N.O.R.E. & DJ EFN are the Drink Champs in this episode the champs chop it up with the iconic team from FUBU!
FUBU changed the fashion game and influenced millions when the brand impacted pop culture.
For Us By Us was created by Daymond Jon, Carlton E. Brown, Dr. Keith C Perrin Jr., and J. Alexander Martin. The team joins us to share their journey, the evolution of the brand and much much more!
Lots of great stories that you donβt want to miss!
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N.O.R.E.
He is drinks chess, motherfucking podcast makes He's a legendary queens rapper.
He ain't agreed as your boy in O R E. He's a Miami hip hop pioneer put up as d J e f N. Together they drink it up with some of the biggest players, you know what I mean.
And the most professional unprofessional podcast and your number one source for drunk.
Drink chans MO days New Year's c that's it's time for drink Champs.
Drink up, motherfuck.
Mother would a good be hoping he swootshol be. This is your boy in O R E. What up is d J e f N And this is drink Champs. Ye did you brothers that I'm about to introduce.
The world.
It made us proud to support our own. Before this time, I didn't know of any brothers from the hood owning a clothing company and it being the ship. They are still here and they still friends to this day.
I thought the money would have brought them up a long time ago.
They still here, these legends, and we are giving them their motherfucking flowers today.
In case you don't know who we're talking about, we're talking about for us by us. Motherfucking I name this.
I try to not name Queens because I can't call y'all, like, even though y'are from Queens, the brand is too big to just be called Queens.
And I'm from Queens that trust me. I want to claim everything in Queens. We claim. I even claimed city field sometimes, you know what I mean.
So for the people that don't know, right, me and you were talking earlier and you said, did you started from selling search and hats?
Is this how this started football? Yeah?
Man standing on the corner selling Ti top pass. At that time, day La Soul had made a video and they were wearing these Ti top passes. I think we got inspired from five five Soul, right five five so yeah, and they were like yeah, and they would like it's like a sleeve instead of having a ball on the top of it was a little.
Strill, the skull cut like the Scully ones, the ones that hung.
Exactly and we would make a couple of wheel So actually, before that, you know, before we had the football name morning, we were selling super soakers with the Super so.
Yeah, we were selling them the Greek at the Greek picnic. Okay, what the apartment was this? You know, the reality of this.
We were business spend, so we were selling whatever we throw it with turning the bucks. So it was coming super soakers. When the things were hot, we had Damon had a van. We filled it up with all kind of merchandise and go to the Greek Vest all those things set up, shopping to cell whatever was hot. So that's how we started being in business without the fashion party.
How did y'all come together? Like? Was it through the gear or each other?
They were selling super so I moved from Baisic projects to farmers, Belovard and Queens.
Five four or five years old was kiaking through the fence and that's what it's doing with no teeth.
Man, I want to play with you.
That was it.
Will we make kids?
They meet out to high school? You know, he came into school. You came in class and you had a car accident or something, and he had a he had a he had a big eight, a big bandage around here with man blood on it. And really, you know a little bit of blood on it. Man blood to me and I don't like seeing blood, right, He just had something to him and he ran out.
I was like, yo, that's ignorant.
Man back then I want to mess with that. And then Jay all partner, we met him.
He lived two blocks way, so we met him around when he was probably about in high school, but twelve eleven or twelve, So childhood friends.
One thing, one thing that that's very unique, you know what I'm saying, Like people, people don't stay together.
For two weeks, you know what I mean?
And especially business, How do y'all maintain friendship but still have business?
Well, I was sending this interview as a guest because I'm so close to it, and I do so many interviews that I say the normal ship all the time. Keith Keith, you know he liked he liked to smoke the Devil's letters and I never understood.
Howlets not tell us you.
Go right there?
But he has the best memory of anybody I knowing this, So my pardon, I'm gonna be sitting here like, oh yo.
So because you know, like I know, I'm a little bit over there. Like lot of times when I look at me and compone's relationship, I kind of wish we never did business, Like I kind of wish we were just friends. Like now that we don't do business, we're back for like real, real friends, but it did affect us, you know what I'm saying, because we couldn't hang out to a certain extent. We had to go business partners. So if he like I always say this, I say, I say, my.
Relationship with Pone.
Made my relationship with e fn Ella because I used to try to change Compone. I wanted Compone to be on time, and he never. He never complied. But when I let that go, but I let that go, I was like, all right, cool, I let him be him. So that's like with E I learned that through Compone. I don't try to change e f n at all. This guy won't buy nothing. This guy got all his money, I mean.
Wanting, but I just like let it be. Is that something you guys relate to you think?
I mean? For us, I mean, we grew up as friends. We was friends, you know what I'm saying. We did everything we was going on tour. You know, we we backstage with backstage passes on thirteen, fourteen years old.
So for us, we were cool.
Like so when we got into business, it didn't change it for us because we we were already cool, you know what I'm saying. Like, and we did everything together and we also went out and took that friendship from a friendship to a business and keep it the same. You know what I'm saying. We was able to stay the same. Yeah, it wasn't like everybody starting he started tripping. I check him, I start tripping, He checked me. Got it was like, you know what I'm saying, Like, it wasn't like just everything was rosie. You know what I'm saying.
But that's that's my thing, is like, how like so many people let the money change them as soon as like, especially childhood friends, especially people you met in high school, and as soon as that money getting involved. Somebody's been big headed. The other one is not big headed enough. So how did y'all maintain like we ain't letting this business fuck with us.
I'm gonna let them speak on that. I got to say though, that there's one there's two things that are different than us and most people. If you with a rap group or a music group, or you with various other things, you can potentially have people pull you away to break off to do your own thing. Fuobul is way bigger than us, and anything that he does negative, well I do negative and break off.
Fuubu is gonna exist.
It ain't gonna be Damon, right, all right, Damon can't I mean could have probably No. I think we even had contracts within ourselves, and you can't break off and do another brand. So anything that I do with if he asks out and I make him look bad, it makes the brand that I'm getting paid off of and he's getting paid off look bad. So we couldn't do that in the because we also had hundreds of people working for us, so we had to save each other ask too sometimes when we didn't want to save each other's asses, like just.
Even keeping our nose clean, you know what I'm saying. They never heard of no ship comes down the pipeline like these dudes involved in this or that, because we had to keep.
The whole you know what I'm saying.
Also, one other things just said you had a contract with like a noncompete. We can't tell the world about that.
That is a genius. I have never heard of that. Yeah, neither of you know what the reality is was and is it is.
It was something that we wanted to protect, so we were willing to do and put our egos aside to do what's best for the brand at all.
Times and to keep it one hundred. There's times where we didn't neither make money for them brand. We had to put money back in. Somebody said, I told you that was a bad decision and now I got to pay for it. Where we were really mad at each other or mad at all overall outcome that that anger could have taken years, like we could have sold the brand years ago when everybody said you keep it real. Those selling it was those same people that stopped buying it. And we had a we had a massive offer on the table from Kmart I think it was at that time, and we and we were do too.
Come on, came on, but they were like, how many hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars are you talking to?
Sold out? I'm about to fight.
I'm about to fight one we get outside here, I remember. But and then one last thing is that I remember, unlike your business, you gotta work with this artist, You got to go on tour with this artist.
You got to do this and that.
When we were coming up, our friends are the ones they rote belly about and various other things. When we were coming up and we were doing clothing, hip hop, very homophobic and prior to us coming up, of course, Caulk and I cross colors. The idea of a clothing designer was some flamboyant person in Europe. So when we were we were being almost harassed by some of our friends like yo clothes, Yo, Yo, Lie, and so we came up by ourselves because nobody wanted to talk to us. Imagine you are there one of our boys moving kilos, the DMX of the belly, and we're up there talking about, you know, about to go making strawberry patterns. Son, you gotta see that this hoodie is gonna make. We came up realizing nobody wanted to mess with us for a while until they started hearing we're doing three undred fifty million dollars a year.
So that was some of the thing.
The bottom line is noying. You know what I'm saying, You're from the fright. You know, we come up the same way. So we all had out different stories. I mean, like for me, I know that I found them because I knew that Damon, especially at that age, he has some unique qualities about him. Deubley cash and half. Like when I would say I'm broke, that means I ain't have ship. Damon say he was broke. He probably had five or six hundred dollars that, you know what I'm saying. So that was a quality that I liked about him. I said, I'm fun with him, you know what I'm saying. The same way there's certain quality is I loved about my partner. And I say, no, what if, whether we're selling clothes or selling fucking bananas, you're gonna make some money together.
And that was my call. You liked about Keith? I hated keep that. I hated it.
Yeah, it's some real back yard right here.
No word of I didn't even know him, and he was hating girl, Like yo for him. This dude, he's sitting in the car looking at me sideways. I'm asking dam I'm like, Yo, what's up?
What you mean? And why are you always looking at me? Crazy?
So one day they was like, Yo, we're gonna go pick up cars in the fuck call. We're gonna be a pugger, so he says. So he told me the story why he was looking at it.
It was over some girl.
I'm in motherfucking springtroke gone. Okay. My girl at the time was like, Yo, this dude sucking with me, man, I said, Yo, where's the funk. Let's go see you just do this.
I go ahead, my man, we got this a block party got together and I.
See this motherfucker.
He looked like a stone cold like he got this look on his face.
He at that age, just get a ship out of you. So I'm talking about girl that yo, you know, maybe what did you do? What did you see them?
He looked at me like screwfys.
But that's when we we didn't. We didn't do nothing at night. The next time I saw him, this motherfucker introducing me. Ain't gonna be more motherfucker.
I'm like, Yo, this dude, really but at that obviously afterk I you looking at me sideways?
Man?
Man, man, what I love about it?
I was home one day, mine of my business shirts crazy Sam from video music by Pop Up Old Dirty Bass and walking.
Into my house. I don't know, but I know the wou tang shit we're talking about. Did you just say, oh, d you walked in your house? Walked you going too fast?
A minute?
So what happen is no, dirty It was like nineteen ninety one or something like that, and I think I took out we took a little ad in the right on magazine.
We put the name in there.
And we got mostly the orders were from Japan and Seattle, Washington. It wasn't black people actually Maine, right right. We got a back machine somehow old dirty beast. Oh, I guess you wanted a bit of music box because we stalked was he old dirty?
He was super early and ear yo.
And because we we stalked Ralph McDaniels, you know, to help us with the stuff. And Ralph being that I think so many artists hit though their career to him, he crazy Sam basically want some free ship, come out older in your basketming out. I'm like, yo, there's older you beast is first of all, I'm a fan. Second all, I'm hiding whatever kind of whatever kind of something I have worth than anything my transits the radio because older is the best. But when Keith was the kind of partner though that we were all different. I have my kind of conservative way of trying to come up with this idea. Call was always like my anybody voice or reason, my partner Jay, our partner Jay, who's still with us? Keith to be the one who like, oh is that right? You go to the studio for three nights and be like this this stud yo older.
All the ghetto hood hood hood dudes. Low key.
They remember one that red Man was like, yo, Keith, I wore the same pair of pants the football ones are soon seventeen days strength.
That story was crazy and Keith is the hood hood they bought.
They were like, I don't know about that dude, Damon, he kind of funny, he kind of quiet.
I don't know about him. So key keep the icebreaker.
So the let me ask y'all you touched on it a little bit earlier, how hard was it to break into that fashion world? Because I remember going to fashion shows and saying to myself, I'm never going back, right, Like I remember just I just went back there and they had me on the runway and I was I just related just to like this is all how old fashion is, and everybody was getting undressed in front of each other.
I was like, oh, the same for me.
But I predit that to the fashion world, right, And people say how hard it is to break through, Like remember how Kanye and sway, So how hard was it for y'all to get in that world?
For me, it was, I mean It was hard work. Don't get me wrong, Its a heavy lift. But we were doing something that's so natural to us that we were going against the normal the progress of a fashion house.
So whatever we did came naturally.
You said, you wouldn't walk a runway that made you uncomfortable, didn't do shit that made us that was real to us. Whatever it was, so in that form, it was easy because we were doing what came natural to us. But obviously all the late nights, the early mornings, all that ship was hard. But the actual building of the brand that is in our DNA.
But I'm assuming you guys didn't try to break in the traditional fashion doing the workaround, knowing the audience you were going to.
We broke the system because they didn't. They didn't actually allow us in the department. So as they said, they literally told one of us that, for all four of us on the Hantack, they said, if we don't want people coming in and look like that who steal clothes or getting in the shootouts, so they wouldn't put us in there. But the reality is, if I was on the Nory, said Keith was on the Norse set, they're kicking everybody off the set, and but if we had a way to yo, No, we dressing the artists over here. We wasn't dressing all artist. We just wanted to be on the set, so we making sure. Well, now we get to holler at the girls on the set to eat the freaking food with the craft. I get to see an artist like nor performed. So what we was doing, we were spending night and day on sets. If you really look at the first set was the first set with Miss Jones where I want to be, and then it was ice cream. You'll see you'll see red, You'll see you'll see method in the in the truck going ice cream man coming a food who hat. Then you'll see the biggie one more chance. I'm in I'm in the background with a little hat, you know, just always trying to place the hat in it because I just wanted to be in this on the set to watch artists.
I just didn't want to get kicked off. And I everybody else was like I'm doing this, I'm doing No, you want to get out of here, and know you want to get out of here.
I think that was the first way we started. So people started demanding it. They didn't go to the these are cats who, like I was a van driver and Rockaway. I know cats in Rockway that never been to the city, forget anyplace else in the country. So we now go to a specialty store in Rockaway and we start selling to the especially so the mom and pops to every day, so we didn't go to the department store. So it was really almost like we we were putting on sets what we love and then giving it kind of like to the cast we know just in the hood.
And or you said something earlier about not knowing how the work you're doing that's getting out there that you're not getting like the instant likes and all that shit. We were putting in that work as far as public placement goes, when probably placing wasn't really a thing. So we didn't realize as kids in Atlanta, Alabama, Cincinnati, you know what I mean, Japan seeing our stuff on video sets until we went out and actually go to the trade show and these retailers told us, it's kids in my town in Michigan asking for your shit because so and so is wear in it. But we didn't get to feel that that momentum until we started talking to retail But.
If you knew the stores, it's a hood thing. And I'm not saying this because everybody here has to be hood. Everybody here knows this stuff. If you knew the store you want to select, you know where we're gonna go in Manhattan. We're gonna put that stuff in the stores on one four five. Why does everybody moving weight all the way up and down the Eastern Seaboards go going to that area to go and do whatever they do and then they're gonna stop off at one four five and go shopping. Then they're gonna take clothes down the Eastern Seaboard, right. So it's just thinking if we think about advertising.
Those stories were the influencers of the time. They were the taste to making you didn't want.
Every time they shot in ten thousand, they ten thousand dollars for thirty seconds on MTV. They starting five hundred dollars on BT. Why because the amount of people to watch, No, ain't nobody in the hood feeling out known Nielsen rating and everybody they're watching BT and the project's got ten other people watching it for five hours, we're getting the same amount of value that will be ten thousand dollars on MTV. It's just common sense about knowing who you're messing with, who your market is, right, So.
Let me ask you this.
At one point right where we see football product was in rap videos all day, right, But then at one time labels start requesting that you block out the label you block out.
So that that was early on, so that wasn't that was what MTV was doing that They didn't know what the FB was, but it was in all these videos and then he just started seeing us.
I can see how the figure that few. I can see that now. I didn't even keep that then, No, it is, but you know what we did.
Remember what we did was that the man got one on right there. What happened was it was ninety seven they started doing that. We realized though that they wouldn't block out jersey numbers, so before five, so before five ever existed, the year oh five, we had always wanted food would be five of us. We created the number five to be synonymous with Google. So we're the only ones in clothing that ever owned the number. Trademarked the number from ninety seven up to five, and then they could never blur it because now you you would have to be blurring twenty three forty eight. So that's how we started to place the stuff in the end. So it was us and I think BMW on three two three, and I think there's very few that owned actual numbers.
It was a lot of It was a lot of marketing and ship we did. You know, we didn't do the basic the basic route. We learned a lot from our mistakes and what we did, and you know, we just grew from there, you know what I'm saying. But we always kept it like everything that we wanted to do is what we did with our brand. You know what I'm saying. We didn't have to go this route because so and so was doing that. We didn't have to go to that route the so and so is doing that, you know what I'm saying.
We look at it.
Labels at the time, stay and I remember up here in Collins the street the street teams.
We had street teams as a fashion house. That was unheard of back then.
We kind of ran a lot about marketing and promotion, labor, a lot of gorilla marketing, a lot of in the face of our consumers, and that just spread like wildfire.
Man was was it?
Because once people find out that the name means for us by us. Some people would take it as hip hop. Well, some people could take it as black people. Did that ever have a backslashing like trying to get in the dwarpping stores and like we don't we don't cover, we don't cover black clothing.
We think I think it affected us more on the consumer side because in the way we are we obviously we are black men with a black owned company. But forced bias to us at that time was more than just a It wasn't a race thing. It's more of a hip hop raxural thing, cause.
We had we from New York, we got Manican friends, we got Cuban friends, we got white friends.
Search and they yeah, boys just as wild as anybody else.
Like the hip hop. It wasn't a colored thing.
So I thing for his bias was like more of a cultural thing for the hip hop community, by the hip hop community.
But obviously being black on being black men, black owned company, we couldn't ignore that fact because a lot of people saying, yo, don't weigh our ship, and we knew that that's something that we wanted.
To address in our clothing, but also to keep the one hundred though when you hear somebody who it has so much pride and go, man, you finally made something for us.
It's hard at that moment.
Ago, Yeah, it's true, and it is powered by an African American culture that came out of the Bronx and we are represented. But you gotta allow everybody to touch this because I think our I think I think hip hop and country all going to be the most powerful music ever because it's the voice of the have nots.
But you can't exclude somebody from our beautiful life or our struggles.
Don't think like that. You can't say that to somebody. At that time was just like it was so much pride. You know, you're just like all right, cool.
Because you know, you know, you know, it's a it's a saying like whenever somebody is doing something good, they say, oh, we the fool board this ship. I take pride when if somebody says that, and you know what, you know, what's the crazy shit about it is, I immediately know what they're saying.
When someone says, oh we the fool board.
This ship, I say, either they mean you know the team or we control.
Of our own ship as the coaches. Both of those things. The reality of it is that it was never like black.
It was black owned, but never black only. Only we never like thought of it as because first of all, it's bad business to say I can't buy my ship. This is bad business.
And and we created it because we felt that. We felt the Timbling at the time said that about us, you can't buy out.
That was the energy.
Remember they don't sell our boosts to drug dealers, and we were buying all we were buying three pair Timbling in the year when construction work, and so we would be guilty of that. We would become the same thing we're fighting against if we if we decided to be that ignorant.
Now this is this famous our commercial. It's a gap commercial, right, but he had a food who hat. I thought that was the hardest in America at the time. Was that done on purpose?
So that was a mistake.
Now he went down to do the commercial and my boy round Tree that was holding him down at the time, all back to the office and was like, yo El was gonna wear this hat? Kenny ware he acts for acts First he said, Kenny wed the hat in the commercial. So I was like, hell yeah, but hold on one second. Put them on hold of going there to these guys. I'm like, yo, that one where the food had the Gap commercial. Everybody saying, hell, yes, I go back to around yo.
So it's a goal.
We didn't know he was gonna rap about it, but you know, they just didn't have a hat to feed him.
But he changed the game with that one. Like how many people from the Gap had to get fired? Bro?
Who everybody?
He heard?
It was like sixteen people that got fired. How long did that commercial run? We can't, like about a year and a half.
It still now we have like like four or five months, six months and then they stopped.
It and he stopped the show. They ain't re read it, think about it? What's good drink Champs Army. If you like this show, you've got to check out The Midnight Miracle. If you don't already know about The Midnight Miracle, It's the Legends Dave Chappelle, Teleib Kwali, and Y'allsen Bay co hosting this indescribable podcast. It's music, it's convo, it's debate, it's a million other things. It's really dope. It's so dope to hear these legends chop it up about everything from wild stories to debating what's going on in the world. I mean it has it all.
Season one was taped at the Shack That's Dave Spot in Ohio, where we had the honor of filming our Drink Champs episode with them. They had guests like Questlove, Kat Williams, Michelle Wolf, Q Tip, Radio, Raheem, and a lot more. Season two, though, was taped on the road with Day to Living y'all scene bringing the magic that rises up when they're live together.
Check it out. That's the midnight miracle. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. There is no social media at the time. The Gap runs an ad. They spend thirty million dollars on every network. He's in the ad Acapella Forest by us on the log it's running.
They don't have anybody culturally relevant in the company black white, I don't get yellow.
Who said, yo, Yo know.
This?
No hashtag Gap fail Yo. The dudes in the mirror like, yo, yo, the fuck you know what I mean? Over the Gap? Nobody tells them yo, Well how many we wow?
But the Illi story was when we first saw the commercial. Yeah, we were all in the office watching. He said, oh yo, they go to GAP commercial. We're sitting there watching it.
You don't know about he was like, we were like, oh, say well he just said food in the Gap commercial.
Yo.
It was It was crazy that they know what know what is He had ll had bested interest in our company.
So we we we worked a situation at him where he was censivized to do to go the extra mile.
He was invested in our company, and he really just once he got to a situation, he felt like, I can make this much by making this ship this much hotter, and I got these platforms. He was off his sitcoms, you know. You know at that time he wouldn't take the ship off.
He was so he is so underrated as a partner, a pie in a legend through so many transitions. Even what he's doing rock the bells. But he he to me, is one of the cats who you This was not his brand totally. He was a part of the brand. He got paid off the brand. He went so hard he wasn't talked to My manager.
Owned it. And I got to think, I think that commercial.
Not only did we know you owned it, but after that commercial, we thought the gap, yeah, we thought.
They and then that's what happened. The Gap did their numbers.
They realized the target market they were trying to increase three hundred percent. Everybody, the kids still thinking about football, the gap and then l goes back to them and says, why don't you'll do a deal and let and and just get over it. I know, Lecky Wounds re air the commercial, and then they re air the commercial.
Listen. The commercial was so powerful. When I watched it today, I had to say, Miss zach Filin that I had a little bit like, oh, like, I was like and I wanted to ask you. I wanted to ask you this for a long time. I've been seeing it.
I haven't been seeing it, y'all, but I wanted to ask you all this one a long time. So you need to tell me that I asked what I had. We're in lady lyrics and then split it and they didn't even have no idea.
What's crazy is we've had all angles of the story because we've let talk about it. You've been on the show before, we spoke about it, and it doesn't get old. It's just it's such an epic moment in hip hop and then and then clothing and you know, and part is he said the way he said it in the wrap on the Only You. If you was in hip hop, only you will understand it.
Yeah.
So there's people called me like, yo, you're l but nobody if you don't understand that language and that langue. At that time, it was really authentic, but it was it was rebelling within the system.
Yeah yeah, you Oh my.
God, that's that ship is so quick? So what mad y'all go on tour? Because I heard y'all saying that earlier. That was a lot of the other things that you just said wasn't traditional either, right, But I remember seeing that. I remember seeing y'all you know what I mean? What made y'all say I'm going to be a.
Part of it that much?
Because you could just close the rappers and you ain't y'all guys had to go physically.
Yes, that was that was before what tore you talking.
We were on tours, guests on tour, and then the good old days when we started doing can Con and we just rolled into a city and we just buy out a bar for three hours for everybody, and that.
Was like the good that was. That was social media.
I got you know, you know, you got your crew right until some casts started going no, no, no, no, no the balls on me.
I'm like, yo, your home boy, this is on the company. No, no, the ball on me.
I met one of my dudes, like twenty years I just paid off that credit card from the night I brought out the bar in Detroit. People like, Yo, you got caught up, home boy.
But what you I mean?
Because that's the type we do. We would before social media was out. Somebody were like, did you let's say live happened on Sunday night twenty five years ago. You hear the DJ go who just brought out the ball for the next three hours. I don't care what you're drinking. It's on fool ball. You guys would be a me fit it back.
Shit. Yeah, we talketing just fine us.
Right because because like you said, like you I said, y'all went at it like a hip hop promotion.
But this is a clothing line.
So I had never seen like we heard of cross colors, but we didn't know how to cross colors.
People. Look, we didn't. We thought they was lying to us and damage with the same people like we.
Like.
So like just like the first time.
We see the owners of the brand, we see the brand and we see the owners.
Of the brand out right and they look like me.
It looked like, so who are the other people in the space at the time, was walking?
We're out yet we launched. Yeah, we advise. We advised Dame dash on how to start rock.
We put we put the president Jeff Tweety over at Sean John when when when he wanted to start that brand.
We advise Mark.
We all here's the ones who we came who we came up with, Maurice Malone, April Walker, calcaon Bad Brothers. And at that time when we would go to our trade show, there was nobody else in the trade Magic. Yeah, of color. There was nobody of color in the trade show. So we would just be us. We get together in a little room and talk about what we were going to do. But we also we also ruin the Magic trade show because we started throw the wild parties.
We would we would get six in Jack the Rappids. Basically, Yeah, we would hire six bustloads.
It was a trade show because we will hire six bus greyhound bustle loads of models from LA We would have them all come to the trade show for one party one night. All were fuble come in and they would be Cinderella. They'd had to get right on the bus right after and leave. And all the buyers and everybody started hearing about this part. It was all these beautiful people. You would never see them again.
Imagine what.
It's like.
Five guys, like two hundred women and we sprinkl women in.
There are like five at a time, and very classy women, you know.
And we made sure everybody was say because they had to get right on the bus and leave, not say in Vega, it's not get in trouble. So when we do a method like that, you know super Bowl, we would would we'd buy out. We buy a beautiful space for just three days we called Club Fuoble and you had to get a pass by one of us to literally get in. And it would be DMX performing that cat that cat you know, so can coon, same stuff, all the same mentality. There's just hood mentality, you know what I mean?
It strictly hood mentality.
Yeah, yeah, what's the difference of an everyday person When we were talking befoor, an everyday person in your store and you say, you know, thank you becoming so much. Take that home, man, how are your mother doing? It doesn't have to be in that form. But when somebody feels like you care about them and you took that moment, they will never forget that in their entire life ever, you know.
I remember I remember Nelly, Nelly telling me, Yo, give me your football party, Daddy Olds last year. I was caught noell back then. He said, but that party was crazy. And it's funny because we were on stage. What was that that that thing they wet and wild or whatever, and we was on stage and he was telling this is when he was telling telling him to me, and it was just crazy to hear him say it because we was vibing on his music, yet he was vibbling on us.
I remember, I remember fifty used to be online there when he was a young artist coming up. Or it was Lebron, Remember when Lebron? Yeah, when he when he first he didn't get drafted yet.
That's how Fifth shot his first video at one of our parties out there.
If it wasn't for hip hop, for US hip hop music, football wouldn't exist, not at all, not at all.
Hell, let's fix no noise for that guy that.
But at one point, like the brand did go commercial right, like, yeah, it was just everywhere it was just it was just everywhere was that hard because you know, you know how you know how they said, when you when you go, when you go, when you go, when your records get played on the radio too much?
Are you pop?
Now?
You know what I mean? Did you ever feel like that?
We you know, we were just having a conversation about that because we thought at that time we were gonna have no more than three years.
Like, yo, we got three years.
We got to get as much money as we can because it ain't gonna last that long. And then here we are sitting thirty two years later. You know what I'm saying, right, saying the same ship Liken we here like this is you know, legendary.
But listen, end of the day, I'm glad that we had a previous conversation about analytics. Yeah, we want, we want, we want pop and I love it.
Right, But.
I mean, he's a keeping real niggas.
But you know that.
I'm here, yes, but a hot bash man like five to seven years, where is United colored Beniton's I don't know where where is the cost? Whereas a let's say, when it came into the market, leve I was doing eighteen billion.
They went down to three, they back up the six.
Uh when you when you really think about the brand, A lot of people have fell in love with their brand so much. But you know what, if you would love too, loved it to death and you were in high school, that was the old thing you want when you went to college.
You want to feel a little different, all right.
And that's when we started to expand the brand, like I'm gonna do with you with drink Champs. I think drink Champs could be a whole bunch of licensing and I think there's a lot of a lot of things. I think that's I think. I think we wanted them. I think that you could be you could be the Coco Bongo was ready to community.
Taking. Yeah, yeah, but.
Yeah, of course it went pop and you know what, it went like this, and for many years we took the brand overseas. A lot of people said, I mean, because one of the biggest issues was saying right, yeah, well it was like nineteen ninety eight.
He was hottest fish grease.
You know, we were hot about like every you're giving me chills and chills.
So the brand was so hot that they couldn't people couldn't figure.
Out how to stop us.
They didn't, so they created this story that we sold the bread for some reason. No matter what we did, it just stuck for some reason.
Wow, you know what I mean? Like even what it's twenty twenty four, ut that you sold it?
Yeah?
Who created this this? It was?
I feel I'm gonna speak for myself. It was the competitors because they were like, yo, let's throw a monkey. Mentioned is day, Like we.
Was getting three hundred the peers, your peers, We don't don't know. I'm not saying it.
But than that, yeah, I'm not saying that necessarily called Canne. There's other entities that own these brands as well, right right, people.
People started buying out the brands and then it's them like you.
Don't do business with a person didn't want to throw a little you know what I'm saying.
You know before you say something, because I'm gonna tell you the reason why the rumor was a little bad because this is a company.
That said they for us, by us, you're gonna sell it. They sold it. Yeah, I wish we back. They did sell. We did sell. But what we did do is we sold to we sold the region.
We so we sold China Korea and Philippines and about we can't touch those areas, and Korea was more skate and we didn't want to relate to skate, so we just sold those areas just so you can break up your brand now and you see, like enough shark tank, right, But the example, I'll give you an example. Yeah, I mean publicly, we were so open about our world. So we were like, yeah, we got a distribution deal with Samsung. Same as you may have a distribution deal, you own your brand, you may be on whatever platform it is today, it's normal.
Then people are like, you own my Samsung. You know we have a distribution deal. You own by Revolt. Right, They would be like, well then who owned Revolt?
Well, who owned that? Person owns you? And that was easy to say.
Again, no social it's the licensing deal all but it's a distribute.
It's a distribution deal. There's no social media. We can't answer immediately.
Somebody can't go to the fooble or hear the fooble, Instagram or TikTok to go yo.
Let me break it down, let me show you the paperwork. No way to get out of it. It keeps spinning.
You can't spend time on negative when we knew the commercials, Hey, we own it.
We own it.
The kids don't care. At the end of the day, they care what's cool, what they want to rock, you know. So that's that's some of the things we have the challenges.
So so let me ask you, because that was very interesting what you said. So you said you showed the Korea territory territory and then then so that means that you, guys, wasn't designing those clothes that came out and I was.
Start Usually we start with a licensing situation where let's say a company in Korea, and yes we were guide them with all the branding and all the direct quality control. But once they get up and run, they may say, no, what we want to buy the story from the guy. We don't want to license it no more.
What's your price?
Right?
And that's what you look at, you know.
So if you did, if you did a license of drink champs in China, right, we want to you can you can create whatever your your A license is basically you leasing it to somebody. So you're or you're renting your home this summer, you can say, listen, guys here in China here's what I want you to do. I'll allow you to do twenty four episodes a drink champ. But because we understand that China wants some portion of it to be China related speaking that language for a half an.
Hour hour, you can neither go a half an hour is us.
Or we can go one segment is US, one segment is your version one segment, or you can go every other episode. So what we would do is say, here is the package, here is all our logos, identity. We're making a military set d D. They'll go, okay, we'll use thirty percent of that. But in Japan they used to like to dress and they still do something like characters. They say, we want to do that.
We're not gonna do your double lexus because nobody's a double lex over here.
And fifty percent we're gonna create our own with your logo. But you're gonna they're gonna look like a dog, literally a rock waller with FuGO on whatever it's trending in that gave them. We gave them the DNA to it. So that's how you do it. And you can license a territory. You can license, Well, I'm gonna give you suits. I'm gonna give you bags, I'm gonna give you boots. And that's how you see Mickey Mouse, Nike, Apple, all these brands that are gonna scale, and everybody listening to us right now.
You want to scale your intellectual property. It's all about licensing. Because if we knew the we knew how, we knew, how we knew what we knew. We knew how to make for hip hop.
That's it mails between eighteen and thirty five that love to pay twenty percent more in quality goods. We knew that you want to make ladies, and you're a ladies manufacturer, we will license you because you know ladies.
I don't know how how design like a lake you want to make for makeup? You want to make for this like right now, call he does if you're a. If you're a. As the baby.
Boomers, the primarily the African American baby booming, their children now have wealth, but their parents don't necessarily have in the multicultural housing a place to retire that they feel that African Americans are sold up to. So if you want to go to call because he runs the real estate division. You want to say, hey, I want to create a community for affluent African Americans who kids aren't lawyer, docs or whatever the case is. But nobody's telling them I want to create a Fuboo community. Well, then you go to call and let me explain that to your real quick. That's a license and it is likely said. It's expanding the brand.
So we're moving into real estate, which consists of anything from hospitality, housing, Well, we call.
It community, whatever you want to call it. You may call it this community.
The reality is when you deal with developers, they always looking for a way to upsell whatever property they have. So we filled our brand and get them the leverage that they need to get into certain markets. So we partner with housing developers, retail developers, commercial commercial developers to build these communities that we're working on right now outside of Atlanta that consists of housing, retail, hospitality, restaurants, sports, sports what we call those things the things we do all the sports things that So we basically go into these communities that need these things in developing them.
For and we're going to have some medical and if you think like the retirement, but we want to have experts who understand heart disease, adult care, living adult care for African American blood, high blood pressure, cholesterol and be experts in that. So that our so again it's a license of people. Well then we vet and the same thing. If we want to do frozen soul food, well we're gonna say, well, African Americans suffer from a lot of You wanted the African American taste or Caribbean taste, or you want that, but you want it to be maybe not as much salt in it, not as much for every case. The bottom line is when you license drink champs with whoever here talking about their bakery, their lotion or whatever, if you are able to find great partners to say I will take a three year license on that, and if I hit all the numbers and do it the right way, I'll do what I really do best. I believe in your brand and I'll take it there and then you know we'll keep it going. Some license, screw you. But that's how we got to grow up.
For the young people that's going into the building their brands, it's all about the brand. Build a brand and you capture your market. Now you have an asset that you can go out and work these.
I mean, isn't that what miss the Beast does, right.
I think you just sound one of the biggest deals in history, right, Miss the Beast, these burgers and all that kind of stuff like that or YouTuber YouTube, Right, I need buy an island assumption. They learned to license their brand.
You know, that's something that from year one we knew build a strong brand and we wanted.
To We wanted to own it, and we wanted to do I looked at.
It as franchising Drink Champs to these different countries. Our idea was like, find the equivalent of no Orient EFN in your country that's credible, and we'll give you the full franchise model of how that will.
Work and back it from our end. It's the same thing. And you know, license and.
Do you make money fun the whether the royalties from the avatarsing what you may do your work.
And your job is to keep the d N a of it, because if Drink Champs doesn't do what they're supposed to do, then everybody else Hence, going back to our partnerships, you don't do. If you don't do, if I don't do what I'm supposed to do, the whole thing collapses.
Is it true? Owns Cougie. Yeah, yeah, we ended up buying Koogie.
We had.
We had, we had Kappa us A, but we gave that back because Kappa uh Soper didn't take off till last year. And the damn sneakers we had, we have etonic sneakers. Willie Esco our party, you're running too, so you understand.
We had a coming called Heather Red. We had drunken money, married to the mom, and we had we had what's that Ted Baker? We had for a little while, but we didn't we licensed that from them. We didn't. We didn't.
We failed at that. We didn't know how to build retail stores. We would never experts at that. We love to know what we're expertise. So we failed at Kappa. We failed that uh Ted Baker. We we reinvented Cougie because we bought that out of bankruptcy. And the old cats would say to the young kids, you don't know about this cookie. And then we ended up making jeans that Kougie never made, and the young cats would say, the old people, you don't know about then.
Let me tell you all.
Our show is about giving people their flowers while they alive, not why you know what I mean.
Something happens and you passed away.
So we wanted to make sure that we tell y'all how much y'all mean to the coach, and how much y'all mean to the society, how much you'll mean to us personally.
So we wanted to give you all y'all know what I'm saying. Oh the other word, Yeah, we got always say give it to the Michael just gets to put it on the tables. There you go, you represent him that he's not here. Big up my FUNA network.
So we're gonna play a quick game. You explained to them, the fans drinking. We got to find out was drinking for them. Oh yeah, you want to you want any of your friends to be a designated drink or you want one of our dudes to be a destiny?
You got that information?
Drink?
Come on, come on, who's gonna be drinking? Put them back? Somebody? Come on, key, I think everybody need doesn't drinking? Right, come on? Designated drinkers? Come on? Do you hear that? Folks?
This is the only place in the world this designated drivers, but don't drink chapter.
Get it designated drinker?
Alright, designated drink There we go, all right, I need somebody to drink from me. Yea, we need one more designated drink. Come on, now we go, I mean cost son and.
Uh so, we're gonna give you two choices.
If you pick one of these two choices, nobody drinks, right, nobody yet what We're gonna give you two choices.
Okay, you say one over, you know you pick one.
Nobody drinks if you say both of neither, which would be the politically correct.
And we all drinking here. We're all taking a shot. And please dive into any stories with anybody we mentioned. This is about, you know, bringing up any stories with these folks.
That's rock, that's rock, baby, cal Knile or cross cars Carl? Can I you know why? I would like to know what? Because I had a dreamer on the arrange rover one day. You had a dreamer on the arranged robo. Okay, that was one of my goals. And Karl kan I made an ad in the ski hat and here's some skis on sitting next to a range rover, and I said, that's gonna be me one day.
How can I with a big fucking uh uh encouragement to me to go on? Can for some red ask you this that question, that's my guy. I'm asking you claiming you don't drink. Nobody drinks.
Nobody drinks if.
You don't pay, you don't ye nas or l j ll cool j no.
Niche or Esco Esco because we own a little bit of that. Shout out to man, shout out to Will. That's the best part ever, Jay z or Biggie Smalls. Baby, that's pretty easy.
Wait wait, wait, don't. We're throwing at you too, and it's just for you guys, big old day baby, you got it?
Yeah, fat form or rock Aware, fat Phone, Okay, Tupac or d m X.
Got me d m X man, you want.
Us to drink ko either There you go, There you go.
Yeah, that was a tough one. Any interaction Pcer, I know you know one of my my regrets. I don't think we ever had interactional pop. I said, what's up to him? Once?
I don't think I've ever even seen him, man, really, I never I don't think. I don't think I haven't seen him. I heard he's in the club one time when I was there. Man, you know what I love about the park.
If you ask ten different people ten anything about tens of people get ten different stories really, which I now know because I'm married to a Gemini, so I know that.
Gemini bro it is hm hm.
Tommy Hill Figure or Nordica going to Okay, yeah you want this one?
Walkerware or Maurice Malone walk Away.
Like that's my homie. I mean, no, no disrespect the Maurice. I love him too.
But Big Home Basaci or Gucci.
Yeah, man, that's a that's a that's a tough one. Both of them, Yeah, both of them a legendary. Both of them got the that's a tough one. That's a tough one.
Yeah, crop called Quest or Brand Nubia, that's a good one. Lynden Bulle, Linden Bulla on that polo ship, I'm going with something to get come on, grand It wasn't okay, okay, so I ain't. I'm still gonna go with my guys from London, Lyndon Boulevard, Baby Salt Pepper or j J. Fag No, that would be your baby Colosseum or girch More. I'm going down. We're going Calseeum.
That's the Fresh seven over there.
Man. You know earlier when we spoke about you guys selling shirts and hats.
In my mind, it was on the coliseum. Let me tell you this a quick story. It's two stories.
Is that because me and Damon worked in the colseum get the funk out of hopcoin stand together. That's how we That's how we went our first jobs together.
Wow, before church is chicken. But but we started.
Easter Sunday was the first day we went out with our hats and from the I'll see them all to start our business because I was it.
Anniversary.
Yes, it was thirty five years ago that we stood outside in the corner Carl and I and I always say this story I tell you, but I always tell the story. I was by myself, but I wasn't because you know, back from the hood, you're never going to where body. You don't even go to the corner store. You take a walk with me, right and I need a call and he needed me because if we didn't know we were going to tell anybody. I had eight dred we had eight hundred dollars together and now all of a sudden thinking about who gonna rob us? It was a good and then uh then good Friday nineteen eighty nine because I remember and my memories fucked up. So I remember going to shirt Kings and thinking I saw a footbel shirt there.
Key cousin worked the shirt Kings big time.
Way back there, like back to I was like, you know, go to see him for me, and I know this is going to really sound like like like that was like I didn't know no other fly.
Yeah that was that was it is everything?
That was it.
I mean what you were thinking about it was Coliseum shirt King right, it was, mister Lee. If you want to get some pressure on all you didn't have money for that, but Dan that yes.
Ye.
When when I when I moved around the world and they called their spot flea markets, but that's what coliseum.
I was like, like, are USA flee market out here? What they calling that?
L a If you say this is the crazyes shit is? If you say to me the coliseum, I'm like, yeah, I'm with it. What do you say to me that coming to the flea walk?
The same I got my first back gold chamber in the Policum. I think it was two dollars a yard. You get you remember, get the rope chain in the turn Green like the.
Same night, tell me nothing but you got you gotta remember Kyle c. M didn't sell fake ship. They had real.
So it was a fleet market. That's the time between that the fleet markets. You have a real store right here in the fleet market and you got it.
It's bootleg.
You got the.
Big difference. Okay, you said, I got the next one podcast of radio radio.
Come on football radio, Man radio talking about home radio. As we talk, we get a license drink that Shaun John, let's drink.
You gotta drink, you gotta drink, you gotta drink. You know, Mark will show edgy with his from that side and John. But but when Echo had the tapes that came with it, I was like that and then Denean it took it to a high level with a lot of the firs and a lot of all this love.
You know, they kept it kept it going, you know what I mean? And you know, oh.
It's this style wise but you could you can answer where you want da Dad or Google.
Loo oh what googy look goovy lot. Yeah it's really whatever. Yeah I'm taking a shot. I'm shocked. Then, like that really a story behind us. We don't know the story.
Behind it, but it's just like little jabs that we don't understand like we always show respect, but you know, a no call has some understanding on.
That, you know it is.
It's not even about that, it's about I think. Even when it came to I think, what's his name? What's my man named? Jim Jones he said something not so long ago about.
Our catching hallm didn't fuck with football, And at that time I was in sales of football. I was head of sales, so I knew the numbers we were writing with Sammy's to catch one forty fifth. I knew they were making millions of dollars with our brand, and I knew camp. I knew what bas is wearing our ship. I knew Cameron's wearing our ship. And for him to come in and say that Harlem didn't fuck with Fooble, it just it touched me the wrong way. So when you come to DAP, he never showed us much love. Jim never show us much love, even though he tried to do the same thing we tried to do with that vampire shit. He should know how hard this business is and how hard for us to maintain what we're doing. To try to say we ain't ship to kind of rubbed me the wrong way. But with that being said, though we love Harlem Hallow.
Always loved us and we'll be backing so us over there soon. You know. You know what's crazy?
You know Rap, it's like so competitive, right, and everyone is always at each other. And the other day I had lunch with Dave Chappelle, right, and I kind of like, I kind of.
Like, it's just mean like that.
I kind of laughed at I kind of laughed at him because I was like, finally Comedians is going through it with and I'm like, I'm sorry, but I kind of like can't get the heat. So it's like the fact that because Rap, we didn't see human at at first, like you know, you're getting money and now start beefing like that ship don't don't make no sense. But to see it in other worlds, like a part of me was like, damn, that's real. Like y'all go through it too, like I didn't. I didn't think of it like that. I thought, I this is what I thought, what you swear to God. I know I'm mad, naive you forgive me, but I thought, y'all all cool ya by yall you see each other and can cool party? And I think the whole fashion, the whole you know what I'm.
Saying, it's no chief, It's just that, you know, it's just a lot of a lot of ship we've been through behind the scenes that people don't know about.
Like they see the story.
You know, we know Damion Mortgage's house for you know, one hundred thousand dollars, and we did deal with Samsung and all of that, but they don't know the extortion plots. They don't know the deep ship that we be going through behind closed doors. And while we talk about putting out a documentary, let me tell you know, so let's talk about some of that ship. Because by the way, we've been holding back the doc and the series, right because every time like Hollywood talks to us and they go, they always do docks and series about stories and somebody end up dead or in jail or crime bas African American whatever, and they always go when we tell our sorry about what happened. So when they go, so one of you all are in jail now, somebody getting weaned up a p dough No no, no, no, no, you'll also alive. Yeah, but what happened was when we came up, as I said, homophobic culture that nobody thought we were making money.
So what happened?
And nobody grabbed on to us from the streets and none of the supreme Remember we come up with supreme teams. We come up with with Tommy Montana and Queens and like, we come up with all these guys who we was in encore where they usually try to grab on you before you come up, but we come up silently. All of a sudden, three hundred and fifty million dollars are going through a system. You got now the yakuza in Japan and China going, you got to make the clothes over here with us?
They took you this, yeah, or something going to happen.
You got a buyer at a store who's like, I'll buy ten million dollars worth of shit, but I need a house, right, You got, you got, you got the you got the mob going? Is the one hundred million dollars coming into your warehouse? Just claim insurance from five million dollars. Don't work about it. It's not gonna be there when you got there. If you don't, it's a washing machine.
If you don't.
The way worse than that, you got the streets seeing us coming out going three hundred and fifty million almost be under your mattress. So now we got to hire the due We got to hire the person somebody guards who used to run who used to deal with the tunnel and Union Square. To know that they're gonna be able to deal with the streets. You got to start trying to move your family out of it because they ain't gonna get to you. Well, you know, the worst person ever get kidnapped aint the person getting kidnapped, it's the friend next to them, because those are the fingers are going to show up at the house. We have all coming to us at the same time, right and we're trying to push this away because we're just trying to.
Make clothes, trying to run a business.
Yeh, When you got that kind of system happening, there's a lot of things that happen, and there's a lot of hate that happens too, because your clothing brands not working because ours is.
We're not trying to do anything. It's just not your time.
Son.
I want you to tell your story. He's so bad, because we're gonna tell that story one day.
Because it just looked like it just looked like there was no nothing. It just looked like, y'all just dump. I was four cars away when Biggie got shot.
In front of them. We was party just up to them.
Yeah, we sent them a bottle of dump and he raised his bottle up. We raised our bottle up.
We got story.
We got remember party and everybody's trying to fight and all that stuff. We're just trying to dress everybody.
Man. We in between everything. East Coast, West Coast.
Shug Shug shows up at one of our parties that we're throwing for Lennox Lewis after party, the promoter was a promoter from La so he had to let Shuk in. But then my bodyguards had to go to Sugar and say get that out of here because Puff's coming in. And so that was so we gotta we gotta beef in the streets with Sugar that we don't gotta beef. But my dudes had to settle it because now they had you know, they have their they're deep.
Well, my my dudes. Our dude is our ex Navy seal. We got we we got all kind of stuff. We're just trying to dress people. Many want a shirt home boy, We got a lot of Yeah, man, we talk about third world countries. One say about foot is four different stories.
Yeah, we we try to stop the counterfeit is on twenty seventh Street and Manhattan, and we tried to stop them, and we found out that a lot of those are these organizations over seves that don't do well for the for for the world.
I don't want to say their name. Three hundred people come out of those buildings and start and start chasing. We have we have off duty cops. They saw whipping the cops. He got key got caught up in it. Uh that was in the hospital, called me and that's written up in the paper. Because you have all these counterfeits coming out. You know, if football did let's say we did ten billion over the years, counterfit has did fifty billion.
Wow.
So it's a lot of stuff in our world that Listen, there's nobody gonna do three three hundred, two hundred million dollars worth of business annually without a lot of people wanted to get paid.
This this is this is the reason why y'all got a really really really we got We're gonna tell him the story. Oh no, we got stories today.
What about the fatty girl set who walked onto the Fatty Girls set and we put that.
We couldn't put that tape out. We got O. J.
Simpson and Fatty Girl video like dancing.
With Superhead with handcuffs on, the handcuffs on Lucas had to chain.
Know, Luca's chain with the head.
That's what with the jelly telling the story. And OJ just.
Popped out of nowhere. He came there him his Superhead dance and he got to change.
You know, he looks as he looks at he looks at Ludifer says, I know what those are, and there were handcuffs. He put the handcuff gold chain around him, Superhead current stuff and starts dancing with him.
He shoots the video.
I got it still locked up because soon as Hype William put the video together, we grew up with Hype two.
He was on tour with us. We showed it to so they go, you can't put that video universe. No, we showed the universe.
They said, no store will ever carry your stuff because you are promoting O. J.
Simpsons.
So I'm assuming this is after the right. Okay, he came.
We love that. Anyway, We've been doing a lot Man Academics or l r G it's the same you gotta drink that now, the same style, same same thing.
I didn't think I know the owners Polo or Perry Ellis Polo. Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna keep it real. I'm gonna keep it real with you cast that with Pole. Its cringes me though, because the bottom of line, the bottom line. I feel like this.
There's so many black owned brands right now that are so ding. Let's forget Fooble's on this thing. But to put that much energy and influence and and an effort behind a brand that literally does nothing for your community, it.
Just it just it does be the wrong way. I look at this.
When we started, we build a company based upon young black and and people of color, hiring them, give them jobs, opportunities, and without companies like ours, without supporting companies like ours, a lot of these kids would never had the opportunity that we gave.
Some of these kids. Now now some exectuves have Adidas.
Puma, They're doing things that they would never had the opportunity to do without Fooble. So we need more, Like jac said, we need more food booths because a lot of kids just won't get those opportunities about it. So when I say fuck Polo, nothing personally to that cat Ralph Weber's name is. But it's just to that energy that you give those brands as opposed to where you can put you could really put your.
Recent Here's what, here's it, and this is why we're all the great partners. So what the way talking about? If we feel some cast that says something negative or not, I'll always going to be and he'll do the vice versus mean I'll be the devil's advocate. Well, maybe Jim the group he hung out with never rocked it, so that was his experience. Maybe maybe adapt this and that maybe Ralph Lauren made Tyson Beckford, and Tyson Beckford was the first African American male supermodel that I know, right, And maybe Ralph Lauren inspired it.
Ain't Ralph though, to step up his game.
And so we'll always have these healthy debates, and I think that that's what makes that's what creates innovation. I don't disagree with call, and I don't agree with call and vice versa.
You see what I'm saying.
I can't forget that a lot of the Polo thing was people were boosting it and in the sense.
That was a protest, and a lot of community is a pro but you know, there was people do something.
From an economic economical state point, the bottom line is if companies like Hours don't survive, young creative people don't have the chances that they would have if we do.
So I agree, well, you know what you know, I like. I like what we're doing now is we're spreading the business out. It's just not clothing, you know, it's radio, it's TV, you know, things of that nature. I've been doing food with radio for the last eight years, you know what I'm saying. And it's interesting, you know what I'm saying. It's a challenge, it's not easy, but we've turned the corner. And you know, did a deal with you forty two. My people at U forty two were building an eighteen stage did an eighteen stage studio in Atlanta, right, So, like we're working on some other things. You know what I'm saying that.
With the with the revenue, with the capital from your supporters, I mean, the bottom line is you're gonna spend your dollars somewhere and.
I'm gonna tell you, I'm I'm gonna throw it back in drink Champs I see your production crew, and I see everybody here. It's a healthy mix of beautiful people of all colors. And I think that what happens is when I look at a lot of production crews, they only look one way, right. I think that the beauty of what you do right here is everybody comes up with they get the best out of both. You show these major companies right here that you can make money keeping it real with a real uh crew mixer, And I think that collectively, I think sometimes that's where Carl and I may disagree because maybe it was the fact that it was you know, they maybe don't do as much of the community in this way, but inspire the community this way.
So you know that you know, but because you know, I don't want to tell you tell it to you. I remember if we had Shaquille O'Niel sitting right here right and I say this, Shaq, like, how much I like.
Autem are right?
I'm like, I like I like autom off And Shaq looks at me and he goes, I know a mar cares about me? Do you think they care about you? And I had to think, like I was like, because it's true. Sometimes it's not just automor. It's like Rolex, like, people don't really know.
Who's my favorite watch right now? Which one is? Which watch?
Why?
Because it makes me money? Goddamn it pays No, not even watch. I would a militant one. The reality is.
It's creating well for me, opportunities for me, you know what I'm saying. So this means more to me than any role exactly. Shout out to Jacks King of Licensing. Yeah, he's let me ask you, let me ask you.
I saw I can't say this, say this, say this brother name, right, but I saw the dude and he was he was really like trying to just swear just black owned ship.
Right. It's just that he's just he picked the worst brands, right, he just.
I'm looking like, man, you need to go back to tell now, like right, all wrong? Man, he don't know exactly about him too. I think he knew exactly who you were talking.
But yeah, you know.
He said the people, Yeah, the people don't to okay, but sometimes the quality is not the same when you wanted to just support your people, right, Like like I's suppose if I wanted to Puerto Rican food, like like today.
I called my engineer has who We always eat vegetarian Jamaican food. Don't ask me why. We just like it right, we mean it.
But today I purposely knew I was going to a Jamaica stood and I knew I was gonna be just expected.
What I want. Y, you're gonna get the abuse.
Like I knew that.
I knew that was coming out.
But it was like, damn, Like I'm you like when I sometimes go to our people, I know that it's it's like, yo, you're supposed to be here.
It's like nah. So my wife ordered the food right and she was like, yo. I was like, can you order it for me?
I'm about to get a haircut, I'm going out and she was like, yo, if my employees talk to me the way this because my wife owns a juice bar, all right, So she's like, if my employees just talked to me, And I had to tell her, no, man, that's is Jamaican ship, like.
Like I'm used to it. You brace yourself before you can do so sometimes, so this is the point I'm trying to make, right.
Sometimes when you support just the culture, some of the some of the products aren't that great.
Are you know the foundation of what when some of the things we created was prior to that. Besides cross color, you had to wear kin take cloth colors to support African American businesses, and then cross clothes came out and they broke them all. They inspired me. But I don't want to wear no orange or yellow everything. The little characters shirts and they wrink they're going after one. We always and you're right, I don't care what organization color. You got to step up your game and you got to prepare. And we should not support those companies that do that because we should give them a shot, give me a second shot. Put on notice, support somebody else caause there's somebody else who's trying to make it better.
But you know what I mean.
But I do want to you know, instead of like you know, I do want to talk about the people who do support food with today. You know what, we realize the people who support food today people don't.
Let's talk about people who do. The ones who do.
That's right, highly educated, highly educated people all with people with a lot of money because they can pick from anything and they don't just do fool So you'll see like old school people in their thirty to forty they'll buy the shoes, whatever, because they can pick anything and they say, hey, I'm going to make ten percent of my wardrobe. That also, you'll see like a lot of the young artists who are very pro that they're doing. They have a silent message everywhere, Like I know, Drake supports it a lot for the other artists, younger the artists Scissors support all the time.
Who else? Yadi? Who are so?
What's a girl?
So a lot of a lot of the music artists today who are trying to do a kind of like a little like people they're doing the l who j they're doing subliminal and what's.
Dope about it? Let me just stop me for a second. Was dope about it? If they're discovering it just now? But most of them want to pay homage. They want to pay homage. They want to say they want to rock with their favorite rappers, rock when they favorite rappers rocket. And so I see that a lot like when you know, I'll go through the malls or something like that and I'll see like my sons or somebody like this, and they'll they'll pick up and I'm like, I want to say, you don't no foot?
Well he like, but but he does know he does.
He's he's seeing these videos and that's what it So when it's older people who know what it is and they have a choice of anything and everything, they choose that the younger artists who are trying to do the subliminal. And then a lot of times it's the younger kids who are saying, this is mine. I'm going to reset this thing off because I'm creating an identity that you don't know about. They're very pro conscious and those are the people that we again, like we've always tried to do. We always tried to appeal to those and not talk about the negatives of it. And I want to make sure you twist.
But those girls the people that Yeah, so I was gonna say, the key to all that, even being successful, is that there has to always be quality. You want to pay homage, the qualities got to be there. The new cat wants to come in and discover it. The qualities got to be there.
They think, I'm sorry. The thing about what we did was we made sure we put the quality in the in our clothes. So people how we actually relaunched, you know, because everybody was doing anything, everyone both doing anything, But how we be launched, was people started thrifting and the clothes was they were fine.
They looked brand new.
So then they started like posting, I'm bringing foodb back, I'm bringing food, but I'm looking at these clothes like, damn, Jackie looks brand new. The sweatshow looks brand new?
You brother, I mean, obviously my crew got it because you know, and a lot of this stuff is not. We did a collaborational pullman barons the other thing. But one of your brothers on set, he got a jersey we didn't make that. We made that jersey twenty years ago. Yeah, yellow jerseys.
He made it yesterday. That's twenty years old. Man looked like his brand new you and and you know what I'm saying, so.
But that this is the quality because we was kids that we said how we're going to make this. It's the way we wanted to make it. Wait, hold on, hold on, just catching on what you just say? Hold on, hold on, I'm saying that shirts twenty years old. Yeah, store, that's important, a little over twenty years old.
That's by the way, he shout out the top partner Jay, because when Jay first used to come home and close that he spent all the money on.
I used to look at him. He was crazy, and he said, that's an investment. And he always pushed the quality partner.
We're not in the in the in the podcast, yeah, six out of Gucci, Gucci pezz and only week a month.
But his pas was Chris, well, okay, we're still a quick time. Yeah, video music box or you're on TV Rapp video music Box all day, the music box. I love that.
Rap the Ors or double x l anybody Double had batter Bitches gez.
He said, what Yeah, just giving one hundred different magazine. That's a different magazine.
Many Little Bunny and Little Man, I.
Said, sauce Man, I say the original source man Lost Boys or Onyx, don't get chuff. You mayna take a drink for that one. I'm gonna be fine, you know what.
You know what mister Cheeks was on our album. But Donnie used to be a barbers. Yeah, I just interviewed cheer.
Yeah, used to stick Fred Roll with my ball but before he made it. Yeah, right there by the girl GIRs mall that's wild.
Show.
I understand the story. I've never heard the actual they told you the right.
It's just me on the back of my neck one. I still got that thing right now. I was like, Yo, make out the studio, man, this can you hit.
This really quick? Out? Holy ship?
That is?
That is so man? Check out the archives. Drink.
I'm gonna tell you listen like Walker floggers his mom, dad who discovered Nicki Minaj. They fought out a four house away from and be so Bimmy.
You know Bey, he've been on the show. So when Bemmy was when when I was about I was about I was about seven. I think Bimmy was about four. I hit him in my garage because I ain't have no other I have no I have no brothers and sisters. And he was about four and I hit him my garage and my mom was.
Like, who that was pop? No, it was a pop was little brother.
Oh.
They were like you gotta go outside. I got a patent garage. She's like, what are you gonna cross now?
Mammy and Joe and all them they got like a hundred they got like a hundred brothers and sisters and they you know, my mother like you got one of the Antony's in the gar But Dad who Walker clock was Moms like we are like we all walk and not like we all grew up with all these people.
Man I was. I was on the other side too. Yeah, Karens want to rock him, rock rock Him.
See that was like one of the first joints I've seen wording for work, which.
One seven holes in my face and I'm looking at the window. Come on, man, the guard, God God, rock rock Him is the game?
Chan take seventy.
Peyden. He's still saying, ain't ever cursed. It was just crazy. How did you swear he cursed?
You know, I went my whole life without not realizing that Rock Him did not curse. That.
Yeah, that's the ill ship you never heard. But that was the most gangsters music you ever heard. I don't know how I even discovered that. Recently. I was like, and I'm like, you're a liar.
Rock Him cursed and I went through and I was like, Oh, this motherfucker not just did he not cursed?
It was gangster without him saying he gangster ship. You know what I'm saying.
You know what we had on our Black Army Day that I never realized. I never realized that flavor Play played fourteen instruments. Oh he's a yeah, yeah, yea, yeah, yeah yeah, Yeah, he's the illness. He's I shot a video of playing flave.
Yeah we need you on drink Champs and we have d but we need flavors.
Huge swifty kind of broke open reality shows want the first people to go. I think he went platinum, right, you have a black planet with Public Enemy?
You know, yeah, they so Matt records. It was crazy about Public Enemy.
They were speaking like they speak the most black prior shit ever.
You ever been to a public indemy show. You know how many about yrdhood up you believe it or not.
There's a massive amount of people who are not remember them by football these days. It's kind of like it's Matt like with one of the top in Manila and one of the top in Europe and stuff like that. It's fascinating how they love our culture. If you ever a look at the Bob Marley movie the first crowds they went to Europe, remember we watched it together.
They went to.
Europe and they were hanging out with the crazy danging each other on their head CBGB like crazy. They were getting ill fights to the white kids who were like, yeah, there's a lot of times those cultures when you look at them they adopt each other.
First, let me just.
Tell y'all the fly ship this guy did printed out the whole movie theater. I'm trying to I kind of support Bob. I'm trying to buy something they like. No, sir, it's winter. Everything is free. I was like, fly, So I say that to say, I still went out and seen the Bob Mally the story because I felt like that wasn't supporting may. It was like getting the screening, you know, private screening.
But I still had to go. And by the way, I.
Cried both times, man and shout, you know that movie. I don't work for the family or nothing, but amazing that ship is what's crazy like to hear your story just say that, you know, you know that y'all deal.
Would hate y'all deal with all this ship too. All I hear is Bob Mally's beautiful music.
And I realized I didn't know nothing about Bob, like personally until I was interviewing Rohan.
So I went and had to do that.
And I was like when I found out all the ship that Bob went through and made beautiful music was supposed to make Robby smurt of music this year he going through supposed to be making.
It felt like that's what the ps that bed feel that way. He was like, I love you. Yeah. People are scared of love. People are scared of unity.
You know.
It's so ill how our generation. So, my my oldest daughter is thirty. I show a picture and that was the second I saw because I had the joy of seeing it. The thing and I have a picture with the young man Bob.
You know.
My daughter says, that's Ken from Barbie. Yes, that's.
Played.
He played another can It was so she was like, who that's not.
Shout out to that brother Kingston. One minute he bought the other minute he can. That's a good you know, right now we're talking about him. He's going to be whoever he is because he already he's Obama in another movie, No way Obama in another movie. I saw it, uh not to be honest, the show like something. I've seen him play Obama. So when I said, I think.
Out, you know what, that's how how old I am? I thought that was his big shaka. When I took a picture with him, his head was ball. I said to myself, if I was him, I've been working that ball mally ship. I would have been like walking around with him.
By the way, you fucked me up since that day, I mean running around with a Jamaica accident, and I.
Realized that people people don't find that funny. You've been doing it on drinks I got.
I went to Turk from who because I'm like, I got a question with you. You just went to Paris, and so your life is good.
Hip hops be really good to us, man, and I appreciate that because you show us how we have that work balance. When I'm in Paris, my wife says to me that I'm culturally culturally inappropriate when I'm like, how do you say?
Is it?
I don't use that, but I'm not.
It's not like if I'm not like like I'm in an Agian country and I'm not saying the word I'm going, you know, like Hong Kong.
You know I'm going because I ain't gonna lie you.
He's not.
Actually what your corporates rock right now? Do you? Outside off of town? I bought a reproree. I was out there and this friend dude.
Said, Yo, ain't nobody left personal ward out years ago? You know, I gotta I love Paris and I got an accent. Man, am I being cultural, Yes you are, what is it?
So? I do it too. We we are actually trying to show love, but we're so so it's like somebody coming up to one of us, going your home. Exactly they happened not to be a home boy. It's exactly that. All right, I got it now, and all right honey, honey, honey, I do it everywhere. I'm sorry. But the French don't like us anyway. They don't like anything. So I got my heart studies about France. Yeah, it's not fun. If you're not from France, you are to them what England I don't, but you know, I know, I know the people to call. I know they don't like we know. I mean, by the way, let me just take you something. A lot of places don't like America, that's true, but but they were the first. They were first. They were first in the car. I donuld think England was the first who didn't like America. You walk in the hotel, when you say something the English, they would act like they don't know. I know, no, no, no, maybe now ye.
Came.
I just went there in November, and I was kind of apprehensive by the little the little act trying to translate and but you speaking English, But.
I sure do ye.
I heard they like it because they like tips, and we're Americans, the only ones around.
They just started liking tips. That's what I heard. Tip the guys, which is this.
Mother, it's such a snucking a license drinks. It's such a sexy language you cannot help.
But not the way we're saying. We were sucking it up.
But how come every time the people from overseas imitate Americans days go, hey, y'all.
It's the man.
What's that mean?
Brother?
All right, we're going on. It's perfectly on track. Oh Wu Tang clan. Oh, I'm gonna go w tank. I knew your New York wi for.
You know it is?
I mean you got Ray Kwan. Let's be real, you got you got Ice.
And then when he joined P like he did one album Scarface or ice Cube, ice Cube, Ice c All Day Court Mega.
Or Nature cor Mega mm hmm, mob Deep or m O P. You could drink, you let them drink or not looking at it is what it is?
Like?
Like that's.
Heavy D or chump rock, heavy D, rest in peace, Man, he loved Heaven?
Yeah, Juice or New Jack City, No New Jack City, Jack City. All right, and this is the last question for quick Time is Slider and then you go back and not a trick question, but it's not a trick question.
But this is for all three of y'all.
I'm gonna start with you, but I want individually answer individually. Loyalty or respect, respect, any reason why or not?
No loyalty, come and go. You know what I'm saying. Like respect, if if somebody really respect you, that respect, we should always be there or will always be there, you know what I'm saying. Loyalty won't always be there. You know, people change ship. You know what I'm saying.
So no, hell yeah, loyalty.
Explain well, I just I've just been to so much in my life to where I realized that the uh loyal people in my life that really suck me to whatever this situation was, those are people that really matter.
Now. I can, I can get disrespectful with motherfucking time.
But if I'm loyal to you know what I'm saying, that that kind of oversees that that kind of overlooks everything.
If I trust you, I'm fucking with you forever.
M hm.
So purpose of loyalty is loyalty. There is no coming go. It's to be loyal, that's it. I respect what Genghis Kang did as a leader. I would never do it. I would never rape and pillage. Loyalty is to be loyal.
That's it. I'm taking a drink to that. I'm taking a drink.
By the way, I agree with all three answers for me. And if we always say you just say why not both.
That this is this?
This is the only time when we play quick time with Slive that we should say both, because I think one watches the other.
But I agree with what everything that you said. My and I just want both of the same time.
Go there you go. Now. At one point, Fooble, I think it was you who said it went like this, right.
Me, this is what I said, Thank you, designated drink and me, I always say at home, my career is like that.
Right. There's been times with rock Bottom like whatever as nor right, and I call it.
I call it rat purgatory. M hmm.
Has it ever been a time where y'all felt like y'all was in fashion purgatory where it's like, all right, cool, they ain't fucking with us no more?
Did you ever feel like that. Yeah, we saw it coming.
If you shipping a million dollars a season to a certain retailer and they come to you next season order half of that.
The next season they ordered the quarter that the writings on the wall.
So we we had a sense of knowing that the ship was that things were turned around, because they even told me, go call, We're gonna have to do something about this. We gotta do something else outside of this clothing ship, because this ship is about to hit the fan. This is like five years before it hit the fan. So the signs are there, but you know, you just got to make their adjustments.
I want to be I want to bring up a point of I don't want to make it a big sloppy, wet kiss about footbal we got because we didn't know.
We didn't know. Also we got cocky too, you know we we would tell what they call a pre pack. I dealt with that.
I had a story. Yeah, if it was the worst thing for a small business, right, I don't know what prepackag talk about it with April.
You gotta tell you gotta take these twelve pair of jeans. There's two thirty two, two thirty four two thirty six is up up to I'm.
Telling to high school kids were skinny, and I was getting triple d X of these.
I'm like, I don't know what y'all talk about. So let's say his boss a way over five hundred dollars.
Okay, he just want he wanted five hundred dollars worth of size thirty two thirty four. But we said to him, screw you, we're not breaking open the box. I got the whole box from China or where it is from. It's twelve pairs. You take the five hundred dollars worth because we're so hot, or you don't get it at all, we give it to your man across the street.
It was rampant. It wasn't just obviously you got to know it.
But I think that's cannibalizing our own industry within it.
Somewhere here, I'm gonna tell you what happened. Guy like this man would say, I ain't got no choice. Let me take him, Let me take them, let me take them.
So now what does he have to do?
He takes them all. All the jeans are one hundred dollars a piece. Supposed to sell it one hundred dollars piece he got one hundred pair of forty twos and forties that he can't sell. He puts them in a bucket over here and said, buy him for twenty five dollars. Kids, you a kid, you walking and saw you can't tell the difference of the one hundred dollars and twenty five dollars. And then guess what the new one, the new Hungry Company come up, go yee, you many thirty two's as you want. Now, all of a sudden we have a bunch of inventory and we got him. He's pissed off. We're like, yo, oh, why so for?
Why you buy so for?
You're like, remember me, mister, you gotta buy the whole box home? Yoh, matter of fact, I don't want to buy shit from you no more. We did that for a certain amount of either not knowing you, but because we didn't know what was about to happen. Now we build up all this inventory because we didn't know any better. Then all of a sudden we're like, no, no, no, that was a mistake.
Man.
We break that box over. He like, too late, homie, Yeah, we moved on something now too late or our doors had to close. They had another retailer's gun. Now we weren't in the store. Again, I missed the story. Bruce told me recently. There was a time where an independent store couldn't get credit. That's what it was. That's that's exactly how we were told. We get credit by buying the pre biss So what so what happened was Republic please, it is the bank that gives independence stores credit. Right, So Republic told us is, Yo, we get so many calls to buy fooble. What we're gonna do is we're gonna give everybody, every store that calls, we're gonna give them twenty thousand dollars in credit. But whether they get good credit, bad credit, we're gonna give them that shot.
Right.
So with that being said, with us, the sales is that made us go from ten million dollars to twenty million dollars.
It also gave us a power to give neighborhoods so us credit credit that never were able.
To with that. With that arrogance, we said, not for you to buy our stuff, you got to buy it in these packages. And they kind of caused some and we couldn't sell.
And it shows that no matter who you are, no matter who you are if you don't treat your customer right.
And if that was our customer and you.
Don't treat them right, sooner or later you're gonna put them on a business or they're gonna put you the business.
Because then what happens in return is they put other brands and because somebody else says, yo, somebody is not fulfilling this man's needs.
All right, And I'm small and I don't even have twelve packs right sized that you need.
So so like.
I remember me going in Costcos, right, and I remember me looking for a product and not being to fire because it's all the way in the back. Is that is that something that happens in a fast world? That's something that actually matters.
Yeah, place, it all depends chanes in real estate, right, So it all depends.
You're talking about grocery.
Grocery and Costco is different, right because the whole procer what's going to be in the back, what's going to be in the back milk, eggs, meat and things you need because you got to go to the back so you can pass everything to buy everything else. And then you're going to pass it all to buy that. But what you're talking about emerging, dodging and all that kind of stuff. When you see like so like big department stores aren't they don't. You don't make any money off a big department store. So a big department store, they're not selling clothes. A big department store is selling real estate. So if you go and look at the Ralph Laurentz section in there, Ralph lorent paid for all that would they paid for the person selling it to you.
They're paying for the people in there. That's how that raw la Renn is paying for everyone of the way, for the windows. Every time you see the stuff in the window. Their their job is to sell real estate. You don't make money in there.
So when you launch a fragrance, you got to pay twenty two or twenty five dollars per person you see going like this in the store, going like hey, smelling this and all that.
The motherfuckers they're selling everything.
So what happens is and that's why they say, that's why they say clothing company, I mean they say, you know, retailers like that get really religious because what they tell you to do is spend a million dollars on putting stuff in the window, putting someuf in the circular people that put your stuff on wheels, because if your ship don't sell, we're going to mark it down and roll that ship right out of the back door. And that's where they make their money on all of that. They don't care about the clothes. They make this selling to us. And that's why we tell everybody here who's watching the show, be your own distributor online, direct to your customer, because even when you want to be in those stores who bought it, Once they go past the register, who bought it? Was it a mother buying for herself, that she buy it for a kid, was it a gift for it? You don't know who they are. So now we want people here who watch this to sell their own shit themselves online. You don't have to set up those stormers directed consumers, so you can say, how did you like it?
How did you not like it? What should I do better?
And that's the important part that that's why technology has democratized its entire data of your customers.
Like me and you were talking about it earlier. I had Kanye on the show, right and I went and hung out with him and then I brung him to a place called Zz's, which is which is ironic. Right, there was this a whole big space open next to Eas's and you just looked at it and was like Valenciaga, Sweet of God, Sweet of God. And then he put a Balanciaga in there two floors. I had never seen no dumb shit like this. I mean this was some because he stopped and just like like, by the way, it's nothing there. There's absolutely nothing there. I just described Zz's told him like, yo, this is a place we are safe. You know what I mean, There's no hood shit going on. I'm a member of the club, you know what I mean. Room And he's seen it, and it made me say like damn, why don't we do things like that? Like what I mean by that is footbo right now, if we go to food, but we have to go through somebody else, right, No, No, what I'm saying is like I wanted to go to the store.
Why why isn't food boo stores?
Those are those are that's a great, great, great point. Those are different businesses. So you have to have an operator because we're we're not good retail operators. That's like, that's like saying to I don't know what you do here.
That's like.
I don't know how they do the carrier of the broadcaster, right, So a store is a different you know, like we we know how to make you know, to make good. To own a retail shop, you have to know how to put it up there. The software they're shipping the goods in, shipping goods out, taking this back customer.
Service the least of the place. So they're different insurance.
So what he did was probably he already knew the blencia because they have different divisions, and he it's licensing. Like we said, that's exactly what we did, like we would. We we have Fooboo stores and we still do with certain countries. But it's somebody who's an expert operator. They have they have ten Donna Karen stores, they have ten Fubu stores, they have ten this, ten that. So that's why because you don't want to get the way to Disney does not own all of that.
They license it.
When you see Mickey your stores, yeah, a lot a lot of would be doing some would be doing so, but they'll license out. Think about all the licenses does they have. You can get key chains all the way. They're not making that stuff, they're licensing that out.
You can get like Star Wars everything, that's because they're licensing.
That's Disney Baby used to used to damon with the Marvel. That was a licensing that we did with Marvel.
Yeah, because I have license that too actively black right, you know. So it's all about licensing. Is the quickest way to grow your brand, extend your brand and uh and revenue?
Can I ask a quick This is gonna be a little bit of a veer off, but talking about licensing Marvel for the average Let's say there's a there's a person's creating their own brand and they want to license a big brand like a Marvel or a Star Wars.
How difficult is that? Extremely difficult? You gotta come to me. You got.
You got somebody like me who who's gonna talk to him? Who say give this young person a shot.
You had sales and all that. You gotta be popular to even have that conversation.
And a lot of times you name it communicating with marvels. You communicating with someone that already holds the license.
But let me give you something that you got to do. Think about George Lucas when he sold his brand, he sold Star Wars. The George Lucas brand. He sold it to Disney, So Disney, right, we love his story content, right, Star Wars?
Right? How much do you think of sofa? Anybody will go a billion? Three three point eight billion? Right right?
But she regrets kind of you know how much Pepper Pig sofa four point two billion?
Ship? Well, Blue better? I don't know what, because Blue is bigger than Pepper Pig. Now, I don't want to be I don't want to be cult pretty inappropriate and talk like Pepper Pig. So please tell the pep big started on YouTube all the Star Wars. Don't fada obie.
The whole.
I p three point eight billions pistol Pig on YouTube for a cartoon of a pig because the licensing, all the toy and everything four point two billion dollars.
See how that was smart because Pepper Pig lang and Lego Lang is Actually that's.
The only thing good about Lego Land.
I don't even know Pep. I got kids, I got little kids, I'm in it. I know I'm lost. You are twenty billions completely.
I have to say, eeyo, kid. So anybody here has an ip and idea something else like that. The idea is to do the best you can of it, and create a core audience and go to somebody else and say, let me tell you something. I know exactly what eighteen years old to twenty five year olds old want, who'll make about this amount of income, who watch this amount of time? Because you have the analytics, and then you can say to somebody, once you give them that information, you can say, now you can replicate this in the other areas that they like and they love. And that's exactly what we've been able to do with Foobu and have great partners, and you got other people who say, you know what, I make the best. I make the best peanuts in the world. But I don't have something like a drink Champ to say, do you want when you're drinking some great salty snacks peanuts Champs. I want to drink Champ peanuts whenever you're drinking. Whenever you're drinking, what you're gonna need bat Joe, let's just take a car.
I'm gonna take a I don't know about it.
I'm filming drink chants for foob not rewind one of the we'll be there, we pull up on you, finished Joe. One of the first stores to ever buy our stuff, and we will we were bringing it. We will bring it.
We're bringing it to his store and the Bronx in the back of our trunk.
And I used to I used to take them to our warehouse, pick out the clothes of them and count all the money and cash to take me like freaking out.
We only show we only show us the eight stores of New York and Factio was the third, the fourth store in New York City to ever ever ever buy our stuff.
And we were still in the house making it at first.
Uh to out and he used to come out and just he was a legend and still is a legend me and be like, yo, man, all right, I buy you shoe.
Let's just buy it all cast. I guess we still streak money explaining around.
So you just you guys just said something for a person that's trying to be the next foobl right, And what I mean, I don't mean it like the statement foodle like like owning and be independent, but actually trying to make clothes. You guys don't make the close ourselves, do y'all?
We make some of them. We still make some of it now we always make by hand or how does this work blanket?
We still we still make a portion, but we have like we have like maybe thirty five different We have a great we have a great uh shoot division team.
That's right.
We get to the points where we hire people to get it to different stations of approval. So we had the cast coming first, Okay, we like the general look of the season. Then you get the samples coming Okay, we like how these samples make these changes by the time we get to production.
Then we ship it to the stores. So we kind of oversee the whole process until it gets shipped.
To this But to simplify it for people watching, if you have an intellectual property and you have registered your name, not not just on a website. You registered, you went to the United States Trademark off the USPTA United States Patent Trademark Office.
You put your name in a category.
So your name would be drink Chams and it could probably be in liquor, it could be in everything else.
Right, there's a category.
Don't just say your website because if you say, well, I got the drink Chams website, or you go, listen, my son's name is, you know, Todd. I'm going to name my clothing brand Todd Well, I always say, well, my next clothing, my next son's going to be named Apple, and my next son that's gonna be named BMW.
You can't just say that.
Once you get the category, whoever you are, you can license your name to somebody. You can go to Middle America right now, all this all you look up and down the street, like Main Street, everywhere it's empty. Nobody's buying stuff, nobody's going to those stores. Those stores all have inventories. If you are a kid and you know that you're super fashional, you go and say, hey, my name is whatever it is, I got.
An this is who my IP is, intellectual property.
I'm going to do a TikTok with all your inventory and my soul, and you know on my site, I know, I know you already got the goods. You're going out of business, give me fifty percent of what I sell, and you start naming it your brand. That brand could be the New Century forever twenty one, that brand, right. And so what I'm trying to tell people is they can license their name as small as they are, create a name for themselves, what their following, and make money.
You can do it.
On Amazon too. You know you ever see when you put in some name and it says sponsored. That's just somebody who sees that you're making this, and they take it and they get an affiliation, and then they direct they direct their traffic to you and you get that cigarette or you know that, whatever the case is, and they make money. So I'm trying to explain the best way to everybody watching this. Then they can do exactly what we did. They can start up today and be the next I don't know who you want to call it. You know, you know targe, but don't.
Get it twisted.
Licensing and like like Damad said, companies categories is expensive. We spend closely three hundred and maybe half a million dollars a year just protecting our brand around around the world. So it's not like you're going to just have your brand protected everywhere. Choose where you think your best markets will be and grow as you can. You can't protect it everyone, you know how you can't protect around the world.
Remember the show we used to love in limon Color In Color, there's a band called in Living Color that the rock band. The rock band they in Living Color of the TV show didn't want to because they in Living Color. They were Entertainment in Limit Call of the TV shows Entertainment and Limit Call the TV show didn't want to pay and they got into a fight and they said we had it first in Limit Call the band and they had a fight over the name.
And that's why they had to cancel. And Love and Color Nowhere had to cancel because of that. I'll give you another example. Let me give you another example. This is legal. This is legal. Eagle thup.
Our buddies, the ones who created the company Jordash and gas and stuff like that, they come to us.
They had license our ladies.
They come to us and they show us something and it's a two horses, like two horses and I'm like, I'm like, what is that. They're like, this is a US Polo Association. We've said, well that's Ralph Laurent. Ralph la reringuees, you're you're intruding on my mark. We're going to take you to court. They go to court.
Judge looks at.
Them and goes, all right, when you can no longer do business, you're done, get out of here.
Ralphla Wrengue goes good, seek it out. He says no, Ralph.
They bought United States Polo Association from the United States Polo Associations. It's one hundred years old. Who've been making clothes for one hundred years old. They can cancel your mark. So what happens now is US Polo is so station doesn't have to advertise, market do anything they ever want to do. And they do six billion dollars a year.
People that.
And lorandas all the advertise ahead, home boy, you can play with the judge camp on this floor.
Whoever has it all the longest they take the same they having a seven of all Man.
Somebody had a lot of things.
We gotta, I feel like, we gotta dumb it down for for Layman's US amazing us like like like does a poor man's copyright work in that sense? For for timestamping, remember the poor man's copyright you just sent it to yourself and that kind of work.
But not as much anymore because what it happened with years ago was there was a guy who looked at every type of movie and said, wow, air brakes, Wow this that, and sent in a whole bunch of trademarks and now earlier on many marks, trademark everything. He saw in a movie and he just sent in a letter and said, Lightsaber, oh this, And what happened was That's why it depends on you're talking about a pattern of trademark and or you have the crew that you're actually using that. So was he successful that person he was. He ended up making billions of dollars off of trademarkting thing he saw in every single movie for the next fifty years. And no court could see through that through that scam. There wasn't a scam at first. The law changes against this and that, and that's why you see that a lot of brands have expiring patents and trademarks. Now there's difference with copyright, there's different trademarks, this with patents and everything else. But the bottom line is I've seen it even on Shark Tank, one or two of my companies on sharks Tank, they could never after all the advertising, all the marketing, well that name they had, they didn't have to protected somebody else that's cease and desist. And they took all the traffic after they got onto shark Tank and they made me out.
So what's the ultimate.
Detection in your The bottom of the protection is exactly what Noria has said in the past, it's to make sure that you cross your t's and dot your i's and understand the fundamentals of when you build a business, that you have your contracts in order. As we talked about. You can be in there with the family, but Keith knows his deliverables and our deal, Carl knows and I know right in every relationship you cannot be fifty to fifty one has to make a decision fifty one forty nine. You have to have all of your stuff trademark and pattern because you know they say that for African Americans the number one organization that puts them out of business and not intentionally, it's the irs because you don't understand what the fundamentals are in the basic of taxes and barriers are the things. So if you start off a business, you're already African Americans, so you're getting discriminated against. So your loans are higher costs, right, plus you're getting paid less. And then if your stuff is not in order, well the government can't discriminate.
They just have to do what they have to do. So everything from your trade war so that we learned this a hard one.
What you described before is an operational agreement right between, it's an operational agreement, a DBA, whatever you want to call it. You have to have these things in writing, and you had set it in some other past stuff that you learn the mistakes you had made. You went in and got an attorney, and today you know Rocket Lawyer and various other companies. You can look at these agreements and get them online, and don't go spend all your money with your man who's just giving you advice, right right, go online and look at this shit and set yourself up from the beginning and then understand how to dissolve it and various other things.
I always say fifty one percent. Try to keep fifty one percent and try to be.
Management hold management position in your company, which means.
You make to find a call. If you sell it, you still run it, no if you if you.
The bottom line is when there comes a situation where the assistant has to be made, you get to final call. So that's how do how do equal partners do that? You do that in the operational agreements, because.
An operation agreement could be like this.
Listen, You're gonna fundel the clothes and I'm gonna be able to sell it on. You can never sell it to uh, you know, lower end stores than the person over here goes. Okay, but if it stays in my warehouse ninety days, I can sell it to who I want.
Okay. You know every agreement can be you know you're I'm gonna keep it gully.
The only reason Food was still around is because Damon was able to at that even at their young age, negotiated or had advice to negotiate a position where they couldn't.
Get rid of us investors.
The bottom line is we're still around because we have to be around.
They wanted to get rid of you. They don't want they wanted to open to It was not ignorance, though. It was like they were ignoring us for a couple of calls.
And when I finally got on the when when when they finally had called us back, I was like, yo you and they was like, listen, calm down, We'll do a deal that will make sure it's good for you. And the funny thing that I brought my mother in the room with the deal, and a lot of people are laughing. I brought my mother, my mother, my mother, but my mother is very brilliant and a lot of us, you know, we have significant others, mothers, And I was like, so what I brought my mother?
Why can't she be a brilliant woman? What's wrong with that?
Right?
But we have great part of it, But you're right, and vice versa. We can't the companies that around because they didn't own that company. When that entity decided to sell it, they had no says.
So it's kind of like being a rapper, yo.
Imagine wink at the deal, don't want to shit out and and the wrong people will dangle the wrong things in front of your face. And so a lot of us are so busy, You've seen it on Sharks Tank. They're so busy wanting to do the deal that they're not thinking about like what's in for you?
What's for me? What's the end game? I just I just want to get it past this point.
And as us as African Americans who don't come from wealth, we often are just so happy that somebody that the hustle may be over and would get to this point that we don't look backwards that like how did I get here?
And what could I risk?
You know?
What?
Am I giving up? The bootlegging? How bad was that at one point bad.
The bottom line, we was hot, so it was on the one on one end of the spectrum. It was a blessing because you that hot. So how is it a blessing?
Explained? It was because that guy. But the botom line, if you hot, people bless you, that wasn't the blessing. But the bottom line is they stopped. When did they stop bootlegging us? They never did.
So the bottom line is that part we said when they stopped bootlegging us, that was the problem because that we weren't hot no more.
You think you can get Lituis baton anywhere in the streets, right, but you know there's no one when people bootleg you. There's no one bootlegging there is. The factory you're working with is making an extra ten million.
They make it extra if you on the twelve jeans or twenty like as rappers, we just think is Muhamma from one and twenty fifty.
The fact they're recording your real records, right, they're duplicating. That's what they're saying. You tell me ignoring this as twenty eighth the street. Yes, he said yo, he said, you know, he said yo.
Literally, I hire some correction officers to go down there and take our bootleg and stuff down on twenty eighth Street. I'm like, okay, cool, get out stuff. Half an hour later, YO, come get me, come help us out. They gotta surround it.
So he said, I feel like this is apt. Said, YO, we gotta go with guys. Man. They down on twenty eighth Street. We go down there, We go down there.
My cousin is down there, and one of our other boys is down there.
Cousin bag No.
So you keep saying that I told you that not the story, But listen, stay down there with two hundred and fifty people, at least two hundred three hundred people surrounding them. My dumb ass go over there because my cousin over there. I got to go make sure he's straight. I don't know what happened to them, but I ain't.
Never looked back. Apparently not going on. Goes over there. Next thing, you know, this rocks a bottle of water America. You got you know, I'm telling you that record. He jumping around, and I'm gonna tell you the story. He's right. So what happened we have so we have about twenty duty correcting.
We go down twenty eight seventh Street everywhere, every wait coming out of that buildings rebidelities because we we we start packing up about.
Two three trucks. We have the woman.
We have an order that says you're supposed to surrender, surrender these goods because they're all counterfeit. We're packing up the trucks. Something goes bad in that building and just like uptown, these people all start pouring out. I'm like, I'm like, yo, Keith, we in the Empire, Sam, that's where our offices. I said, come down about we need somebody to help drive the truck. Keith is like, I got you coming down.
We are twy regular.
These dudes are coming out of the building direct correct off the pools.
Gun Yo, free their.
Dude, Like Arnold Swart Nagas said, shoot me, dude, he's doing all this ship.
I'm like, yo, keep were saying these dudes with gunny big dude, let's get out of here.
No, no, no, I'm gonna keep it real, yo.
That's what happened.
Yeah, I went down there and help my people's man.
That's how I built man went down. I went that by no problem. Yeah, the fifty two victims.
I got this big dude Talban sip anyway, the Angel of the Crane.
Right when I was crazy. I'm gonna tell you it was crazy.
The dude that hit me. I was I was handing the woman. I was handling my business and everybody else.
I was handling my business and I went to step back and you know that turn where you step back and then you go to turn. Yo, this dude called me from the bat. I didn't even see him.
Boom. He hit me right.
So I go down like this and my head come back up and he hit me on the other side my feet, my feet.
Just start moving like what hit me? So I'm over here and.
I turned around.
They through like six seven.
He got on the I'll never forget, I swore to gone.
Then he got on a yellow gold gym T shirt. You know they got. He got on something. He got on some ass jeans.
He look like you're playing for the pocket pool with his cowboy I'm looking at him. He's dude from from over there somewhere. I never see him dressed like that. I never see I swear to I looked at it. I said, oh man, he didn knocked me out, and yo, look like he be in the gym all day.
So what eye? One eye bloodshot red?
So I wanta fight now because I'm like, okay, let's get it on it. You can't knock me out and prove that.
Let's go.
Then his little minions start coming, all the little millions.
I'm like, oh, man, I see a bend down, clothes everything.
Yo.
I run down the block. I said, I'll get my back to this man and I'm good. I turn around and I turned like twenty people like just swinging.
I go down. They start stomping and kicking. Next thing I know police. It was like a riot. Bro.
It was like two hundred police out there. Everything. They come lock and put the handcuffs on me.
I went straight, Hollywood. I don't know why, man, I just came down.
Yeah, straight Hollywood. They took me out of handcuffs.
I go back. These niggas in all happened to your son? I told you to go over there. I'm like this, yo, But it was crazy, man. They just why they want to fight, y'all because everybody stole the would make a lot of money from counterfeit goods. We had permissions to go confiscate those goods, and.
They started pocketing they went and oh, boy was behind the behind the curtain, like yo.
There's an organized system out there, and they got downstairs with a rag.
A lot of money. Count Counterfeit is a huge business. So to say about the counterfeiting stuff.
Factory is running ten million more throwing it off the back. Another another factory competing is making more goods. Then you got people who bring in a million white T shirts and they got a line going like this, and they're going, Tommy fool Nikena.
Is coming from all places.
And when you spend all your money and time trying to fight it, you can't even put a dent in it. But when you look at somebody like Louis Vuitton, who's the biggest company in the world LVMH, they're counterfeited all day. And actually a lot of the people buying the account if it, would never touch the brand anyway because they don't have the money for it.
They don't have two thousands. That's the moral of the story. The moral you can't you cannot, you cannot stop.
What you can do is make your your your goods quality that different from that, and you can.
That's what helped us out.
And it kind of sucks to say that you're Louis and your price point is up here, and the regular folks can't get get it, so they have to go boot leg.
That kind of sucks.
That's that happened because what happened when we grew up as kids, Remember we can wear a blank shirt and not get full, you know, and now whatever when you started to when you started to you know, all the brand and labels, and we became so labeled conscious. You couldn't go to school without something on right, right, absolutely, And that's what it is. So you know, it is a compliment, but it's a challenge. Is something that you you would have to spend a lot of your profit going after Sun stopped.
Your ship bout leg all over the street. You're doing something right, yeah, but as they stop you doing something wrong.
But let me ask you, because we spoke about it a little bit earlier. I had just went to Paris, right, and one thing that I noticed is it seems like if Louis doesn't sell the ship, they give it away, give it away, they burn it. Right.
You'll never see Louis on discount. Oh no, I never did.
But I remember times of me looking at seeing ladies with Louis garbage bags and everything with I'm about bums out there, like out there and I'm looking and I could almost tell the real Louis.
Or the fake Louis.
I could almost tell everybody got Louis out there, And there's no way everyone is rich out there?
Is it easier for it to be like that, like just in New York?
Because you know Foo Boo was the New York based brand, and say, you know what, fuck it instead of y'all bootlegging my ship, why don't we just give it to.
Y'all at the law price that that devalues.
But but the bottom line is a deep values the brain you and because you got remember you selling to Macie's at certain price, they got to keep that certain price and make their margins. If you got somebody right outside in the street.
Like when he was a retailer, why would he then invest in buy it? Yeah?
Yeah, And I would think that that would be easier, right to like stop the bootlegger. It's like, you know what you got it, let me give you the real ship at a discount.
Definitely that they getting it is you can't even less production. We put in too much.
I'm imagining you have to equate all of that into the business model. And you know the thing in our world of that is people taking our content, ripping it and posting it and monetizing. Yeah, and we have to play a game of whack them all to say no copyright, copyright, car and you.
Can't you can't really get Anyboddy. You can't stop. You can't stop.
And at the end, if you're popping, you kind of want that to happen because the minute you're not popping.
They're not gonna. It's the same thing. Yeah, it's like a double edged on.
It is, it is.
It's crazy.
What's one thing besides besides twenty eighth street shit, But what's one thing that it was pretty wild man by You wish you could? You wanted to do as as Fooble? One thing I wish I want to do as foodball. We do.
We do.
Like if you something like a mistake that you made that you wish that that you could you could, you could do over.
I would go and do the one or six and park job I got off. It was supposed to be me and free.
Wow, you're supposed to be Bobby Brown early. You're supposed to be.
Earlier early, but I told I chose, you know it with the time frame for me that we were just building Fooble and I was from we used to go to work from like ten to eight. B T wanted me from eleven to seven. So I was like, well, damn, how do I Well.
I mean, couldn't have worked for the brand as well for you. I don't really remember that.
It could have, but I just chose not to do it and stay with my dudes. And you know, but if I had the chance all over again, I definitely.
Away us. Are you kidding me? We could have taken that out of.
Distribution, but I didn't want to, Like, we was building something and we've been working so long, so now when we made it, then it's like it's easier be I'm gonna get secondhand knowledge, but I'm not gonna get that feeling that we were doing it together. And that's why I kind of say, you know what, I'm gonna stick with my guys and patched that up, you know what I'm saying. And plus the money was good at that time. We were taken, so it was good. But I wish I could have. I wish I could have did that because then I would have played it for out advantage, you know what I'm.
Saying, Yeah, because you would have been essentially helping the brand.
Yeah, you know that.
I didn't have that knowledge back then, but couple years later I was like, damn, yeah, you know I can see that.
Now because and especially if you would have been wearing football every day or it just totally made sense.
So what's the one thing that you would think that you you would do time?
I think because I was always one that really felt that food could exist in different areas in the industries. But I think that moving into more investments earlier, when you really had the resources to do it earlier, I think time I would have gave myself a little bit more. I would have acted earlier, and when it come to real estate, when it come to acquiring another company, use no resources sooner.
Other than that, though, I think that we only a thirty year old company. Companies been around for hundred.
But then there's some companies have been been around for no years, right, and they out they got companies.
Was our ability to stay here. So now I think it's a great time for us to really move into these places and deal with I didn't know about investment capital groups, the investment bankers and all these things like that. I know that our brand now can be leveraged in these arenas to bring it this revenue to do these things. So I would have liked to do it earlier, but I think right now it's a great time to do it.
And of cool as Fooble, I someonet agree with Carl, because you know, I didn't have financial intelligence, none of us stadium.
For the first I was on.
Bankrupt twice before we had Fuoble, and once when we had Fooble. When I made the first bulk of money in Fuble, you know, I spent it and straight up and again I spent this but I didn't even spend it on the straight laverage.
I just didn't know how money worked.
And the biggest thing in this world or in this country, the way that you get wealthy in this country is to understand.
Tax codes, tax and what to do.
And what I learned later on on is that as I was running the company, and we have great partners and distributors who were trying to teach it to me. But as a young man coming into money, where I started really making my money is all the things I bought with all the homes, all everything else. Later on when I get rid of it in six and money that I kind of put away a little bit in investment that scaled crazy and I had seven times that amount prior that I blew. And so you look as I talked to a lot of billionaires and people we know, you'll look at a billionaire and a billionaire wild and then these always walk around those old scale path you remember those things that those school, those paths were on the school that black and white.
You fill out, you got to fill out the cover.
I just always said, like a billion of friends, like even Mark Cuban, I'll be like, what are you writing down? I just heard about a new tax cold.
That many billionaire friends.
You know, I've been watching enough and we've been watching not even billion they were right down, they were right down.
So what do you left?
What are you writing down? Oh well, I just heard about this new tax code. So just give you a quick example. You know, two years ago when COVID happened, right when we were getting out of COVID, uh, the IRIS had passed with that COVID act that if you go to a restaurant and you support a restaurant for a business meal, that's a one hundred per tax right off.
Make it a way I was at.
Me.
Let me, let me show you how the tax code works, or the time work.
If you go to a hotel at that time and you put your food on the key on the room key at the hotel, that's only fifty percent right off because it's under the hotel. But if you took out your credit cards separately and laid it down on the restaurant, one hundred percent right off. So you just probably realized, you you probably realized that if you spent yesterday, it's about.
No. No, But you got the point right there.
When I first and we first made money and we were talking, we were just like we were so happy were making money.
The accountants don't tell us that because they think we know they're just trying to do it.
And then because you know when when all of us talk about accounting and so yeah, I get glossy, oh am, I going on extension?
What are you talking? We?
I never said what's up? And they never said hey, what did? They used to say something like hell, you need to know. I'm like whatever I'm.
Putting business spends on personal cards. So when I talked to billionaire.
When really wealthy people, they go, listen, I made a half a billion dollars this year of five hundred million dollars in my businesses this year. Now I can either be under these tax implement implementation. I can't even say the word implications, and you have yeah, yeah, exactly.
But I'm just like me.
But they said, if I do a half a billion dollar five hundred million dollars, I can need to spend two hundred and fifty million dollars and give that back to the irs. I can try to start a new business, or I can try to save as much taxes legally, where I only give them back one hundred and fifty and I keep whatever right I want to. I already made the money. Why am I paying it in taxes? If I utilize these tax codes. You want me to start a new business, getting new employees, hopefully marketed, maybe make money, or.
Instead of paying instead of paying two to fifty, I paid I made one hundred.
It's not about how much you make, it's how much you retain and when you have businesses and stuff like that. And earlier on fooboo days, the money in the operation has called said to acquire more stuff and do more things. Three hundred and fifty million dollars running through a system. Let's say we're distributing twenty thirty million of that a year, and we're paying fifteen million in taxes. We could have maybe paid five million in taxes and taken that other taking out of the ten rolled it into the business.
It's almost like somebody here, anybody who knows real estate.
If you sit there and buy a certain sell a certain property, if you do a ten twenty one exchange or something like that, you don't have you right if you have stocks right now, if you sell your if you went into Apple and you sell your stock and it went up two times and last I don't know how many. If you sell it under a year, you pay a normal tax, right forty five fifty percent. If you sell it in a year and a day, you pay only twenty percent. Because that's capital gains. All these are just basic fundamentals. That is, African Americans and yellow and black people and brown people, a lot of us don't understand that's where the difference of wealth is. Because if you do that over twenty years, and if I would have learned that earlier, when I had when we had Foo, well we could have been LVM as as well as you.
Know this is you know in public and all these other things that we just understand that it's always about. And the people who have this knowledge are willing to tell you.
We're just so busy trying to buy cause when we were kids that we didn't know any better.
But the like, the good side of it is we have going through that Foo is still here. I still have a consumer.
Base, and I think even now the meeting of Fubo is bigger than when we started, so leveraging that I think going forward and dealing with the knowledge that we have and dealing with real bankers and investment groups and really bringing in.
No saying projects that's going to last a lifetime. We should have had a billion dollar fund.
Fool to acquire and or partner with all emerging brands in any category and give them our back end. And thank god and our partners ended up showing us and we learned off each other because once I started learning this, I got so excited.
I was talking about so much on television.
Some guy Nam Mark when they called me from Shark and said, Yo, you know about some stuff that people don't know, but it was exciting when we learned it, you know, And and that's why we're still here and.
An emerging I mean, I'm sure you guys have probably done this, but in emerging markets as well.
Yeah. Absolutely, yeah, like out of the out of this country.
I went to South Africa and their street where brands are out of control.
In South Africa, right, Yeah.
Yeah, it's like I said, it's it's unlimited.
It's just really growing at a scale that you can control and not doing too much too soon.
I met Nelson Mandela in South Africa.
Yeah, building the food store in the most really, that's we got stored.
Wait what got Africa? That's an ill part of the story. Man, We went to Africa. You had a food store in South Africa?
Yeah.
Earlier we are doing the whole parties and all that. That's like that's like there and what that's like New York City and then the license.
He was like, oh, just cover the plom and know some Mendula's people you want to meet y'all. I'm like, come on, bro, don't play with me like that. And he was like no, I'm serious. We went to go meet him somehow somewhere he had to go fly out to meet the dignitary. They called us, Oh, he's not gonna be able to meet you. I'm like, we was just closed. We went the rest of the trip, did our thing. Two three days. Lady calls us back and says he's home. He wants to come back buy his crib. And we went to his crib and we.
Got so much history and stuff like that. I went to crib. Come on, that's hard.
Say.
I'm sitting in the living room.
They're like, no pictures pleased. I was like, flash off, you know, the camera got lost some god you know, calm as them up.
But he came down the steps.
We went outside, spoked him for a little while and went outside in front of his door.
We took my biggest regrad in my life. And I didn't take that trip.
I was. I was with him and Jay took that trip. But you can look at it to Great Pool Instagram.
See that we were the last brand to work with and license and partner with Mom and I'll leave before he died. I'm the most photographed man in the world in history who was never seen in the brand at all.
Was seen in Foolboo three times. You met Mohammad. That was Michael Jackson. I'm talking about you did.
He wore?
He wore He was the only brand with any label on it in history that Michael Jackson ever wore. So and we have the three pictures and and you would see that. I think we've had a lot of We've had a lot of great success in our life, man.
So we're pleasure. It's amazing, it's an honor.
Now we mess some people.
Man.
And by the way, nobody's done the story yet. Still nobody's on the documentary because because pool, he ain't dying. Now, somebody got the ass whipped in the story, but he ain't.
But motherfucker got your head. Yeah.
But like, like again, I know I somewhat asked this earlier, right, And I know you guys alluded to like you guys being for instance, kids, and you guys being for instance, high school, But how is it to be friends for thirty two years? Like again, you said it earlier. You was like, man, you won't hear none of the bullshit about us.
Of him for fifty years. Yes, it's for forty forty.
I'm like thirty eight, thirty nine. I know they like what fifty right, for forty fifty nine.
It's like brothers man like like to listen, we afford you. I don't even we're going to have each other for one year. Physical fight, that's fact. Hold on, hold on, let me just be clear.
Let's me clear. I want to reiterate what I'm trying to say. This friends who just met each other, and then.
The friends.
The minute they got money together, it deteriorated. So for I want people who was inspiring to be friends for as long as you guys been friends, and has long you guys been friends, Like I need y'all to tell me because I witnessed this this rap game. It's probably one of the most dislawyers. I felt more honor and drug dealing.
At one point. You know, we understand that makes sense, you know what I mean because it's like it's honest, like, yo, don't do that. I won't do that, Harsher constable. But in hip hop sometimes it's like, you know, if he ain't gonna do it, I'll do it. What why is it? Just do that?
You know you were wrong for doing that, and then you guys are this long relationship. There's so many people that's gonna watch this show. Ain't gonna say I need to know how the fuck they kept it together. We know that you'll had bad times, but how did y'all keep it together through the bad times, good times, up and down, whatever, How did y'all keep it together?
Let me start, Let me, let me start with you, Let me.
On.
But I always credited to us knowing each other before the business, like we were super cool since we were young, you know what I'm saying. We grew up together. We experienced a lot of different things together. We experienced a lot of first together. So even when we were doing fooble, everybody was kind of doing their own thing. This dude is, no, we're doing We're doing the brand, but we got different projects we're working on. At the time, this guy recognized that Cas wasn't one hundred percent focused, so he was like, yo, listen, we just booked this. How we're gonna get out of this whole? YadA YadA. It was it was thinking thinking grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, Oh that's the one I read the book.
I was like, damn, sorry, thinking.
The whole all the volumes that he has, all the volumes, yeah, but thinking it is attributed besides any religious book, that being the book, the number one book.
We're talking about. It's a great book we read.
And got everybody focused. So for us getting together and then going down this road and seeing this thing mature year after year after year. But we're enjoying ourselves the same way, Like we're having fun with partying, We're doing things we ain't never did. We seeing money we ain't never seen, we're traveling all over the world. So it just made us closer. And then by the time, you know, years later, when it wasn't doing anything, we was already like brothers. Like you know what I'm saying, Like, Okay, it's gonna be hot one day, the next day won't and we still won't have the love for each other that we have. You know what I'm saying, Even though Monday I might want to kick his ass or when to kick his ass, but then next day after that we're like, yo, what you're gonna go to dinner.
It's very rarely gotten to the point where we even want to lay hands with each other. When I was, I mean, I've got an extremely man at him, he's got an extremely man at me. I don't know if I can ever pull my well first of all, I ain't no gangs, and I ain't no I don't try to play like that.
But I don't know if I can ever strike.
Even if I know brothers, little little brothers, they beat each other to death at the time to love each other.
I don't know. But even gotten to that point when I say, we've had problems, right, you know, but pictures, but hold on, I want to keep it.
I want to keep it to the question what made y'all keep it together? What made you on your part? That's what I'm saying, what made you keep it together?
Picture Like, I knew that.
I was with a couple of casts that first of all, I love like I'll be with them for free. We had that much fun together as just friends.
However, I knew that I was with three of the smartest casts that I could find in my network. Fire.
You know what I'm saying, And that said, if we can whatever it is, we can work together. We can make it successful, either a food woo store, whatever it is, we.
Can make it successful. We worked together. So my whole thing was always looking at the big picture. I knew he was the boss. He put up most of the money, he took most of the risks. So that's the boss. I knew I needed key for certain things, for certain things.
My whole thing was to try to make sure that, besides my ego and besides trying to do everything my way, to work together, because the only way we're gonna make this should happen is we work together. And at this point, even now, the successful demon is he still asks about football, right saying football is still a.
Part of his story.
So the more successful footbal is, the more successful Dame it is. And so we still gotta we still have that bond together to make this whole brand successful in my opinion, and that's just my goal for the next decade.
Yes, the same person, you know, I think that. First of all, we've had a whole lot of really hard discussions with each other when somebody's falling short, and like, yo, we can replace what you're doing. You can still get distributions, but you won't have the job, you won't have the title. We don't like what you're doing, you're going wrong or you're not stepping up. And that's after years of fault.
But I've meant to Oh my bad, I'm sorry, I meant the relationship with you guys know what.
I'm saying that the business the business part relationship. Okay, okay, okay, okay.
But second of all, I guess the best way to say it is, it's each of our job.
We never exploited a weakness. I will never exploit his weakness and vice versa. And it's our job, I think, as brothers and partners to protect each other's faults because if he looks fucked up, Mike, Mike Candle, don't shine brighter if his is blown out. You know what I mean, We all look fucked up, and it's my job. Now if he wants to listen to me or not, this cool, but then now I got Calls the backup, and I got Jay is the backup.
I'm not anyone to listen like one of us go. We ain't fucking Joe on that guyhead man, But it's my job to protect him.
My job to protect him and his job to protect me when I'm asking out because it hurts us all. So I think that that we never exploit a weakness and we protect each other. We may not agree with you, we may not co sign on what you're doing. Well, say yo, man, I ain't fucking with you on that, like you want to fight those casts and keep it real. I told you we hired these people to do so, and that dude looked really big. I told you we hire these people for that purpose. But the bottom line is I gotta protect him. I gotta protect him, even if he stabbed me in the back, will get over that he stabbed me or vice versa, which we don't do.
I gotta protect him, you know, That's what it has to be. And it's been a fun ride on the start of the business.
Build it up to whatever it is, three fifty one hundred million, whatever it may be, with your best friends, and.
Ride that ride.
And who is on.
Who also gonna do that? Who are like?
We've been through You've lost the wife, he went through divorces, We've been through new bursts of children, parents dying, cancer, Like, who else am I?
I've been on this planet in fifty five years.
I may last ten, I may last fifteen more, I mean last twenty one, But who are or one hundred more? But who else am I going to start that relationship besides these guts who know every single aspect of my life?
You know what I'm saying?
The investment so let me ask you, did Shock Tank help the fool brand? Yeah?
Of course, of.
Course, you know it's another Yeah, we were gonna be the first one, the first reality showing BT.
This guy won't do it.
We ain't know why he want to do it.
We know why he was.
He was, you know, contemplating on his next move, but his next move with shock Tank. Understood why he didn't want to do it. You know what I'm saying. But by him doing that, But.
Who was the reality show? Well? Remember that what's going on? It's revelations right now. Listen, we shot that liter Let me tell you. I'm listening. These niggas told you they was fried, right slipper tell me we shot that show with lions Gate. Nobody picked it up. No, I'm talking about the BT joint. What's out there? Huh? What are you talking? Moment? The BT ahead? See listen nor read.
Let me get back to you.
I'm listening.
Anyway, go ahead, if we shot it or not, I didn't know all that shit happened, but I know that ship ain't go through.
He went to shock Tank.
He did his thing on Shock Tank, and I just opened the doors for everybody looking at football again. You know what I'm saying, because now once again we're on the national platform with the CEO of Fooble, which he's always gonna be. He's all remembered first, you know what I'm saying. And then I think they talked about it in the opening.
Wait, now you know what happened for Foobo and start of Tank America started to say, it's not just for a segment, it's not of ignorance. This guy who's on here, who they all must be the same. You know, he's not a dumb guy. They're not coming in the room. They all want to hold every one of us are held in a box. And they used to think when we came in the room, we were going to have gold teeth break dancing baggy Jean yo.
And I'm like, no, no, this is business man. You know what I'm saying.
Yeah, you know, we ain't do Oprah because she wanted us to stand on a car and do all kind of crazy.
We turned out, Wait what that was the biggest So what happened with that? So here's here's what happened with Oprah.
She wanted to come into our houses, and at that time, we didn't want to show our family she want us on cars and doing all that other ship and then say.
We say on cars, I don't understand, you know, like.
All that the producer, I'm not saying Oprah herself. And I remember there was a girl who was working at our company and she was either an intern or she was working there. And they said, by the way, that's Oprah's niece working in your company. And I was like, I don't work working at FOOBU. And this is when we had about three hundred employees. We would show up the red carpets and we would go into a movie theater at an event. She's sitting in the front rows. We sitting in the ninth row. We started going, I think maybe this girl worked for you know, she dded up coming lady to acting fly and I think one of us, I'm not sure who was fired up. We told the girl working for us, who Who's gonna fire? We said, it's okay to fire. I remember this big time publicers called us, you are going to fire Oprah's niece.
Are you crazy? This is the most powerful woman in the world.
And I remember one of us, or the woman Leslie work for us, said Oprah would want us to fire her ass and din Ald was a sudden We ain't get on Oprah?
Are you producers behind the scenes who didn't let Oprah know?
Whatever the case is? But how do we get to Oprah? So that was your doing? None of y'all smoke the drinker, y'all. Oh, be honest. That fool story is so and his was crazy. I think it's so. I thought it was a documentary, then I thought it was a movie.
But now that I'm thinking about it, it's almost a wire meets power definitely, one of.
Somewhere in that to this. Yeah, it's.
I know, if I know, if you know about it's a problem.
I think it's sex in the city meets wire. No theme on. Let me get you get that, let me let me take, let me.
Take don't get get that baby, let me take this baby boy. It's the Wire maybe a little bit, it's.
The Wire Entourage. That's that's It's the Wire meets entourage.
This this is what great realized when not when me and Damon started the idea of Foboo, I had just came home from Rikers.
It was in jail.
It makes a noise. R know what I'm saying, And I'm not saying that.
I'm not saying that, not really, this is not really talk. This is not even celebrating that ship.
Not long. I did less than six months, say seventy four.
But that's that's that seventy four era. That's that that's the toughest ship ever.
But the bottom line was I didn't want to go back. You know what I'm saying that six months, six years in today's time, I never want to go back. That's the bottom line. And now let's make some meeting.
Want to go back.
Me and Damon, I had my first child at the time, and meeting him at that moment. You know what I'm saying, was me either trying to figure out how to be a better criminal.
Or you was just because because we kind of stopped hanging just because you know, he was moving to that side of the world, and so when you came.
Home or whatever, I even really forgot about that. So it's a lot. It's a lot that, like I said, it's four different stories in one story. That's the reason he got me the story.
You know, I think what you said at another time we were talked, and you said when you you didn't realize how your impact was and you never went outside your world. And when I was going on the toys as a roadie on the tour, I think Keith was also a street dude. I don't think he I don't know if he was doing I don't remember if he was doing any of that stuff. But I remember Keith saying to me he was on the road to nowhere, and when he went on that road with me and he saw that there was a bigger world where LL was doing what he loved and people were screaming and shouting, and he didn't have to look over his back.
He said, I.
Remember you said something like yo. That's when I said, y'are gonna leave that behind. I'm gonna leave anything behind and roll with you because there you can live. You can come out of the hood and do what you love and live and make money.
I just had that I had the wrong friends.
I had everybody that I was selling crack, getting them football numbers, going to jail, dying, and then I had these dudes where I was going on tour and doing different shit, going out of town. At fifteen.
I was like, MA, can I go out of town?
She was like, I ain't got no money else.
It just got just need fifty dollars, let me get we gonna share rooms, onto a room. I'm good.
But it was like doing things like that that opened my mind's side, like, wow, there are other things than what's going on in my hood.
You know what I'm saying, and you know, So that's why I wanted people to listen to us that we're talking about. Who were listening to us? Now, Man, get with that little crew that that they're on to talking about money and see, I don't care how corny it sounds of you love what they're doing. Man, Don't don't go to those streets. Man, don't go to those streets. Man, there's so much.
Man, we're we're we're a great product of our environment of people who got out because we just wanted to make sure to make people happy.
You you wanted to make people happy. You want to make people happy. Man.
So man, Man, yeah, this, I can't wait to hear this. Man, i'ma be honest because and I'm from Queens. So the reason why, like we didn't know about no nothing wrong or nothing you know, crazy with Foo Boom fool Boom came out. We were proud of it, proud of it to this day. So for y'all to have, like I love this that four different stories because shit, I'm tuned in.
That's so so so. So what is next for foodle mhm expansion the real estate party.
So there's this brand expansion, just identifying new partners as far as licensing agreements, growing out business here. We just started manufacturing on the Goods head of the States again and very local radio, Yes.
Network, and we got Football Village coming. So it's just really brand expansion and you know, trying to make this situation where it's here long after we're gone. Did you say food village Gooble village.
Like the real estates, Yeah, but is housing, manufacturing, sports, entertainment, and retail and we just we're looking at two hundred acres.
I can't stay where but right outside at Lance.
At this point, Yeah, that's the right place. And with me, I'm with Fool Radio. I'm build then, like I said earlier, when my partners down in actually Roswell, Georgia, eighteen stage creative space studio with one hundred five hundred car parking lot, three hundred seat theater, restaurants and you know it's going to be a creative spot down there. So I'm be doing a lot of things out there. Got an office in a station in uh North Carolina, Atlanta, and New York now Toms Square, So we're just trying to do it. And I'm also working on this is He's probably gonna love this, the Tommy Micking story. Trying to work develop and getting that done. So me and my man, me and Tim have been talking about that, so that's gonna be crazy.
Makes a noise that.
Everything connected though everything, Like you guys are all partners in each other's venture, so.
Exactly what we've been talking like I will.
Let's say it, Football Villas is my project, but I get permission a licensing deal from my partners, so I paid them a royalty.
So you're licensing from your own entity.
Just because he's a partner, he would get a license and have or seventy five percent off what anybody else is because you want your partner to be able to roll the business. And food was always four of us, so we could be at four different places, four different times, four different businesses and four different minds.
Right, I think could open up drink Champs bowling, and I ain't gonna necessarily read.
I could license it at a discount from my own man, you can say, let my own ip and you can say, here's our rules.
Man, just don't do this.
And you and because you're a partner, but absolutely I got you. But then go run it and then you don't.
Bother me right now, now, questions from what you're licensing that excludes them as specific partners only from the licensed part of it.
Well, it depends.
If we decide to come in as a let's say a monetary investment, then that put shoo in a different position. But if they just a licensing partner, my partner's license it to me, they get a royal toy off of the overall sales revenue that generated from this particular property.
So I don't want to make things too complicated. In the basic form of a license, when you think about it is if you sold one hundred dollars a million dollar worth of goods, a millioniles the worth of anything, if you had a twenty percent net, I mean that you pay everything, You pay for everything the twenty percent profit profit. But if a license is ten percent that you give to somebody, you do all the work, finance everything, advertised market and I don't do anything. You take ten percent. I take them and we're splitting it of the profit or of the profit of and I didn't have to do anything. So that's why licensing is so powerful.
And it cast us. And we usually put in a place where there's a minimum, like a minimum guarantee, guarantee.
You're supposed to do x amount of business over heres, and they can get complicated, but in my scales up, that's.
What we're I usually see a license as a minimum. That's what we do normally.
If you want people to have some skin in the game to get your name in the first place, and we want to and we don't want to go into too much data to get people computed. The licensing can be but it's really really simple. It's like renting or leasing your home to somebody. That's the same thing.
Right.
So in my my regards to what I would, you know, my job is, I will be uh, you know, we will be foolble forever. We've been fortunate enough to create something that was globally recognized, that came out of our basement.
Thank you, thank you.
You know.
I think that I will start sooner or later a fund, a fooble fund where it will be you know, deploying money to businesses and or whatever with with with our our history. But my job still is to grow the brand and support my partners, use my because my job as a partner here is my public access, is to keep being hopefully the dignitary of our brand and to bring attention to our brand globally. Definitely, one day, well we'll do the whether it is the doc or the series or whatever the case is. Yeah, And I think that the job of us is that people have always shown the scissory. And I think if you hear a jumping, whether keeps talking about the fight, whether I'm talking about being an asshole to customers or whether calls talking about counterfeit. I never want we never want to sit back and say, look, how fly this shit is.
We want you to cod it.
This shit is hard, and when you're doing this, you've never I've never met an entrepreneur in my life who did something purely because they wanted to make money. I've only met entrepreneurs who want to solve a problem or bring somebody joy, and then the money came. The people who did it only because the money ended up in the wrong place, so they the money once they got it. And I think our job and our obligation as the people who created this brand, who never sold it for the for the right reasons, is that to extend this brand for people of coming from all all colors or whatever will come from nowhere to say.
I mean them, them dumb cast did it?
Like the only thing I did notable in school is I I like to say the seventh grade so much.
I took it twice. That's it.
And I'm dyslexic. Paul went to jail. Just I'm just remembering it. I'm just like you're just like, it's the bottom line. My my job is to be the statesman of food. Keep pushing it out there, keep building great brands and bringing great partners in. Maybe do do the movie or whatever, cases and and stuff, and just keeping it's my life, you know what I mean.
It's not just a move. It's a series. It's an acted out series.
It's a documentary with the actor. It's a whole series. It's locked it out. It's like, man, you gotta take your time. You see you've seen the Wu Tang clan ship.
Yeah, Swete, And my newest agenda has been really honestly, all that is supporting emerging artists, especially as we're shooting in an area of at ours, because what I found unlike we had we came up, we had each other, we had clothing, sports athletes all that. I found that artists who creates, we all know a lot of creative people. There's a lot of addiction in this community, and that their their joy and their pain. They don't ever know if they're going to get into the NFL or create a fooble, but their joy and pain. We benefit from it, and there's a massive amount of addiction. So I'm starting to bring attention to fine artists and hopefully give them fooble licenses for free and various other things like that, because I think there's a lot of addiction of these people who have beautiful things that they have to share with us, and we don't realize that community has no support, so they have it.
Let me ask you, would you do fooble cannabis?
Yeah? I just don't smoke on TV.
I respect that. I noticed that.
I noticed that, but I miss smoking. Since miss smoking. I told me one day and say, yo, you was on the something back in the days, you know, you know, you were smoking weeds and he was teenagers, bro, But you know I keep it respectful.
You know you're still smoke. So you slowed down a lot?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I slow I slowed the lot down. You know when you start, you know, when I turn the senior citizen. You know what I'm saying, You don't count no one those you know. But it's it's like like I said, I don't. I slowed down a lot of a lot of things that I did. Like back in the days, I used to fall fall asleep in the club with these dudes. They used to take my chain off. Wake up, I'm wilding out and like your chill here your chain like you falling asleep like a stupid ship, like you know, like he was. He was an angry week for attic. You know, I've never heard angry me either, because it was mixed way to hit that back then, Say that.
Time the club, that time the club, Remember the time, that time, that time in your life. Remember that time when you time the club? What you tell kid, I ain't fifty the club. You know he started peeing on people in the club. I'm coming, he said.
I say, saw being told. I'm talking about there some women sitting the he said. The ball and he pe.
Great pete on their legs. He when he mixed his weed with Henderson before close the Palladium. You don't see the week before that, you man.
He the boy hit the floor and then it sprinkled on these toes.
And listen, man, yo, okay, I wasn't gonna make I began with my pistol on myself and you have to go now.
Now before that big dude loosening up in the blad on twenty eighth Street.
Oh my god, I wasn't ready for man. Well we need to make it.
We can go ahead for yo, man, Yeah, thirty five years I'm not he let me say that one.
I told you.
See, he gave me permission. That's a crazy you're gonna say that. I knew he's gonna say the pistol one. I know that Pep's in the club. So you know how boys, boys listen, I need to hear it. No, his boys, listen. These are the hard conversation we have. I said, listen, Keith Man, I got your back. I'll die for you straight up.
Like if we're out of the club and something's going to happen, and I know that you know, like your you know whatever I gotta do. Man, you're my brother.
I was out of here.
But once he started all joking aside, he went through this phase of doing that and we realized that it was you were mixing tequilo.
It was something was happening with he went through the face my beating.
I had that.
You know, sugar run in my family. I don't know that.
Yeah, you know, when you're diabetic and you drink liquor, it just come out like when it come out. It's coming out. It's not like hold it.
I didn't know what.
I didn't even know. I thought I was, you know, too drunk to get to the bathroom, you know what I'm saying.
And we were, and so we were, we were running around, right.
So if you're my man, and I love you like and I'm willing to die for you, and I'm not a gangster at all, but if I know that I got to jumping in from a movie, this cat what O the case. But at a point where after a while it was happening too much. I can't justify you. I was like, yo, Keith, here's two things we're gonna do. I'm either not going I'm not going to go out with you, man, I can't go out any more. Or if you keep doing that, I ain't got your back. I'm walking on you.
We had to have a heart. That's a hard conversation created the depends about six.
You tell one story story man repete on somebody and the man was about to whip my ass. This dude's wrong. You pet on the man?
Girl, I don't care. She had painless shoes on. You still discribed it pee on everybody, bro. So it was a wild nice man. We have some wild nay, haven't bro it happened you know, don't have.
No, No, don't know. Don't you have peen on somebody in the street. No, no, but sudden.
But you never said you'll turn that ship up. But should happened in life. No, he ain't shipped on him yet. That's what I was waiting for.
I'll wait for.
What for you?
They literally throwing chairs. I wanted to foot and peeing on something that's going off.
The hunk.
Luckily has the social media. We don't make cancer a boy. Make sure to depict that in the film. They all we got you got you a long stream and that motherfuckers they had social media. We'll be here right now? Yoh, what do you want? You want me to go get that? You want that other stock room? Could we wouldn't be here no more.
So it's something that I kept hearing repeated through this conversation. Said, at one point you was doing three hundred and fifty million.
Did I hear that?
Correct?
Worth like doing three three hundred and fifty million? You can't help hold on a minute, because how was y'all acting?
Then?
I know, listen, I'm gonna be honest with you. I don't give a fuck.
If they say you just worth three hundred and fifty million, I already got.
Fifty million before you answer to that. Inflation? What is that today? Yeah, that's yeah, that's the question. Inflation. So acting in clothing.
Technically it's a good it's a great number. But Nike does thirty billion a year and a lot of But but.
Coming from were I letna stop staying saying.
But we was only it was almost homeless. So we all moved into my house and and slept, you know, like we worked during the day. I worked at Red Loft and then we were so enclosed and having people so close. I worked in Baldwin and I worked at I worked at Sunrise, and he worked uptown Manhattan as a building manager.
And you worked in a factory. Right job Yeah, so job bro job.
The job.
You had a fantasy boy, You were in a clean, good job. Man. I remember I said, job Okay, it was nothing behind that story. It wasn't steady.
So almost a sudden, were almost homeless. We get our deal, were supposed to the manufacturing deal. Was supposed to be supposed to do five million dollar worth of sales in three years to keep our basically our manufacturing deal. We do thirty million dollar worth of sales in like three months. Wow, what takes all? Immediately we start moving and doing stuff. So I think at twenty nine we was almost I was almost homeless. That means you would have been almost homeless, but you were renting the basement from me right and then paying whatever he could, and and he had a job, and then.
We all quit. It just takes off. I remember.
I remember I came out here in Miami the first time. I remember standing at Jack the Rapper, and I remember looking at some pink tall building what is now the Port of Field.
I was like, man, one day, was it?
How can I be done? Nutjacks rap. I was on the beach going, man, look at that pink building. It was like ninety seven ninety eight, and that pink billing just got bill. I said, man, one day, I'm gonna get thirty thousand dollars in a foridn apartment.
I remember.
The next year I bought the second building and there for three second apartment there for three million dollars. But I found out I didn't know any better. I didn't know about what they call marinas. I had Jessky, so I wanted to buy a Jesski. I want to put a jesse someplace. So I go down to Venetian Causeway and I buy another house of five million dollars.
There just to put a Jesse.
Man.
I remember, we bought each other. We bought each other cart cars, all kind of I mean, we were just spending money. Like but we got my first bens.
You had to corvette.
You had the boat. We brought you the boat. We bought Jada Bidley and these are these are Christmas gifts and birthdays. So well, yeah, it was pretty good.
You know.
Damn, my friends ain't shit. How young were you guys? How old were you guys? A twenty nine thirty. That's the thing when.
We have a lot of these conversations, especially at Dream Chance, we're talking about things that happened in the past.
We were all older. Now these are young people that we're talking about, young mentalities, young men, young women that were doing things, and we got to put that in that perspective.
We were told that.
We're not supposed to live past twenty one. That's what everybody told us, even the people that we paid to protect us told us that that we're going to be dead or in jail by twenty one.
My mom to tell me that should every day, tell me that shit all the time until I almost die seventeen.
What did you say?
She's to be like, you're gonna be dead and you're gonna be dead in jail by telling you twenty one. And I'd be like, yo, you my mom, Like how you.
Saying it to me? Because way because you were acting out. She's like the way you move in, what people you hang in and carry you straight scared skin, just straight shoot us. I mean all of my mothers are actually the truth. Yoh, y'all fucked me up.
But one of the best days though, like when we made it made it. I think one of the best days for us was seeing our product of Macy's windows like. We literally went to Macy's windows windows Like y'all literally got forty ounces and went and stood in front of Macy's talking about that.
That's that's selling gangs to Hold on Home, hold on home, because I know is it Macy's on thirty four thirty four Street? Okay, hold on, let me take it.
Let me take it, because I'm there. I'm there, even though I wasn't there, I'm there. Y'all knew it was going to be on thirty fourth Street.
You can remember I said this. We had to pay after a while, you know what I mean. All that stuff, But what really happened is we grew up. We grew up in Hollis Queen's Halls. Queen's is right next to JFK. Our parents used to tell us. They used to say, well, there was a plane that shut the whole community when a land called the concord in the land of time. And our parents used to say, either you need to be because when when you heard the rumbling of the jail of the concord landing the whole neighborhood ship. I remember my mother used to say, or during the during the summer, the lights on the Empire Stable, and my mother used to say, you better be the fastes than the concord or quicker than the lights of the Empire Stable, because that means it got dark concord and at a certain time and whatever the imp So that's what happened.
We finally made it.
We had our first office of forty eighth floor of the Empire State Building. This is a building that was thirty miles away, that took us thirty years to get to, and now we have the ford. We would end up owning the sixty fifth, sixty sixty three floors of the Empire State Building. But the first time, and I remember at that time the Empire State Building windows can open as high as from here to did I remember the first time we made it, we to the outside outside actually window, and that's why people used to jump out of some of the last by the way we got avoided off. I remember sitting out sitting there at the forty four and me had the call and Keith we were looking outside of there at the entire city.
We finally made it.
The next day we take I just got a brand new Lexus, and I had the thousand CD player in the back, the.
Thousand of them.
It took me a week to open all those damn CDs to put them in there, and we sat outside of Macy's with the coldest forties from Popula Compy kids. We opened up that trunk and I made sure every girl seeing that I had every CD they're playing, and we rolled down the window then listen and blast of that music as much as we could right in front of those Macy's windows. We would later on be the first people that ever physically sit in the windows of Macy's for eight hours while.
During the promotion, you guys physically sat there. And then next week I remember driving that car home.
And somebody car jack me. I was all right do to my friends, Our friends who used to rob people. Caught me on Long Island and they dragged me.
They got you. They caught me.
They saw me, and they saw me driving that Lexus. They dragged me to the back. I had tried to move as fast as I put out of the neighborhood. They dragged me to the back and they put the gun to my head and I thought I was gonna die, and they took that trigger and they was about to pull it and they just took the car and ran away. But what they found out is that we had made it. And they said, Damon can get another car, don't worry about it. And so they followed me and they and that and that was and that's that, and that's that story. A lot of a lot of things happened going on. So those guys believed in you. Then I think that's the side. I don't want anybody else to.
Believe in me again. But let me ask you, how did that feel? Being a kid from Queens.
It happened because because that Macy's on thirty fourth Street, that's home alone.
You know that it's everything to us. It is a kid from the see because I know a lot of people are gonna.
Watch this man, and they're not gonna they're not gonna understand that.
But I understand that.
So I'm gonna I'm gonna be reading you right now and I'm saying, how did Jack, how did that moment feel for you?
Honestly, man, that was a big day for us, but that wasn't That wasn't my big day.
But because God mean, when we started the company, I had a child, I was married and had a child at a young age. So my whole goal is to buy a home for my kids, my life. And what happened around at same time Macy's all that stuff. Damon's like, okay, let's go find a house.
So we went to a house that's on Walction out there in Brookville, Long Allen and he and he was like, yo, all right, we're gonna spend no more than seven hundred thousand, that's what That's the highest we gonna bid on it. So we went out there to this house in Brookville, got to seven hundred, and his ego kicked in seven eight hundred fifty nine hundred.
We went no way upse I think a million too. Didn't get the house, but we end up getting another house. But what that told me was, you know what I'm saying, be in a different game right now. And he got my back, you know what I'm saying. So it's times like that that I remember more than I guess the Macy's name, because those are goals out trying to set the home buying, taking care of my family, just getting a daily paycheck, another weekly paycheck from some shit you build out of nothing.
To me, that shit was monumental to me.
So that's what the things I remember the most, just really creating something from nothing to be able to pay my bills with that shit.
I ain't gonna lie. I gotta make some noise for that what was in that moment man, Because for me being from New York City on the thirty fourth Street, it was thirty fourth Street and forty second Street.
If you didn't if once you conker the coliseum rather.
The next movement, Yeah, forty deuce is the next one.
That was the next one. That coliseum got a gird.
Then thirty fourth Street is big at all?
Yeah, I said, because there's a lot of more other people.
This is kind of it's just going international with going up the block. Yeah, how did you feel with having your mother fucking closed in thirty fourth Street Macy's n.
I mean it felt at that time. We were still young too, so the brand was still coming up.
You know.
We used to do this thing we say one time when we would walk down the block and still see people in our clothes and be like one time, everybody be like where where where?
You know?
So it was still new for us. But having any Macy's window, especially like even my boy Jay. He had got fired from Macy, so he always had this personal thing.
He worked for.
He worked for Macy, so he had got fired for, you know, supposedly stealing like a three dollar time and he never forgave him for that. But you know what I'm saying.
But to see us come back and see his face that night and see all of us, he said, the guy I'll be selling to you.
Yep.
So it was it was big.
And then you know, Macy's windows is historic, bro like for us, it was the first time I think Urban Fashion Company graced the windows.
Talk and I think had done it. I think he did it eventually, but we was in the windows, that's right.
So this is pretty much my last question.
There's so many other people that's from Queens or black four people that's together. What was the moment where YA actually sat down and said this is what we're going to focus on. Me and e FN been friends forever, right, I recorded his studio, he's been my studio in New York. But we had invested in Drink Champs nine months and kind of didn't make anything back.
No, we didn't make anything back.
Anything back, but it was it's so impactful. That's the only thing we got back was the impacts. The impact, but no one knows that. So we just kept going.
But it was times we were like, hey man, what the fuck are we doing? Really mean?
This is? This is this is this is not Luca did. Was there anytime doing fool where y'all? I was like, damn, bro, We're sure we were doing this is the right thing.
I don't think anybody, I don't think everybody. Anybody's ever asked us that. So when Carl and I started in eighty nine, we started it, we were doing this thing called like you said. He had a family, he had a he had a child, and he had a wife. She said, Yo, what are you doing? You gotta take care of us. And I think that we close it down cause he ran out of money when you got.
First start, We closed down the brand.
We stopped and then he I'm sorry, but is this before or after the super Soakers?
After after when we started putting the actual physical name food on product? Close it down? We closed three times from eighty nine to ninety two.
Call this.
Carl says, I got to take care of my family, can't do it. I'm like, whatever, cool, I ran out of money. One thousand dollars, two thousand dollars. You're the financier, I'm the financier.
Whatever. This is no big money.
People start seeing us. Yo man, so the flea mark or whatever whatever I need. My boy Ja comes back. He's fighting desert storm. He's like, he's he's alright. He comes back. He said, Yo, man, what are you doing? I want to go to fashion institute. By the way, I got a little bit of money. He give me five thousand dollars. We started again. Call no longer. The picture not necessarily cool. It starts to get momentum. We run out of money. Close it again. People, Yo, I sort of stuff.
I like this stuff.
Call comes back. Jay says, Yo, let's rock. I'll move in your house with you. I'll work during the day. I'll put some rent. Keith says, I'll move in your house. I'll leave in the basement. I'll put some rent. Call says I'll come back. I didn't go, and we mortgage the house. I work at Red Lobster. We all are working off and on shifts. The Foobol brand then comes back again. It's not big. We get that call for three years off until like ninety five five. This is a three year span that this has happened. This is a seven year this started six years span.
So right around.
Eighty nine we failed the first time, started agetting ninety failed again, started again in ninety one, failed again in ninety two. Then we all just come together. We live off of shit beans and what are the cases more than rent the house?
What the answer? People probably saying to you, you're failing life. I got I got a wife.
So they're all laughing at us, not talking to us. Ninety five we start to get some form of traction. Ninety six, we start to get a deal. Wow, millions of dollars in the bank by ninety eight, ninety seven, ninety eight, and we're globally recognized.
At that time. But that's how it goes. Yeah, I don't think, I don't think. I don't think I have a recaptain in that way.
And it was about partners coming in and out and we all say, yo, we got something bigger than this man. Work your day job, don't save money, put it into this ship, move into my house, Sleep on the floor, sleep on the ground.
Get your wife. Your wife's mad at you. I don't care. Go ahead, that's rock sounds about right. They killed it, so then you wonder, you wonder why we were still brothers. So what were we gonna do after that? I've been through everything, through everything that was hard, crazy as we. Drink Champs is a Drink Champs ll C.
Production hosts and executive producers n O r E and dj e f f N.
Listen to Drink.
Champs on Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Drink Champs, hosted by Yours truly, dj e f N and n O r E. Please make sure to follow us on all our socials that's at drink Champs across all platforms at the Real Norrie go on I g at Noriega on Twitter, Mine is at Who's Crazy on I g at dj e f N on Twitter, and most importantly, stay up to date with the latest releases, news and merch by going to drink champs dot com