The Exchanges

Q So tell me about how you fell in love with hip hop. What do you remember, like, listening to or hearing or, or it resonating with you?

A I remember being in probably fifth grade art class at Princeton Avenue School, and there was this awareness of this emerging cultural trend. I remember some kids that when the buses would be pulling up, there was like a group of kids that would be doing literally like back flips and break dancing, you know, spinning on their back, like in the middle of the lunchroom. And I just was like, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen. But I also was seeing there was a big BMX culture that was happening at that time. Kids started to wear all of those kind of like neon, acidic colored clothing that was starting to come up through skate and skate culture, Dino brand, GT, Vans, Airwalk. So suddenly, I think that it's about the age for most kids growing up, that sort of pre-middle school I'd say from fifth to eighth grade, where they start to badge, like a little chick, like born new to the world. They see these signals of, of like who their cultural mother is or father, right? And it's a part of, I think, how we're hardwired to sort of culturally fit in. So I was drawn to that. And then instead of just drawing Spider-Man, you know, I would draw what we saw on album covers, Or when I'd go into Queens and see graffiti on the subway cars, I knew that there was a movie called Wild Style because people were talking about it, and there was Beat Street, and there were the Fat Boys. So you were j…

AI assessment note: “I remember some kids that when the buses would be pulling up... break dancing”

Q right, and you still needed to, I mean, you felt like, I guess you felt like you needed to find somebody who had the, you know, the know-how, right? And, and most importantly, the cash to help you turn this into a real business. Um, so tell me about how you met your partner, uh, Seth Gerzberg. I think, I think you met him in, like, like, like, 19, 92?

A Yes, 92, yeah. I meet him first, like, a year before. Pulls up to my house, I'm painting, I'm doing one of these, like, really, you know, crazy pieces. I'm looking at this guy, he pulls up in a shiny candy apple red Mustang, right, with chrome wheels. I'm like, what the hell is someone my age driving around with this car like for an old man? Number one, I appreciate that car today, but at that time I was like, you know, who is this dude? He's wearing dirty ass denim shorts, dusty timberland boots, like with dirt going, grime up his legs. He's coming from a Uh, landscaping gig, because he's got a landscaping company, and so he starts telling me what he does. He's like, I have a landscaping company, but I also do, I buy and sell architectural artifacts. I just got back from Vienna.

AI assessment note: “Pulls up to my house, I'm painting, I'm doing one of these”

Q A streetwear hip-hop print magazine. Right. The idea was that, was that this would be, this would expand Dend the brand, the Echo brand?

A Oh, there was, there was no doubt. Looking at what was, I don't know, our business was probably a hundred and fifty million dollars in, in, in business, right? Something like that. You know, it was north of a hundred million. So we're looking at a, a 12 to fifteen million dollar marketing budget, ok, of paid media, that I was using for paid media. And I found it very frustrating as I, Started to become, like, a darling amongst the publishers, who all were very gracious, and GQ, and details. I said, hey, it's not enough just for the publishers to be nice. Like, why aren't these peer, near-peer editors-in-chief, they're my same age, or sometimes older than me, or the stylists, why weren't they taking the brand into their shoots, especially at the men's fashion magazines? And I found that Offensive, you know, and I had this thing, like, from the, from the media side, they were like, you're too black for GQ, and you're too black for the skateboard magazines, but you're too white for the source magazine, and it was all that same narrative over and over. I just was like, let's take three and a half million for a year, for the next couple years, and let's incubate a magazine.

AI assessment note: “Oh, there was, there was no doubt.”

Q So, when you discovered this, right, when you found out about this, What did you do? I mean, cause you had, you had this partnership with this guy, and you felt like, did you confront him and say, hey, what are you doing?

A Of course, and I got more evidence on about six styles or so that were price manipulated. So then we very aggressively sue for them breaching, using that those six price points as evidence. They then say, no, that's a mistake. That's not true. That's not enough evidence. So then they countersued because we're trying to get our inventory out and break the deal. And they're like, we're going to fight this out in court. And they knew they had us because we couldn't afford not to ship the goods. We needed to reconcile this shit show. I needed a completely new manufacturing infrastructure. Okay. I needed to learn everything that they were doing. I need to cut those guys out. And I They were willing to go, uh, full nuclear.

AI assessment note: “Of course, and I got more evidence on about six styles or so”

Q So wasn't that a win in a sense? I mean, you mentioned you had a young family.

A No, this is, this is the wild thing. It was the point in my life where I had the worst, I, I think I had my first proper breakdown. I had so much PTSD of the world collapsing, the weight of landing that plane to get on the other side of that Iconics deal, which was not a pretty picture. And there was such hostility with those banks that were, it was like a love affair with those banks. I was in a CIT ad, for goodness sakes, you know, back in, in the heyday when I had a, I still have a plaque around here for whatever, you know, five hundred million dollars line of credit that I had, whatever, like, absurd line of credit, which was, you know, you don't do business that way anymore.

AI assessment note: “No, this is, this is the wild thing. It was the point in my life”

Q Wait, sorry, like, are you talking about, like, antiques? Like, like, ancient art, antiques?

A No. No, no, no, no, no, no. Not ancient. I'm saying he would go to parts of the world where they were doing redevelopment or, uh, new construction sites, and he was in the pawn business, basically. And, but, but expensive architectural things like stone columns, marble statues, giant slabs of limestone, urns, nothing that were like... Not like from ancient Rome or Greece, but just... Nothing, no, no, no. But like, you know, at that time, Through Europe, and there were some countries that were so under development, and he just hustled. He paid a kid to go to school for him, to take classes under him as an alias. He wasn't even showing up to school, and he'd be flying around the country, going to, where demolition sites, buying things that were being demolished, reselling them.

AI assessment note: “No. No, no, no, no, no, no. Not ancient.”