she was gonna go
Speaker 1: Brooklyn with it. Yeah, but I'm just mob deep, like
Speaker 1: one of my anthems. What is that? What is it? Well?
Speaker 1: I love sick ones, sugar ones. You know what's the
Speaker 1: project stole from cooking crack? Yeah, that that is it.
Speaker 1: That is the sugar ones being that is from cooking cracks.
Speaker 1: He told us that makes a noise, crack tells a
Speaker 1: fair cracks trackward, I don't know he told us that. Listen,
Speaker 1: I know he told the man. We gotta ask. You know,
Speaker 1: we do all due diligence, just like every other guess.
Speaker 1: We have to go. We have to understand. And one
Speaker 1: thing that kept popping up was the first thing I
Speaker 1: did not know. I did not understand. And as I
Speaker 1: dug in further, I didn't want to dig because I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, we got the queen here. Let me
Speaker 1: not do uh, you know, internet gossip ship. Let me
Speaker 1: ask her the rerecord. Okay, what is the discrepancy between
Speaker 1: you and Virgin? If there is any the discrepancy is
Speaker 1: a Varsity jacket that he put out that has two
Speaker 1: WS on it. Big he's selling it. It's selling a
Speaker 1: lot and he sold a lot of them. And I
Speaker 1: actually saw it first to Carlos Classic Material, which is
Speaker 1: my dog, and he sent me car okay, So Carlos,
Speaker 1: damn me, like yo, what is this? And it is
Speaker 1: a sack at And in the sacks side it's a
Speaker 1: Varsity with the two W. But the two ws looked
Speaker 1: just mirror reflection of this w W athletic um mark
Speaker 1: that I've used since ninety three. Like that's the one,
Speaker 1: I said Mike Tyson warning ring Um, we just did
Speaker 1: a run. We dropped it for Christmas and um in Christmas,
Speaker 1: I think we sold out in like two days and
Speaker 1: it was like a moment in time, like we deleted
Speaker 1: drops when we'll talk about So we talked about Mike Tyson.
Speaker 1: Remember at the end of the last year of Mike
Speaker 1: Tyson did that fight. So we sold out at that
Speaker 1: same time. So we've been selling it um continually and
Speaker 1: after it happened, it went kind of viral. This was
Speaker 1: Women's History Month and Black History Month and people were
Speaker 1: talking about it. UM. So I know. Well, let's say allegedly,
Speaker 1: I believe through different people in the culture that was
Speaker 1: saying like nothing. So finally I had to talk to
Speaker 1: some lawyers that reached out to try to settle this amicably,
Speaker 1: because because I don't want to I never would want
Speaker 1: to even do that, you know, but I have to
Speaker 1: protect our trademarks are masters. And remember remember remember the
Speaker 1: point because I remember this one year that Pucci came
Speaker 1: out with the with the puff there was that something.
Speaker 1: Did you feel like that when you saw yep, I
Speaker 1: would that. Then when everybody I believe that did Louis
Speaker 1: Vuittonucci actually did and he got no credit. So but
Speaker 1: that's how you got it, zeal because black Twitter came
Speaker 1: for them, you know. And so I will say I
Speaker 1: also believe the only thing worse than racism in this
Speaker 1: country is sexism. And I say that because I didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't have after that rally with that support, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's just things you noticed as a woman, you know,
Speaker 1: no disrespect because wrong is wrong. I'm so happy that
Speaker 1: got that and um and that and for me, you
Speaker 1: just heard it. I'm an indeed, So I'm not doing
Speaker 1: this to get a collapse. It's about protecting what's yours
Speaker 1: and what you've built up over the last three decades,
Speaker 1: you know. So for me, it's not okay. Um, when
Speaker 1: you think about Starbucks, when you think about when you
Speaker 1: think about different brands that are iconic, they're iconic for
Speaker 1: a reason. We're an iconic brand. To think because you
Speaker 1: put stripes here, it's gonna make it different if my
Speaker 1: customers are confused and congratulating me and saying dope collab
Speaker 1: or a lot of my customers were getting confused and try.
Speaker 1: So that's clearly the arrogance of another brand saying we
Speaker 1: can do that and people won't notice, you know, and
Speaker 1: how dare you win? We're not. We're an established brand,
Speaker 1: just like a lot of the other iconic brands, you know.
Speaker 1: So I just really wanted to also stand up and
Speaker 1: protect black and brown creatives because, like you said, it's
Speaker 1: not a first. It happened to Dapper Dan, It's happened
Speaker 1: to a lot. Tyler Perez just this happened to him.
Speaker 1: It happened to so many instances down there, like you
Speaker 1: you heard in the remix when they were kidding about
Speaker 1: Mesa and Findy, and you know, it keeps happening and
Speaker 1: we can't. We just can't. Let it's happened more now
Speaker 1: with technology, where do you see these drive bys take
Speaker 1: place with independent designers and they just take make, regurgitate,
Speaker 1: and sell our magic back to us, and we just
Speaker 1: allow it. So I think a lot of disignors. I
Speaker 1: think they'll be out gunne because they know they can't
Speaker 1: stand up in legal proceedings. You know they can't. It's
Speaker 1: too expensive. So they're banking on that, you know that
Speaker 1: they can get away with it. So I just I'm
Speaker 1: hoping that this case is taking a stand for all
Speaker 1: of us, not just me. So let me actually, did
Speaker 1: you know Virgil prior to this? No, you never met him?
Speaker 1: Never met him, never met him? Because it seems like
Speaker 1: something that's like so easy to agree. I agree, and
Speaker 1: I was hoping that we could. You know, my lawyers
Speaker 1: reached out, but um, they reached out to them, They
Speaker 1: reach out to Sacks, and from my understanding, they don't
Speaker 1: want to stop selling it. And this was the offright
Speaker 1: of this. Louis ar Okay, Yeah, we need to put
Speaker 1: the pictures. We need, we need, we need, we need
Speaker 1: to put the pictures. And I think that just from
Speaker 1: the standpoint, like when you're confusion, that's where the problem
Speaker 1: is and you're saying, this is not the roblem you
Speaker 1: wanted to go. Yeah, I mean I would have never
Speaker 1: liked to get it to this point. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, I'm not just gonna lay down here. You
Speaker 1: should make a noise for you about that. But black
Speaker 1: and brown creators, let me just say this, like, that's
Speaker 1: the trajectory of my work, like for us UM in
Speaker 1: terms of paying it forward. You literally black and brown
Speaker 1: yea literally too. So there you go. So no, that's
Speaker 1: what we do. Like so so, like I do a
Speaker 1: lot of educational work. I mentor and reverse mentorship ship.
Speaker 1: I'm big into mentorship and reverse mentorship. I surround myself
Speaker 1: by a lot of younger designers UM, and they're looking
Speaker 1: at me, They're looking at UM. I want them not
Speaker 1: to be a right to do what's right, you know.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, this is how we grow
Speaker 1: right and and and that. Like vid sick, I'm working
Speaker 1: with VIDs sick. I don't know if you've heard of VIDs.
Speaker 1: What's that. It's a it's a new platform where you
Speaker 1: can connect one on one and searchers on there search
Speaker 1: say he actually introduced me he's working with them, but
Speaker 1: I'm working with them. That's one of the platforms. What's
Speaker 1: funny about search? Search hits you and be like, yo,
Speaker 1: this is search. Like you're locked in, buddy. He still
Speaker 1: introduces itself, but like this is like you can't you
Speaker 1: know back in the days, like yeah, he's like, yo, yo,
Speaker 1: this is search. Like wait a minute, you not know
Speaker 1: if you have something called contact lock. We know who
Speaker 1: you are, sir, Relax, I'm sorry, I'm sorry hit me
Speaker 1: today and he introduced himself again. I said, no, that's
Speaker 1: the old school ship. You come on, let's do that.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you something. Has anybody who ever rocked
Speaker 1: your clothes? And the way where you said this, dude
Speaker 1: is a buffolio because because because it's about how you rocket,
Speaker 1: now you give you give us for the same clothes,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be about two of us rocket the wrong way.
Speaker 1: So have you ever had somebody rocket where you was like, rocket,
Speaker 1: don't stop it? No? I never had that because, to
Speaker 1: be honest, we worked with artists that they got stopped,
Speaker 1: that that had style or that had so I think
Speaker 1: that brands, if you're lucky enough, you choose to work
Speaker 1: with artists that are in alignment with your value system.
Speaker 1: It's like pop the et, Naughty by Nature, EPMD, all
Speaker 1: those guys were in alignment what we stood for, you know.
Speaker 1: Um there were times when we had to turn down
Speaker 1: artists like who Rump was still skinning and the niggas
Speaker 1: needed some clothes, and you said, actually we did the
Speaker 1: album covered, so no, they weren't. One was playing around
Speaker 1: the group around definitely, I was playing around. Okay, what
Speaker 1: was the group? I'm blinking out with their name. I
Speaker 1: promise you describe it one maybe it was true. But
Speaker 1: the two guys, one of them, they were so dope,
Speaker 1: but they were pop artists. No. Um KOs had a
Speaker 1: fight with UM oh don't. Oh my god, he got
Speaker 1: disrecord against me right now. It was a joke PM
Speaker 1: don the PM on this left and it was kind
Speaker 1: of ill disrecord to you. I gotta stay out. It
Speaker 1: didn't hear ye. Hype Hype at that time was doing
Speaker 1: a video and I was cool with hyping and you
Speaker 1: didn't want to do people. So I think they did
Speaker 1: the video in my apartment, like the main single that
Speaker 1: whatever the video was that, but it just wasn't congruent
Speaker 1: with the brand. You know what I mean. I thought
Speaker 1: they were dope, but you got them right. And then
Speaker 1: at the time I had Pock, I had Biggie I.
Speaker 1: I didn't want a chance the not just what the
Speaker 1: brand value system is. They're dope, but it was a
Speaker 1: different lay to me and I exactly that's exactly what
Speaker 1: I was saying. So now for we spoke. We spoke
Speaker 1: about Magic Magic Conference. Magic Conference, which was ill to
Speaker 1: me because I used to go out there and get
Speaker 1: free closed. I did not realize that I had holes
Speaker 1: in the free clothes that I was getting because they
Speaker 1: was sampled. I didn't really realize that to us in
Speaker 1: the hood floors. And he was like, you know, you
Speaker 1: got a holy ship. I said, holy movie. I said, okay,
Speaker 1: let's move off from that. Yeah, we had to cut
Speaker 1: them off fashion Week something that I personally because me,
Speaker 1: I'm not like a fashion god, just like fly Ship.
Speaker 1: But I don't like to invest into the fly ship.
Speaker 1: But I'm invested into the flysh Ship, but fashion Week,
Speaker 1: I don't invest there. I don't care about these models
Speaker 1: that come to the town. And now I was trafficking
Speaker 1: on fifty seventh Street. When I go to fifty seven Street,
Speaker 1: all the time and it's okay, So I don't care
Speaker 1: about these models named Sasho. What what's the point? Bro?
Speaker 1: But I'm not in fashion for fashion person fashion week?
Speaker 1: What does this mean? It is this, y'all super Bowl?
Speaker 1: Because to me, it's like soccer, Like, you know how
Speaker 1: the world loves soccer, but we don't give a funk
Speaker 1: about soccer. Let's just throw it out. Let's just throw
Speaker 1: it out there. The soccer fan is gonna let's give
Speaker 1: me the fans soccer trash ship, keep kidding the ball
Speaker 1: and everybody swam and it's only three points. Good. So
Speaker 1: that's how I feel about fashion. But wait, wait, I
Speaker 1: want to kind of add on to it. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say it's it's going into fashion. Do you feel that? Okay?
Speaker 1: What's the best way to describe hip hop fashion? It's
Speaker 1: I always feel like urban fashion was kind of like
Speaker 1: a weird way to say it. Is it? I say, um,
Speaker 1: it's lifestyle. It's really lifestyle. It's just wearing it. Right, So,
Speaker 1: in terms of putting labels on, I think we're the
Speaker 1: only category that has like had eight different names, right, So,
Speaker 1: for lack of better words, we could say hip hop fashion, though, right,
Speaker 1: do you feel that we've that it's evolved to the
Speaker 1: point where it's mainstream fashion and that's why now it's
Speaker 1: going into fashion Week. It's one of the biggest industries,
Speaker 1: made the most money. And come on, so come on, man,
Speaker 1: I got you just gotta spray cree. You gotta make
Speaker 1: sure the devil is not larking. You know what I'm
Speaker 1: saying that the okay, cool cool, So I don't know
Speaker 1: if he does. So, um, yeah, I just want to
Speaker 1: get you just a fashion week. Well that's my whole
Speaker 1: goal right now. So fashion week week. Yeah, I've never
Speaker 1: been a fashion week like contender. Like I've never depended
Speaker 1: on fashion week to dictate my success or validate my
Speaker 1: dopeness as a brand. Um, if you look at the
Speaker 1: color of people that walk the run with, it's very
Speaker 1: different a lot of times for the designers that are
Speaker 1: allowed into fashion. So it's it's problematic in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. I think the world just changed. It is
Speaker 1: just not fast enough. I'm not waiting for it to change. So, um,
Speaker 1: your tribe is your trial. You don't need a fashion
Speaker 1: week to tell you. So I feel like you're saying
Speaker 1: you got heat fu. Fashion Week I'm saying that it
Speaker 1: worked for some people and for some people it doesn't.
Speaker 1: It's not for everybody fashion weebody. It's not for everybody
Speaker 1: fashion week like like like it's fun. It's it's like,
Speaker 1: it's not something like let me get it out of you.
Speaker 1: That's one Listen. Listen, listen. That's one thing that Drake
Speaker 1: and car you could agree on right now because they're
Speaker 1: going out at each other. Listen, y'all. I want you'll
Speaker 1: both to realize fashion Week for both y'all. Fashion week, right,
Speaker 1: I don't get this because the guy named Pierre, he's
Speaker 1: giving up Vivi Cligo. He's just walking around. I'm an indie,
Speaker 1: so you know it's not like as an empty it's
Speaker 1: not the important. They only invite me anyway. So like
Speaker 1: I'm in town, Yeah, not been mad, just go to
Speaker 1: fashion show recently. Yeah, come on and disclaimed out in
Speaker 1: all fairness, it was swim Week, same assholes and be
Speaker 1: any rating white fashion For the disclaimer. I have to say,
Speaker 1: I'm getting ready to do a collapse with another brand
Speaker 1: and you might see it at fashion Week through their brand,
Speaker 1: and you'll be right there because you already went. So
Speaker 1: I like the free drinks I got. I gotta throw
Speaker 1: that out. I didn't like it. They tees stick too.
Speaker 1: I like, obviously want to say fashion week that day.
Speaker 1: I actually was there sober that day. No, that was fast.
Speaker 1: Have a swim week. Oh so that's okay. I live
Speaker 1: in Miami. Swim were a little different. Shark. You gotta
Speaker 1: go with your wife and just act like you like
Speaker 1: this ship. Oh yeah, yeah, okay, you gotta you know,
Speaker 1: you want to stay married. You know what I'm saying, like, alright, god,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, because I'm just you know, I was mad.
Speaker 1: But they showed me my smoking sections. I have seen
Speaker 1: a smoking section. I said, hey, hey, that's all you got.
Speaker 1: That's the cheat to this ship. Have a smoking section
Speaker 1: with non stinking cheese. Because the cheese they had there
Speaker 1: that it smelled like the thunder from down under. Holy moley.
Speaker 1: It was not good. April Walker. We love you, Thank you?
Speaker 1: What what's what's so? What's next? Up? Before we get
Speaker 1: about it? It um just I'm doing a book that
Speaker 1: the audio is dropping. I have a book called Walker Gyms.
Speaker 1: Get your Ass off the Couch. I brought me for
Speaker 1: you walking Jim's Get your Ass off the Couch. It's
Speaker 1: all about the passion for two UM and the audio
Speaker 1: is dropping. The audio has it was produced by Milk d.
Speaker 1: It has rot progress on it. UM, It's gonna be go.
Speaker 1: And then I do a lot of educational work. So
Speaker 1: I'm doing a class with Clide Davids Music Institute this
Speaker 1: at n y U. This is full UM and it's
Speaker 1: called the Sound of Fashion. I'm excited about that music
Speaker 1: in fashion. UM. Work with the kids. Shout out to
Speaker 1: Global Finance, teach them B y O B be your
Speaker 1: own brand, build your own brand, vizig vit sick, all
Speaker 1: about vit sick. You want to find me? Find me
Speaker 1: for fashion Friday Fridays for new up and coming designers.
Speaker 1: I'm doing monthly collaborations. I'm consulting. This is the one
Speaker 1: on one you want, so you me there if we
Speaker 1: recommoried that I'm taking a shot for her because you
Speaker 1: know what our show was about giving people flowers. And
Speaker 1: you know, as I researched your story, I really thought
Speaker 1: your story was out there. I really thought. But then
Speaker 1: when as I as I started the research, I started
Speaker 1: to say, I don't know it, so how many more
Speaker 1: is me? And I kid? You know, I know I
Speaker 1: said it earlier, and I know I said it in
Speaker 1: a playing way, but I always thought designers had it
Speaker 1: the easy way. I did not know. Yeah, I did
Speaker 1: not know that. Y'all. I got the same hurdles as us,
Speaker 1: maybe if not worse than us. So I want to
Speaker 1: give your flowers right now. I want to tell you
Speaker 1: how much you appreciate it. Want to tell you how
Speaker 1: much that we love what you did, how much you
Speaker 1: paved the way, um ic, how iconic you are, because
Speaker 1: like I said, like I really thought when I asked you,
Speaker 1: when I we searched you, and I really thought you
Speaker 1: had someone that you said, you know, I could base
Speaker 1: this off of, you know, Elizabeth Taylor, or so I
Speaker 1: thought you was gonna say that when you said I
Speaker 1: had nobody, that ship touched me just now, like I mean,
Speaker 1: like I knew your story, but just now you me,
Speaker 1: you say like I had no boy, I just like
Speaker 1: you know what, I want to compete with what's going on,
Speaker 1: and that to me has to be saluted, That to
Speaker 1: me has to be respected, That to me has to
Speaker 1: be honest. And I don't want anything that happened to you.
Speaker 1: We want to tell you that to your face. And
Speaker 1: this is your platform, this is your home. You want
Speaker 1: to perform. If you want to promote your new slipper line,
Speaker 1: you can perform it. I mean promote. I meant to
Speaker 1: say promote. If you want to promote your motherfucking new
Speaker 1: Eyeline online, you want to promote pink toe nails, that's
Speaker 1: just for a little toe, just for the little tough
Speaker 1: ye just letting a fashion week, especially fashion week is
Speaker 1: in Miami because we out here. This is your home.
Speaker 1: This is for hip hop, and you are hip hop.
Speaker 1: You are not a visitor person of what you are
Speaker 1: hip hop. When I've researched you, I have very fun
Speaker 1: researching you. I like and I love that. I love
Speaker 1: when I go and researching and it's fun because it's like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: and you don't talk much, you don't talk much, very
Speaker 1: to yourself. But I love the fact that you was
Speaker 1: open with us. I love the fact that you and
Speaker 1: we want to tell you to your face, we love you,
Speaker 1: We appreciate you. You are a hip hop icon. You
Speaker 1: are a hip You are a person who shape the
Speaker 1: mold of how we dress, how we feel, and how
Speaker 1: we operate. And we love that and we really appreciate you.
Speaker 1: Here drink Champs makes it more so We're gonna take
Speaker 1: a picture and you do a drop. Again how important
Speaker 1: this show is. Thank you so much because you're telling
Speaker 1: our stories, yes, and you're doing it fearlessly. You're not diluting,
Speaker 1: and you're empowering. So thank you, Thank you right thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us for another episode of Drink Champs hosted
Speaker 1: by Yours truly, d J e f N and n
Speaker 1: O r E. Please make sure to follow us on
Speaker 1: all our socials. Let's at drink Champs across all platforms
Speaker 1: at the Real Noriegon, I g at Noriega on Twitter,
Speaker 1: mine is at Who's Crazy on I g at d
Speaker 1: J e f N on Twitter, and most importantly, stay
Speaker 1: up to date with the latest releases, news and merch
Speaker 1: by going to drink Champs dot com For more. Podcast
Speaker 1: from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.