Business dealings have always come as second nature to Damon Dash,and in his newest endeavor as the modern day Andy Warhol
he shows us again what it means to demand respect.
by Steven J. Horowitz
Photography by Jason Goodrich
It’s roughly 2 P.M. on a blistery New York City winter day, but the chill doesn’t seem to faze Damon Dash, who rolls up to his gallery, DD172, on a cruiser bicycle. Dash dismounts, carries his metropolitan vehicle through the iron gates and tilts it against a floor-to-ceiling window, removing his black fur ushanka and hanging his gray wool coat in silence before making his way through the cavernous first floor art space and climbing a suspended staircase to his office.
Inside, two model-esque women – who he refers to as his “executives” – diligently patter away at their computers. “Yo, look at this!” Dash suddenly exclaims, his eye turning to a mysterious brown sludge tucked between the cushions of his cream-colored fur couch. “What is that? What the hell?” he asks his right-hand woman, McKenzie Eddy. Dash lifts one of the pillows, brings it to his nose and takes a deep whiff. “Smells like some kind of liquor.” He pats it. It’s wet. He quickly realizes that his nephew Stevie, who had stayed in the office the night before, had thrown up in his sleep. “Fucking Stevie! I’m fucking Stevie up!” he yells.
Stevie soon scurries in and puts the slipcovers into a garbage bag, sticking out his fist to Dash for a dap. “Give me a pound when you finish!” Dash roars. Before Stevie even walks out the door, Dash has already set his sights on his weed grinder, licking his lips as he crushes some potent Purple Urkle.
It’s this inherent contrast – the bad (Stevie’s nocturnal purge) with the good (gifts of greenery) – that underscores Dash’s post as ringleader of the circus that inhabits DD172. Located at 172 Duane Street in a posh pocket of Tribeca, the four-floored gallery has become a refuge for musicians, painters and filmmakers looking to freely create art without any of the corporate constraints or pressures that exist in the outside world. A year and a half prior, Dash had first moved into a corner office in the building to observe its previous tenant Malcolm Bricklin, an automobile tradesman who expressed interest in having Dash run his company. But after Bricklin’s operation fell victim to the failing economy, Dash moved his artistic compound from his apartment to the space, arranging what he calls a “creative deal” with the building’s landlord – a smart move for Dash, whose financial woes have been documented in the tabloids for the past few years.
“I started to go through a lot of bad press all of a sudden,” he explains of the period following the sale of his shares in Roc-A-Fella Records and Rocawear Clothing. “Like, the recession hit everybody, but me being a businessman and motherfuckers getting caught up in the storm, all my issues were completely public. And completely exaggerated. So the recession shit happens, I don’t give a fuck.”
Left with a bad taste in his mouth from his days as a record label kingpin, Dash swore off working in the music industry after moving on from Roc-A-Fella and witnessing firsthand how corporate bigwigs could manipulate artists to the point of killing their indie spirit (he credits his time working with singer-songwriter Alice Smith as a wakeup call). But after linking up with Eddy and her associates (his “muses”), Dash was soon acclimated to a musical terrain that he hadn’t yet navigated: indie rock. When Eddy opted to go to a sold-out Black Keys concert instead of celebrating her birthday with Dash, he decided to see what the fuss was all about.
Soon, Dash had begun to set the framework for a new business model. Introduced to the relatively unknown duo MGMT, Dash took a chance and threw rapper Jim Jones onto a remix of their sleeper hit “Electric Feel,” allowing Columbia Records to steer the promotional ship – and watching it subsequently crash and burn. “Because Columbia’s major retarded, they didn’t know how to exploit that correctly,” he says. “But again, we were so far ahead of the curve. Like, [MGMT] hadn’t even sold any records yet.”
Dash realized that his disgust with label business practices had nothing to do with his love of the music and decided to reach out to the Black Keys for collaboration. Only, instead of looking to develop the project under the financial thumb of a major label, Dash decided to do as the indies do and record an album on his own. Funneling his last dollars into the project, he paired the blues rockers with rappers like Ludacris, RZA and Mos Def for 2009’s BlakRoc, an album that’s gone on to sell nearly 50,000 copies based off of word-of-mouth and viral marketing.
“There is no business model for this. I don’t have no business plan. For once, I’m really going by what I really love,” he says. “Like, I did all of that shit, and it doesn’t work out to being happy. It works out to making money, but not as much money as I could [have made], and then being so disgusted with something I created. Like, I’m looking at Rocawear right now, and it’s not something I know that I could ever wear. I had to go from Roc-A-Fella to BlakRoc. So the only thing that I’m happy about in that respect is that there was an evolution.”
Whether or not progression equates to monetary compensation is of little concern to Dash. At one time an indisputable business mogul, he has set up shop in DD172 to solely focus on the creation of art, whether it comes in the form of a musical or visual medium. Anything outside of the compound is what Dash has nicknamed “wack world,” an umbrella term applied to P.O.W.s (prisoners of wack world) who are only concerned with conforming to the institutions that run any given industry.
“They have no other choice, there’s no other option,” he explains of P.O.W.s. “So people have to fit in where they can and just be mad, and that’s why people don’t work as hard, because they don’t enjoy what they do. They live for Fridays. You know what I’m saying? I hate Fridays. Sunday in here is just as packed as any day. Because, this shit, you enjoy it. You wouldn’t compromise it for the world.”
Dash’s Warholian approach has attracted a group of likeminded individuals whose sole purpose is to create (living comfortably is a priority, but fame whores need not apply). Not only is DD172 a breeding ground for new music, but it also serves as an art gallery where the works of Isaac Fortoul primarily cover the walls. At any given time, there’s at least one artist in DD172 working on a project, whether it involves designing a poster for an upcoming show, recording vocals or editing footage for Creative Control, a video channel that Dash uses to promote upcoming projects (there are cameras always capturing the magic). And while not much music has actually come out of Dash’s creative factory, there are more than a dozen projects awaiting the green light. As of now, Dash is sitting on full-lengths from producer Ski Beatz (24 Hour Karate School), rapper Curren$y (Pilot Talk and Muscle Car Chronicles with The Mars Volta’s Thomas Pridgen and Sean O’Connell), The Black Keys (BlakRoc 2), The London Souls, rapper Stalley, The Disco Biscuits, rapper Tabi Bonney, Voodoo Farm (Eddy’s group) and a handful of others.
“That’s all over a four month period of time,” he says as he shows a PowerPoint presentation of projects in the pipeline. “People don’t leave [DD172] not because I’m cracking the whip, but because they really love this environment. I don’t believe that business has to be ‘business is business.’ Business is a life choice because it takes so much of your time, so you should be comfortable. You should be happy. You know what I’m saying?”
And as far as fashion goes? Dash still owns a substantial percentage of his ex-wife Rachael Roy’s clothing company, but he’s not looking to jump into new ventures with the fashion world anytime soon. In fact, Dash’s tastes are surprisingly simple (if not unconventional) for an ex-hip-hop entrepreneur. Pacing about his office, Dash is decked out in an eggshell white long-sleeved tee, Steve Urkel glasses, dirty denim jeans, Timberland mocs and a GoodWood necklace draped about his neck. He’s come a long way since the golden days of Roc-A-Fella where he proudly wore designer clothing with a signature chain hanging down his shirt – but he hasn’t completely turned his back on the label.
“It’s a medal. It means everything to me, Roc-A-Fella,” he says, pulling out a Roc-A-Fella pendant necklace from a drawer filled with thousands of dollars in jewelry. “That’s what I’m saying. Roc-A-Fella wasn’t just business for me, that shit’s tattooed on my arm. I’ll never regret it. Roc-A-Fella’s the shit. It’s bittersweet it went down the way it did.”
But as a 38-year-old who admits that he’s almost entirely out of touch with a younger demographic and freely points out the flecks of gray in his beard, Dash has finally created a movement where, for once, he’s doing it for all the right reasons. “Don’t get it twisted, I had a ball. I was young, I was wild,” he says. “But I can’t be going out and doing that shit. That shit is corny. You’re allowed to make mistakes as a young’n. But I would probably get offended if I watched somebody pour champagne on a girl’s head right now, and I was the main motherfucker who was doing that. I know the disrespect that I was committing, the karmic repercussions of it, my God. But if you don’t remove yourself from that, how would you even objectively know? I feel sorry for people where that can become your life choice, where they’re just surrounded by wack world every day, all day. You can’t still be living by those ideals.”
via YRBMagazine
