Since childhood, Charlie Morgan has been obsessed with subculture. A globally recognized creative, @sofarok has left his touch with brands like Vans, New Balance and adidas, just to name a few. This year, Charlie celebrates his 25-year journey of building his own brand with the release of his first book Heated Words, taking readers through a visual archival playbook of how a font permeated culture.

J.E.: Where do we start?

C.M.: I came of age in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. My interests, primarily skateboarding and graffiti - and by extension footwear and apparel - were, for lack of a better word, subcultures. None of them were easily accessible. This is all pre-internet, you couldn’t Google. You had to hunt. It’s worth mentioning I was also obesely overweight, so I loved skateboarding dearly, but I was never going to be any good at it. But more than anything I loved the visual culture around it - I loved getting R.A.D. or Thrasher as much for the latest board graphics as the skating. I was obsessed with skating and graffiti enough that I wanted to document it all.

C.M.: That grew into me, wanting to make films. DIY is synonymous with subculture, I didn't need a crew to make a film. I could just go out with a mini DV camera and edit at home on a PC, VHS and two VCRs before that. I'd also been a relatively early adopter to online in ‘95 with a 56k modem and I was on newsgroups already discussing graffiti. So there is this innate sense of, ‘I love these things’. And ‘I love storytelling’. And ‘where's that gonna take me?’.

C.M.: Well, it didn't take me anywhere near where I ended up. Straight out of university, I got a gig teaching ‘moving image’, which I realized very quickly, wasn't for me. I think partly because I always struggled academically, and partly because of that unfair old adage ‘those that do do, that those don’t teach’, So I wanted to do something else. At some point, in the late ‘90s, I started to really pay attention to sneakers - trainers as we call them in U.K. I couldn't have all the Jordans I wanted when I was a kid, because, first of all, in the UK, they were somewhat harder to come by. Secondly, there was no way my parents were gonna get me those. The only pair I had were Maroon VIs from the sale rack. But now I could go on eBay, or I could go on a forum and there was this wealth of crowd sourced information about them. And there was all this other stuff I hadn't seen. I got immersed in that whole sneaker world and started to buy shoes.

J.E.: How did you get into the industry?

C.M.: In the early-2000’s, my interest in sneakers led me to a very small agency in London called Unorthodox Styles. The ‘shop window’ of that agency was a sneaker website called Crooked Tongues. The tagline was “Show love, drop knowledge”. It was, for the time, a big community. They were creating a lot of content. I was very active on the forum. They needed a runner / art worker. So, I got my foot in the door doing basic stuff they needed - video content, After Effects, manually going through 1000’s of lines on a spreadsheet to change something.

C.M.: When some of the people who helped start the agency began to move on, taking jobs within the industry, I took on more responsibility. I started being more of a creative within the agency and more of a project manager. This was early days in terms of sneaker culture being something that brands had identified. We started doing work for adidas, focusing on this idea that there are people out there who instead of buying one pair of sneakers every six months, they're gonna over index, and they're gonna buy six pairs a month. And we had the inside track on that, because we were the people that they were trying to target. Also, we had this community, so we could reach out directly to see what worked and what didn't.

C.M.: I did that for six, seven years. My very dear friend, Mr. Gary Warnett, who sadly passed away five years ago, came to work with me. We shared many similar interests, obsessions, whatever you want to call them. Gary and I became a double act. Often travelling the globe on brands budgets for one reason or another.

C.M.: There came a point where Crooked Tongues, it never really made money. It was more of a loss leader, a shop window for this agency. New management didn't really see the value in Crooked Tongues. Ultimately, a partnership happened between Crooked Tongues and ASOS. I went to work at ASOS, which at the time, they were in the ascendancy, they were writing the rulebook on e-commerce - it just blew my mind. And we started to turn what had been a kind of, semi-professional retail outlet, into a full on ecom beast.

C.M.: Suddenly, I was responsible for a huge buying budget. I was handling all the marketing of the site and the brand. And I was responsible for all the collaborations we were doing. Basically, anything that needed to happen, we were getting it done. Myself and Gary did that for a couple of years. I never had a job title all that whole time. I never had a business card that said ‘Charlie Morgan, Whatever’.

J.E.: What happened next?

C.M.: Around that time, a good friend who had been at adidas, had moved over to Vans and was looking for someone to come in and head up digital, whatever that meant. Vans is a brand that I'd always had an affinity for, obviously a skate brand. Their origin story, everything about them is a bit different than everyone else. Their European headquarters was in Lugano, Switzerland, on the Italian border. So I moved from East London, to rural Switzerland, living on a beautiful lake, right near Lake Como. That's kind of crazy.

C.M.: Looking back Vans was a fantastic experience , I learned so much, so quickly, because suddenly there's this thing called social media, Facebook is really taking off, I'm getting insane amount of budget to pump into social because obviously, it's seen as a huge growth area, no one's quite sure how we're going to use it yet. But you know, we need to be there, we need to show up, we need to, have a following. And it all made sense to me, because social was this huge extension of this world I've grown up in of message boards, newsgroups, and all of that kind of thing. I just saw it as an extension - it was really exciting. And I had a job title!

C.M.: Eventually, I decided I really wanted to be back in the UK. I moved back to work for Vice, managing Noisey, their music vertical in Europe. Vice was an intersting company with an incredible reputation and history in and of itself. Music is something I love, but it wasn't my passion first and foremost. So I moved on again. I worked for a bespoke consultancy firm on a project with a big electronics brand who was trying to go from being a white-label goods brand to being a lifestyle brand. Apple was their biggest competitor. So, how do we become more like an Apple? Again, kind of realizing that my interests and the way that I approached things was valid in other arenas. There was a lot of value in taking these things that I had learned from, that were endemic to these little cultures I loved and lived in and applying them to much bigger, broader objectives.

C.M.: After that, I decided I really missed footwear. Oh, and by the way, during this whole crazy time, with all these things going on, I met my now wife. So I'm starting to fly over to New York as often as possible to see my then girlfriend, I took a job with Wolverine, who own a lot of brands, as European marketing manager. A lot of it, it was a very linear, traditional sense of marketing, spreadsheets and calendars etc. but for me It was about creativity and how to engage with people. Making something at that intersection between culture, and brands is what it's all about, for me.

J.E.: Can you elaborate on that?

C.M.: These objects brands create, they don't think much of them after they've come out, by the time they are in the market the team that create and market them our several seasons beyond them,, but they are adopted and become totemic of these other things. And they have this immense value in them, that can be done in the right way. It can be used by a brand to reinvigorate or to grow. Done in a wrong way, you alienate the true believers in your brand. We've talked about that many times.

J.E.: Ok back to the story.

C.M.: To cut a long story short, one morning, I woke up and  I was really ill, I was out for three months - life threatening stuff, lucky to survive etc. In the wake of that I moved to Brooklyn in 2016, to be with my now wife. At that point, I was doing bits and pieces of consultancy, but I got to New York, and essentially, everybody in New York knows everybody. It was really difficult because I'm not someone who's great at going out and selling myself, and being the that guy. I'm not the guy on LinkedIn talking about this wonderful thing I did. New York is filled with people who are really good at that.

C.M.: Everybody was hustling. And they didn't have a clue what they were doing. They weren't necessarily very good at it, but they would tell you, they could do it. So trying to find work was kind of difficult. I had a few things going on. But I said to myself, I wasn't gonna go back in-house with a brand. I got approached by two very close friends of mine, who were working at one of my favourite brands: New Balance. The person that hired me said, “you're responsible for how NB turns up within culture”, which was something that made so much sense to me, that's what I want to do, I want to work with brands that I love, and I want to help them accentuate all of this amazing heritage that they may not even know that they have.

C.M.: That's not just necessarily in terms of, for want of a better word, pop culture. It could be from a design perspective, an almost academic level of industrial design. A lot of great brands haven't taken the time to really figure out where the last 30 years of their success has come from. They're not looking back and going, “you know, let’s bring back this sneaker, because we know why it was popular in this time period”. They’re doing it because people want it, but they don't really sort of make any effort to understand, and it's always a sort of temporary transitory conversation. There's an arrogance and an assumption within brands that, well, this is our DNA, this is our creation. So you know, we don't need the adopters of this thing to really cosign what we're doing. Or we're going to get the wrong person to co sign it. Or, we're going to do it, but we're going to do it our own way, which is not the point.

C.M.: So anyway, I go to New Balance and it was pretty amazing, because I got to shape the storytelling for stuff that I loved. I could bring in culture and I could work with media partners to help amplify stories and tell those stories. I got to create a lot of great content. Everything from books to mini documentaries to podcasts. I worked on so many wonderful things, it was really kind of a dream gig.

J.E.: Sounds like it. Why did you leave?

C.M.: When COVID hit, we had a kid and decided to move to Seattle to be close to family. I was in Seattle for a few years. And then four months ago, we moved back to the UK. I am doing some really cool, interesting consultancy for some really interesting brands. I'm very invested in storytelling, andagain  trying to find that kind of intersection between the thing, and people and culture and why it's interesting, and why you should care about it over the other thing. And create value in the way that advertising ultimately can also be entertainment.

C.M.: So, how do you how do you do that? I do other things, a bit of everything really, even down to product level. I enjoy the consultancy freelance side of things, because it's project orientated - there's always light at the end of the tunnel. It also feels there's more of a sense of satisfaction, because when it's done, it's done. And it's crystallized and formed, versus perhaps working internally at a brand where things are kind of never ending and you're working on multiple seasons at once.

J.E.: How did your Style Wars figures come about?

C.M.: I've always been someone who goes down wormholes, I become obsessed with things, often things that I think I'm the only person who's ever going to really appreciate it. I call it the ‘Twinkie Effect’. In Die Hard, Bruce Willis phones up his buddy and the guy’s eating a Twinkie. I'm like, What the fuck is that? Twinkie? As a big boy, I liked my food. And I was like, I've got to have a Twinkie. I don't know where I can get a Twinkie. What is a Twinkie? I'd obsess over it for that time period. Because this was the thing that I wasn't gonna get anytime soon. It looks amazing. It's totally different than what's in my drab gray surroundings. I can apply that same logic to all these things. Well, 30 years of my life now I’ve been obsessed with Style Wars. It's essentially, Subway Art, the movie, it's a documentary about hip hop within New York. So I was absolutely obsessed with this film, watching it all the time. I thought, oh, it'd be great if I made Style Wars action figures.

C.M.: I don't know how to sculpt. I like making stuff, but I wouldn't know where to start. So it was just an idea. At one point, I mocked it up. Initially, this was all going to be a bad Photoshop with the backing card. And then COVID happens. I thought, Well, I wonder if I could do this. So I started figuring out where, if I got this bit of this figure, and I took that, and that kinda looks like this guy. And as I was mocking it all up in Photoshop, then I thought, fuck it. So I ordered, you know, God knows how many figures off of eBay. And I started to cut them up like, Okay, now I'm doing this. And then the next minute, I'm buying an airbrush and a spray cabinet.

C.M.: Next thing I know, it’s three in the morning, and I'm trying to sculpt little bits and pieces. And then I buy a 3d printer because there's certain things I can't get, but I could print them if I had a 3d printer. And then I go into the whole world of 3d printing, which is another story. And ultimately, what I created was eight or nine action figures based on this documentary. The main characters. And I did the backing card. I did it because I couldn't get the idea out of my head. I wasn't convinced it was funny or interesting. I just did it because it's something I wanted to exist. That was it.

J.E.: And now you have a new project, Heated Words.

C.M.: Skateboarding, sneakers, graffiti - they weren't mainstream in the sense that you couldn't access it in the same way you could now by just Googling it and finding out every last piece of information about it. You found little pieces of information, and you kind of put them together sometimes in the right way, sometimes in the wrong way. And that is why I had this obsessive reaction to it, because I need to know this jigsaw puzzle so I can fit it into the next puzzle piece. One of the things that is kind of predominant within Style Wars is if you look at the B-boy crews, they all mostly have t-shirts with iron-on flock lettering.

C.M.: I always wanted to know what that typeface is - Old English, Gothic. A very good friend of mine that I grew up with from the same town that I'm from, was equally obsessed. He had gone off and become an art director, creative director and fine artist. He has a degree in typography. One night, we got together and again, for the hundredth time we had this discussion again, ‘what was that typeface?’.

C.M.: We still hadn't come across it anywhere in our ‘professional’  lives. So we set out to answer this story. Because at that time, if you Googled it, if you put in what is that typeface, you know, what is Rocksteady crew wearing? You would find an answer,’ oh, it was, so and so made it or, they did it themselves, or, it's this typeface.’ Wrong answers. There was one website where you could go on, and it would tell you what any font was, and people would just have their answer. And they wouldn't question it any further. We knew these answers were weren't right. So we set out trying to find it.

C.M.: The more we dug, the more we found evidence of it kind of all over the place, really, but very much East Coast centric from the early ‘70s, through to today, because a lot of street wear brands brought it back. We started to look into it. And we were finding, it might crop up in the background of this iconic photograph by this famous photographer, or it might be on this record cover that you've never seen. Or we might find the Instagram account from a guy that was in a B-boy crew in the ‘70s. Then you start looking into the actual type of graphic breakdown of it and realizing it's odd, right? It's not normal. It doesn't apply the rules of typography, it doesn't. It's all over the place.

C.M.: Now I've got all these assets, essentially, and you start spending way too many hours on eBay, trying to find vintage T shirts with it, which is almost impossible. But suddenly, you've got this stuff. What are we going to do? Now let's do an exhibition. So we did a pretty awesome show in London, just before I moved to the States. There was photography by established photographers, there was vintage garments on display. Alongside this exhibition, we did screenings of relevant movies, we had an opening night with DJs and stuff. In our heads, we thought that would be it. But it just raised more questions, more people telling us about their relationship with this typography.. these letters. We thought, ‘What what can we do next?’. We had a few ideas. But making a documentary seemed like a good idea, because we were getting all these different viewpoints. So we started doing that, we did 20 days of filming in Europe and New York.

C.M.: Turns out making a film is quite a lot of work. And you need quite a lot of money to do it. And this story revolves around a lot of these stories, you need the archival footage, etc, to really illustrate it, and that was the big problem. So the idea was, why don't we just put it all into a book,? And even if we self publish it, even if we do a GoFundMe or something, at least then we've kind of passed the baton on to the next people like it's done, it's documented.

C.M.: I emailed someone I met at a dinner party, who works for a publisher, and I just said, ‘Look, we're thinking about doing this and self publishing it, what do you think?’ and pretty much off the back of that one email they wanted to publish it. So suddenly, we've got a proper publisher. I'm extremely proud of this book. It tells the story of these letters from street gangs through to street wear and stops off in punk rock and hip hop. It’s filled with a lot of images that have never been seen before, really important images of important things. Certainly, none of them have been collected together in this way. Ultimately, it is a bit of a detective story of ‘what are these letters?’. Where did they come from? Because no, they don't appear in typography books. So where did they come from? Why do they exist? Who used them? How do they use them? So yeah, that's the book. The cover is amazing. I can't wait for you to see it.

I take Halloween seriously and try to step my mask game up annually. I thought I had something special planned out this year until I saw Ari Serrano aka @pleaselookatmyas pop out at a party with a Louie bag on his head.

J.E.: What’s the backstory of this incredible project?

A.S.: One day, I stumbled upon SFX effects make-up artist @Nina_Carelli_ and fell in LOVE with her work! She had turned one of my friends, IZECREAM into a demon and this other guy into a freaking dolphin! I was automatically obsessed with her work and hit her up to schedule a day to collaborate! The idea for her turning me into an LV bag was because of my undying OBSESSION for the Louis Vuitton brand. I thought to myself, maybe she can turn my face into an actual purse! Nobody has ever done that before. Perfect idea!

A.S.: I took a Marc Jacobs-era rainbow print Louis Vuitton purse and cut a hole in it for my face. Then I printed a monogram image of the LV symbols out on a piece of paper and carefully cut them out with an Exacto knife to create a stencil for the logos. I then hopped on the train to see Nina in Brooklyn. She started by placing the purse over my head and glueing the sides flush to my skin, then started to add some silicone clay to fill in holes on the sides that looked awkward. Once she filled in all holes, she started to gently paint my face all white with a brush to lay the first base layer.

A.S.: Then she picked up the stencil and began to Airbrush each logo separately in a different color. It felt very weird and cold when air brushed on to my skin at first. I got goosebumps and started thinking “yo I wonder if this even looks good?” I closed my eyes and just let her do her thing and started telling myself that I was in good hands and that I didn’t have anything to worry about. Nina Carelli is an expert and she is going to make sure you look immaculate! Ten minutes later, she told me to open my eyes and she was done! I couldn’t believe it when I looked in the mirror, I was speechless and I knew from that moment on that this was going to go down in the history books!

J.E.: Incredible. What’s your background? You’ve gone viral several times for your LV repurposed garments and accessories.. have you connected with the brand yet?

A.S.: I have not heard from Louis Vuitton yet.. I don’t know how to reach them. Hopefully they like what I’m doing and hit me up soon. I’m Puerto Rican, born and raised in Norwalk, Connecticut. At this point I guess I’m notoriously known for my outlandish content mixed with hand made custom fashion garments and accessories. I gained my name by street vending the gritty vibrant streets of New York City! 

J.E.: After setting up some activations in the downtown area, your entirely unique vision was quickly noticed by celebs and fashion lovers alike. What is your point of view? Tell us about what happened when you linked up with Post Malone.

A.S.: I do not see what you see. You see a bag - I see a coat. You see art supplies - I see sunglasses. You see a classic winter hat, I see.. something entirely new. I’ve been taking the New York street fashion scene to new places since Covid’s vice grip on the city started to loosen. When NY Nico reached out to me and told me that Post Malone wanted to meet me and buy something custom made by me, I was floored. I didn’t think it was real at first but then, I realized I’ve been working for this moment for years, this is your time Ari. You got this! I knew exactly what to make him even before I got off the phone, a Western Cowboy Style Leather shirt with Louis Vuitton Accents!

A.S.: I knew Posty was a western Texas cowboy lover and so I used that for my inspiration! I bought a plain denim long sleeve shirt, and took apart a vintage Louis Vuitton luggage bag for the leather accents. I cut fringes in the LV leather for that classic traditional Cowboy sleeve look, and added a long cool Lighter Leash to the front pocket because I knew he was a heavy cigarette smoker! He was amazed. The next day, I headed to NYC to the location Nico wanted me to meet him for transfer of goods. Posty pulls up in like three black Ford Explorers with two big security guards and I’m like “Holy Shit” yo this is really happening..

A.S.: I say whatsup to him and show him what I’ve made for him, he grabs it from me and triess it on right than and there.. Perfect fit! It was like a dream come true for me, I was super nervous that maybe it wouldn’t fit him well enough, but god answered my prayers. He freaking LOVED it and paid me exactly what I asked. Than we went to go play golf with Tiger Woods down the street, it was one of the BEST days of my life, all thanks to NewYorkNico!

J.E.: Who inspires you? What influenced you?

A.S: I lost one of my best friends about 6 years ago. I was so lost and to deal with my grief I picked up a sewing machine. I’m inspired by living everyday life and it’s ups and downs. I tend to create more when I’m in a tight spot, financially and I tell myself “yo Ari you have to make something to get you out of this position you’re in”. I’d like to be known as a master of reimagination with a wicked sense of humor, and in your face sexuality. I am self taught - my middle school home economics class was my initial introduction to the craft. My influence comes directly from life. My love of deconstruction and reconstruction, elevation and de-elevation is designed to leave you questioning things.

A.S.: I use my anger and sadness as fuel to propel me to create the next best thing! Some fashion designers that I look up to are Dapper Dan, Kid Super and Domozillionaire - all out of NYC area. I’m obsessed with functionality, so if something looks like it works and it doesn’t, I don’t like that! So when I create something multi-functional it has to work exactly like the real thing. If I make a Yankees hat with a solar powered fan in the brim, you best believe that fan will turn on in the sun! If I make a picture frame out of sage, best believe you can actually burn the frame and use it to cleanse negativity!

J.E.: It looks like with this Halloween moment that you are reaching the top of the game. Is that how you feel?

A.S.: I most def don’t think I’m at the peak of my work at all, in fact i think I’ve just barely scratched the surface! For now all I’m doing is making video content skits for my unique one of one fashion garments. But I plan to actually open up a clothing store and manufacturer once my brand is up and running successfully! I don’t have the resources these big companies are able to use. I don’t have a team or workshop to execute my ideas. But once I do gain those attributes, I will become unstoppable, and finally get to show what I can really bring to the fashion world.

A.S.: Eventually, I see myself transitioning to a more high-end clothing brand titled “Ari By Ari Serrano”. ARI would be my chance to show the fashion world what I can bring to the industry. I will be making garments from scratch instead of using reworked materials from second hand shops. I create because it’s what makes me happy and keeps me going, and I never want to make something that has already been attempted.

@StephanieKetty joined BFA as their first employee in 2010, booking their events. Throughout the years, her role at BFA grew in a deeper way, centered around helping clients solve their content problems each day and helping tell their stories through content. She was head of partnerships for a bit, then head of business development, handling communications for the agency and looking at new revenue streams and opening new markets globally. BFA started in luxury fashion, but diversified into fine art, tech, real estate, etc. Now, they are considered one of the biggest content sources in the world and Stephanie helped build that vessel during the day, all the while honing her own art skills at night. Tomorrow, Stephanie will revisit and expand upon themes that have long preoccupied her with her debut art show, “The Only Way Out is Through” at Cafe Lyria in Soho.

J.E.: What was your journey like?

S.K.: My dad is an immigrant from Baghdad and my mom is Mexican American. I’m originally from Michigan and lived there until college where I studied art and psychology before moving to Miami in 2009. That’s where I worked and saved up to move to New York. Ultimately, I wanted to move here to be an artist and a painter.

S.K.: Growing up was a lot of school, a lot of friends and a lot of art. Especially a lot of people in the arts who told me I wasn’t good enough. Mainly high school art teachers, who said that I couldn’t draw, didn’t like abstract art. That’s probably what took me so long to build up to my profession.

S.K.: I went through the motions of studying art full-time as a major. That didn’t help me as much in what I’m creating. They didn’t teach me the business behind being an artist, best practices. In graduate school, it might have been a little more of that. Even though I’m educated in art, I’m pretty self-taught. Music was something that helped fuel my creativity and strength.

S.K.: Three months into living in New York, I met the BFA partners and joined as employee number one. Nine years later, Michele Hellman asked me to submit a piece of art for the Coalition of the Homeless Artwalk NY auction, and it sold. I knew I had to put together a show after that. Now, I’m painting for me. It’s the release of what I need to get out. I’m using experiences I’ve had in the past twenty years.

J.E.: Where did your interest in art come from?

S.K.: My interest in art stemmed from my want to help people. I think I still help people in some ways, and I get to work with creatives. Helping people allows me to be creative. People who can’t help themselves or are going through pain, I’ve experienced that. I have a chronic illness. I didn’t really realize until later in life, after I was diagnosed, that art is a release of what you’re keeping in you. It’s a conduit into helping the mind release what it needs to when words don’t allow you to. Subconsciously, without knowing, it wasn’t until my early ‘20s, my need of being around people - helping those who aren’t outspoken - I’m passionate about helping people express their need through art.

J.E.: Tell us about your show!

S.K.: It’s atypical for a first show. The space is a beautiful cafe, with giant windows for natural light called Cafe Lyria owned by my very dear friend Yannis Mastoros. It is where I go to be around other creatives and friends to discuss art projects, work, life and music. It’s a haven for us in our neighborhood and has immense meaning to me. It’s a little community of creatives in Soho and down the street from my apartment. I’m so grateful to be able to showcase my work there. 

S.K.: I have twelve pieces, and they’re all not cohesive. They’re very different. I symbolize that as each painting representing a year I’ve lived in New York. Each year I’ve lived, I haven’t really lived as an artist, because of my day job. There were a lot of people telling me last year what I should do and what I shouldn’t. Some I listened to and some I didn’t. At the end of the day, I’m doing the show for me.

S.K.: This is my coming out into the art world. Somebody amazing told me that galleries need artists - artists don’t need galleries. That resonated with me so much stronger than anything I’ve heard in my life as an artist. In 2010, I knew nobody. In 2022, I know more people than I ever could imagine. There’s something to be said about what I did and what I build with my day job. That helped me bridge what I needed to do on my own. Will I do the next show on my own? We’ll see. My intention is not to sell - it’s to bring an incredible group of people together in New York and let them see me as an artist.

J.E.: What was your inspiration for this show?

S.K.: I would say New York is probably the biggest inspiration. The pain, the grit, the endless hours of work kind of scaled through the sizes and mediums. I have different oils and acrylics. Some pieces I used brushes, but some I used scrapers. It’s very bright and bold. There’s a couple of darker pieces. When you see the pieces, they’re very lively. Some of them are from when I was very sick, and working like crazy. One of my favorite things to do was look at other people’s art, maybe that was a distraction. I stopped doing that in 2021 and started painting more.

S.K.: The difference between Paris and New York is that New York is very energetic, very driven. I will live in Paris at some point in my life. The energy is so different. The artists that have lived and worked there are such an inspiration. Jean-Michel Basquiat, Claude Monet, Joan Mitchell. So, scale also played a part in this way. I’m used to painting massive pieces. When I saw the Basquiat show at the LV Foundation in Paris, I knew that was the goal. That’s the scale I’m going for.

Twenty five years ago, I traded away a hoody that was special and rare to me. It’s a tale as old as time.. shortly after letting it go, I wanted it back. For twenty five years I searched high and low, but it was gone for ever. Over the past year, as I have gotten more familiar with the online Polo world, I noticed a few people have it. One of those people is a prolific collector named Chris, going by the handle @suicideskier. As I started looking at his visuals, I noticed the pieces looked familiar, but the locations I didn’t recognize - he is overseas. I thought Europeans had their hands full with their own luxury brands. From a global perspective, I was aware of Asia, especially Japan, being the home of major collectors. Looking at Chris’ page, you can see there is a growing community of collectors connecting with the American brand in London and Europe. Chris and I started speaking recently and he was nice enough to share some of his collection with us here. He also found my hoody!

J.E.: Thank you for finding that hoody.

C.T.: It was mad. I wish things came up that easy.

J.E. Tell me about your life and how you got in to collecting.

C.T.: I was kicked out of school at the age of 15. I didn’t go to college or university or anything like that. I went to work in construction. Still to this day, I’m working every day. I’m a grafter. I’m a hard worker. That’s what I do with most of my time. I don’t want to be broke, man. That’s the past to the present.

C.T.: I take collecting seriously, I got my first good piece over 15 years ago. I was late. I’m no OG by any means. I started collecting Polo in the 2000s. I was a teenager in the ‘90s. If you were into hip-hop, it was part of the uniform. You know, hip-hop videos.. I have never been a big internet person. I was very late on that. Even to get an email address, an eBay account. Polo is why I got an email address. I never had a computer apart from making beats, and that computer never went on the internet. I had a burner phone when people were getting iPhones. I told people, “You can’t get me on Facebook and MySpace.”

C.T.: I had people who were close to me who were educating me. They were earlier getting online. They were picking up pieces off eBay in the early 2000’s. The first time I ever saw the Javelin shirt made an impression on me - my friend was coming around to listen to beats and he wore it. He told me how it was classic. He only picked it up for 50 quid. This is how I learned about things.

C.T.: So, go on a few more years. I became aware of how to find these classic items. I’m thinking, surely there’s none of these pieces left. But, as I talked to people, they explained that in thrift stores, vintage shops, online - you find things - that’s when the bug hit. I thought rare Polo was unattainable or too expensive. Classics sell on eBay for thousands of dollars. When you start to find things at prices that you thought impossible.. once you find one, it carries on. Then you find one that may not be your size, you sell it for a couple of hundred. That, then, gives you money to buy more. It carries on like that. It becomes a habit.

C.T.: You find a sick piece for a reasonable price, then you find another one. Then, you’re like “I’ve been doing my research, there’s only 2 more colors of this”. So, you keep looking. It’s all part of the game. I’m still looking for certain pieces, some for 15 years. I’ve paid bills in lockdown flipping Polo. That’s still how I operate now, in slightly bigger numbers. I’ve spent good money.. nothing crazy, but I like to think I’ve built most of my collection on finding pieces for good prices.

C.T.: Aside from finding classic pieces at low prices, there’s another cool thing - the stories. I’m interested in it. A couple of times, people told me, “I bought it in Macy’s in New York when I went there in the ‘90s.” If you can find out a little tiny snippet of information, it’s sick. I remember I bought a Superman Fleece. It didn’t have the tags, but it definitely hadn’t been worn. I got it for peanuts. I asked the seller, “What’s the story?” It was some 15 year-old kid who got it out of the attic!

J.E.: What is the Polo situation like in the UK and Europe?

C.T.: I don’t know, I feel like there are definitely a lot of heads who are into Polo - whether that’s vintage Polo or retro Polo is a different question. I realized, really, through social media. I wouldn’t have known about some of it if not for IG. There’s definitely people repping Polo in Europe. I met the Paris heads - there’s a scene there, and in Spain, especially Madrid. I hope to get there soon. Even in London, or England, or the UK, it’s not big. People in America really - they don’t understand - they think it’s popping here, but it’s not. It’s definitely low key, even since the retro explosion of people becoming aware of what it is and how accessible it can be now.

J.E.: How did your connection with RL the brand come about?

C.T.: The whole Instagram thing. That’s how I’ve gotten in touch with people, including people at Ralph Lauren. I got an iPhone, downloaded Instagram. Now, I’m digging for Polo on there. I posted pictures of my pieces. I’m still trying to build up my collection. Take nice photos. The reason I post, it’s to share the pieces. But I like the creative aspect.. making art out of Polo pieces. A lot more people were doing layouts when I first got on Instagram. When I started, I didn’t know anybody on there. It was a way of getting to know people. When you get a photo, it’s like a piece of art. I’ve dealt with Ralph Lauren the company, they’re very respectful, interested, and amazed. They love it. They’re like “Wow.” I’m polite when talking to people. I know how to interact with people. I get that it’s a privilege to deal with the brand.

J.E.: Any other memorable moments in your travels?

C.T.: I found 3 vintage polo flag flip beanies (with polo on the inside) for around $10 each. I had one already so sold them and made $1000. I used the cash to pay for a trip to New York. I had hardly any links but wanted to get to NY so I went on an adventure. As soon as I posted a pic of me there, I got untold messages from heads who wanted to link, have a drink and chill. I was surprised and grateful.

C.T.: Snob XTC came thru right away and showed me around the first day….. he didn’t owe me anything or need to do that, but he did. A strong connection was formed with him and later Klame as well. On the same trip I met Mar-Lo and Uni, who introduced me to Classic and a lot of the RLPC family. QKay, Claudine, Ha-Lo and thru him bek live were also in the mix from early, doing deals thru the post and in person when I’ve been in NY. L.G.O.T.D. was a good moment. Met a lot of good people who welcomed that guy from the UK with open arms.

C.T.: I met Omar in New York. He’s humble and chill. We did a size swap on P2 and Stadium hoodies. I felt like we both came out good in that situation. I actually met Thirstin Howl III at a book signing he did for Bury Me with the Lo On. I went to Dublin with my boy.. we wore some dope stuff. We walked in and Thirstin was like, “My family arrived.” We chilled in the hotel and ate falafel at 2am. The guy is super humble.

C.T.: That translates to when you go back home, you’re looking out. You stay in touch. People hit me up all the time asking about London, asking me where to go, what to do, who to see. I’d want the same thing if I was visiting your city.

J.E.: Do you feel some kind of an obligation to carry on with this?

C.T.: I’ve never thought about it exactly like that. I love that. That’s sick. You’re right. I guess, I don’t think I personally think I have to do this. But if everyone thought that way then it would be nothing. I’m talking as someone who is into original Polo design. In my mind, things are only meant to be in that way. Anything that isn’t, looks wrong to me.

J.E.: Last but not least.. the pieces themselves.. what pieces are on your mind?

C.T.: My first vintage piece was a suicide ski knit. It was probably $100. Now I’ve got a jacket to match. Suicide ski sweatshirt is my favorite piece. I’m looking for some of the classic rayons. A Hurdles. A Snowbeach Hoody. The main thing for me is finding things cheap. It never gets old. If it’s not costing you much money to find things that make you happy, why would you stop?

Last year, I stumbled upon @harddrivetheseries, a mysterious page promoting an upcoming film project. It looked so stylish, I figured it was a slick marketing campaign by HBO masquerading as something more grassroots. I was intrigued, and continued to follow along as little by little they revealed what was going on. I learned that @CherieAntoinette22 had written, directed and co-produced the project and she would be rolling it out independently. Last month, Hard Drive the series premiered on Youtube. I began watching it and was blown away, so I tracked down Cherie to get this interview in before she becomes the next big thing.

J.E. What is your background?

C.A. I am a nurse. Before I was a nurse, I was an English major. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I had kids as a teenager and was told to go into nursing so I could always have a job. That was true, but there was something missing from my life. I went into acting. In 2016, I worked as an extra on a few projects before deciding that I would be better off writing my own roles rather than trying out for other people’s projects. I started writing and took screenplay classes for an ABC Universal competition. I was between nursing jobs and only had three days to apply.

C.A.: I wrote a 90 page feature film, which was challenging. It was called #Woke, about 6 friends who decided to go back to the Motherland after becoming disillusioned with America, and a whole bunch of hilarity ensues. I wrote a couple of other things - one about newlywed parents and their son, called The Parkers Versus the Universe. I also had another short series called The Porcelain Chef. All these projects were self-funded.

C.A.: During the pandemic, between taking patients on the night shift, I finished writing Hard Drive. For Hard Drive, I wanted to roll it all the way out. You don’t really get to see the whole series from the pilot. I knew I had an arc I wanted to show. I thought I had the budget. In post-production, I realized I had so much quality work, I wanted to devote the time to bring it up to television quality.

J.E.: It looks like a million bucks.

C.A. Thank you! I knew I had to write like a producer. I would sit and look at a location and really study it and make sure scenes were producible. I did all of this with friends and paid my friends. It probably ended up being a month worth of filming, and then a pick up shoot.

C.A.: It was about a year each for pre-production, production, and post-production. So, it was about three years of my life to get this filmed. It was very much something I wanted people to sink their teeth in to. I believed in the story and the characters. They were very crisp and clear to me. I had a specific vision down to the end credits. I like anime so I put anime trinkets in there. It was very daunting and taxing creative-wise.

J.E.: How are you planning to get more eyes on it?

C.A. We are pitching now. I really put my blood, sweat, and tears into this. When people say, ‘You broke your back,’ I definitely did some heavy lifting on this project. When you say it looks like $1 million, I wanted to show it was a fraction of what you can spend on a budget. This project was made with love. Everyone believed in the characters, in the story line, that the show would be picked up. That really keeps me going. It’s been a long and hard journey. I just keep going, keep giving it my all.

J.E. Do your kids know what’s going on?

C.A. I had my first child when I was 17, and my oldest is as old as I was when I had him. He loves writing and wants to be a Youtuber. When we had the premiere, it made him feel like anything was possible. It showed him you could do a job and do this on the side, or go all in when you have the energy to do this. You start to feel it creeping up slowly. It gives you a reason to get out of bed in the morning and keep going. It’s surprising how the project speaks to Gen Z, but every generation likes the project.

J.E. Did you have an inspiration for Hard Drive?

C.A. There was something about it that I just connected with. I think the inspiration really was writing for someone else. I was producing a project about pimps in the ‘70s and somebody else I know was writing a show about serial killers. So, I wanted to make an anti-hero, someone who felt really justified in what they were doing. Hard Drive is Breaking Bad meets Clueless. I wanted to show a character who, you really don’t get their motives, but they’re doing it just because they were already bad and how they’re showing it to the world. Candace Carter is that anti-hero. The reason it took three years in is because it was a piece of me. I could see this was a missing lane. We don’t have a lot of women in these positions, or black women in these positions. So, I wanted to create a really iconic show that would have them rooting for the bad girl and still pay consequences.

J.E.: You had your own premiere.. what was that like?

C.A. We really believed in this. I was the oldest child for most of my life. I watched TV. I looked forward to Saturday morning cartoons. I think just watching the roll outs for years and years, I just understood why it happened from a production standpoint. How you create your own news. The premiere was an additional movie - another steep price tag. But, when my cast saw their faces in downtown Atlanta, it set the tone.

Every step of Hard Drive was intentional. The only formal background I have in entertaining is through doing live theater. It speaks to manifestation and goal setting. I worked with Kiah, my lead, and we talked about it. She set me up with all the right people regarding photography. The guy who did our poster did the Superbowl ad for the Cincinnati Bengals. You’re going to love the finale. We’re taking one week off before the finale now to get a little more hype going. Because, we realize we may have to push this ourselves and not take ‘No’ for answer.

J.E. What is the experience of trying to break through like?

C.A. Breaking into the industry is super hard. Even living in Atlanta, where almost all the Netflix films are made, they’re still casting out of LA and New York. You can walk to the studio, and still not be involved. Everything is oversimplified. There’s this thing where I feel you have to prove yourself ten times more than other people. Being a nurse but wanting to do my passion, it put a fire in my belly. Studios want to see it too, I feel. If you invest in yourself and work hard, they’ll meet you halfway. Still, it’s all about who you know. It’s been a lot of word of mouth. We uploaded on Film Hub, and are trying to get on Peacock.

C.A.: I wanted to show studios that they needed us too, don’t just buy it and hire your own directors. Even all my actors, I would love to keep everybody. There is one network, the Black Women Network. Ironically, they set it up for many of the same reasons I set up my film. It really resonated with me to partner with them. It isn’t really about the money. It’s about who’s going to support us most creatively so we could build it out from Season 1 to Season 5 and have it be told how it should be. This first season, we wanted to fill it with the same quality they use for television, so we could build it for television. We want to stay on for 5 seasons and stick the landing, and then have spinoffs. It goes to intentionality, and how big I see this universe.

C.A. The biggest thing for me was just divine timing and luck. I just happened to be in a profession where nurses were needed during COVID. I went viral on Twitter at the same time. I went viral and had almost 600,000 likes on a Tweet. When I get passionate about something I just say it. That’s what makes Hard Drive relatable. I got 15,000 followers in one night and it was tough to get used to. I had people contacting me from Africa. It was a good experience because it showed that what I say matters.

I had 27 followers when I tweeted that. When I wrote Hard Drive, I wrote it as someone who believed in themselves as a screenwriter. My filmmaking comes from there, when I have something to say. I really feel like our character Candice Carter, getting this roll out, the tone matches the grittiness of the story. We’ve all been very strong willed. That made all the difference. We are willing to risk it all for this project. I want my son to know whatever you do, you have to believe in yourself first.

@annakoblish's photographs make you wonder what was happening when she took them. They also make you want to buy the products in the them. Anna uses photography to tell stories that not only sell clothes but also exhibit attitude and energy. She's done ad campaigns for Playboy, Puma, Dr. Martens and Steve Madden. I recently caught up with Anna about everything from how she got started, how she broke through and her love for ‘Dawn FM’, the most recent album from The Weeknd.

J.E.: You got a billboard in Times Square!

A.K.: Yes! I’ve been working with Maude Latour for the past year, including creative directing the rollout and visuals for this EP. We made banners, canvases, press photos, artwork, posters, tracklist announcements and the billboard! I brought on my two best friends, Savannah and Michael, to style and animate.

A.K.: Maude is mega talented.. she’s gonna be a star. The idea behind the creative was ending her last era, and entering pop stardom. The title track is called 001, so I wanted all of the press and roll out photos to be glam and read as pop star, but still relatable. While the EP cover art is a nod to her past era, which was more low key. 001 is closing that chapter and opening a new one.

J.E.: How did you get here?

A.K.: I always loved image making.. I’ve been learning and practicing it my whole life. I was a Tumblr girl at 13 and taught myself Photoshop at that time. I began approaching photography as a profession while studying design at Parsons.

A.K.: The pandemic hit and I returned home to my family. I took pictures of my sister - like we were kids again. I worked tirelessly on photos. I spent my time researching photographers and replicating styles I liked. I worked a lot and continued by shooting pictures of my roommates when I got back to New York in July, 2020.

A.K.: I knew the only way to achieve success was to get eyes on my work. So, I started using TikTok. I started doing tutorials, Q&As, other types of videos. It was the first time people reached out to work with me. I booked a ticket to LA in January 2021 and did shoots with everyone who reached out. I began working with musicians doing editorial work. From there, things moved quickly, which was amazing but also scary. I’m still trying to figure out my voice and my why.

J.E.: And now you earn a living from photography.

A.K.: A big part of it for me has been making money. I had to learn what an “LLC” was while making invoices. I am a professional photographer now. That’s my choice. The deadlines people give me are challenging, sometimes I have to balance it, and just get a project done. That’s a problem I’ve been facing recently. Am I putting out my best work? And sometimes things I’ve thought were bad ended up being great, and vice versa.

J.E.: Playboy ended up being great. What other brands interest you?

A.K.: When I was 23, I shot a Halloween campaign for Playboy. I’ve done Puma, Dr. Martens and Steve Madden. I am so grateful for those who have taken a chance on me. My biggest brand I want now is Nike. I love shoes. I want a Nike campaign. Either Air Maxes, Dunks or Air Forces. A Diesel campaign would be crazy, theres a lot of overlap in our aesthetics and values, I think. Tiffany & Co. would be really cool. Some close ups of the jewelry, edited in a cool way - I should make that on my own. Zara Kids has also been interesting to me recently and Marc Jacobs.. I think thats self-explanatory.

A.K.: For me, the future is to get out of this box I made for myself and learning more about technical photography. I taught myself how to retouch. I’m working on my lighting. Editorial things. Self-portraits. I definitely slowed down in terms of what I’m making and what I put out, because I have big goals - to be signed with a big art agency and shooting campaigns. I’m also excited by the idea of shooting beauty, I love makeup and was a makeup artist for awhile. I love beauty campaigns, about-face, Bobbi Brown, Pat McGrath, or Byredo.. I think I would honestly murder a beauty campaign. Makeup is one of my favorite parts of photography. I also enjoy doing e-commerce, it’s like a performance.

A.K.: ERL is someone I really admire. For someone who’s really process-inspired, they have so much emotion. Selfishly, I’ve always wanted to work with Post Malone. His aesthetic, everything. It’s something the child in me needs to do. Same for Billie Eilish. I’d love to do something creative with Julia Fox. Be a little more intimate and animated with it. Close ups. Goofy. Like the way Jack Bridgland shot Robert Pattinson for GQ.

A.K.: My biggest fear is that I’m not going to make it. I grew up watching people online with these amazing lives and huge followings. I’m trying to dismantle this idea of coolness. I’m trying to find out what’s actually cool. What work do I actually want to do? I get nervous sometimes. There’s people who are killing it. Where do they come from? Who are their friends? My parents work in bio med and tech. I grew up in regular suburbia. I’m someone who’s never been in those circles, and a lot of that’s choice, but I battle with that, do I need to be outside more?

J.E.: You have your own newsletter, called 577. What’s that about?

A.K.: 577 is named after one of my favorite pairs of Levis that are hard to find. I love writing. I love personal pieces. It’s therapeutic. One of the reasons I got a response on TikTok is because I was sharing things with people. Like talking about an album I like. I will write a piece in defense of Dawn FM, it’s one of my favorite albums and I won’t stand for the slander. I also want to DJ. There’s so much to do. 

It took years of hard work for @directorgerardvictor to become one of the go-to visionaries directing videos for the likes of Fabolous, Lil Baby, Yo Gotti, Chris Brown, Wiz Khalifa, French Montana, A-Boogie, and many more. Yesterday, I called Gerard to hear about the creative process, his start in the video world and whats next.

J.E.: Tell us about your journey.

G.V.: I was born in the Philippines. My father brought me over when I was 2 years old to Michigan. When I was in school, I always was creative. I knew how to draw. I would watch TV and hear advertisements, jingles, and watch music videos. I fell in love with marketing in high school. I always had an affinity for hip hop and R&B. I went to college at Wayne State and started working as a graphic designer for a real estate company. My buddies in music were asking me to do their mixtape and album artwork. I did it all with no hesitation. Whenever artists sent me photos of their artwork, I used to say, “I can do better.”

G.V.: Around Thanksgiving 2007, my Father bought me a Canon Rebel 400D - this was before they had video. I took it upon myself to take photos for my friends. Everyone started asking, “Who took these photos”? I started getting booked as a photographer. I used to go to Hip-Hop shows and take photos of artists like Black Milk, Danny Brown, AML and OneBeeLo at venues like St. Andrews and the Blind Pig. A year later, my younger brother got a camcorder. I had the bright idea of “borrowing” his camcorder. I thought I could translate my photos into videos.

G.V.: I asked one of my buddies in music if I could shoot his music video. I shot it on a Canon HV30 on mini-DV tapes. I opened up iMovie in 2008 and didn’t know where to begin. The song was like a minute and a half, but it took 12 hours to piece it together. At the time, Rick Cordero was a big music video director in New York City. He was Filipino and had similar lineage to me. I thought, “if he could do it, maybe I could too”.

G.V.: Once my first video came out in December 2008, I was still at my real estate job and started getting hit up. “Do you mind shooting my music video? I got $600 bucks.” That was a lot of money back in the day for me. After I did a couple more, I started getting offered $1500 - $3500. My name started buzzing around the city. The following year, I got the chance to work with Black Milk after he saw what I did with Elzhi for his Deep video. I got my first music video with MTV Jams, ‘Deadly Medley’ by Black Milk feat. Royce Da 5”9 and Elzhi from Slum Village.

G.V.: Everything just spiraled from there. I was doing everyone’s music videos in Detroit and started making more videos for MTV and BET. When I moved to New York, I was known as the music video director guy. Next thing I know, Obie Trice hit me up and we did a handful of videos. I got to the point where I could hire a DP. I realized there was more to the production side to make videos. I realized it’s a team. Once I realized it’s more than me and a camera, I started branching out.

G.V.: Because of who I was in the city, people wanted to help me. People helped me understand there was a production aspect. I shot a video for this artist, Dusto, in Toledo, Ohio. My life changed when Mally “The Martian” Brandon hit me up in 2013, he wanted me to shoot something for Fabolous for Soul Tape 3 which he was exec producing. I had an affinity for Fab since high school. I went out to New Jersey to shoot my first music video with Fab. After that, I think Fab took a liking to me. Fab was surprised with how quick I worked and edited. Then, we went to Dubai and London the same year and eventually Columbia, Japan, Cape Verde and all around the world throughout our run.

G.V.: Sidebar - One thing up and coming guys need to realize, if you have a relationship with an artist, as your artist grows, you have to grow technically as they’re progressing. I went through hundreds of videos before I got to Fab. So, when we were doing mixtape videos, I was ready. Then when he was doing budgeted projects, I was ready. So, it’s about respect. He took a chance and he stuck with me from Soul Tape 3 to now. We’ve done 23 videos together. I’m grateful for that.

G.V.: Back to the story.. That year, I bought a condo in Michigan, and I realized I was in New Jersey eight months a year. That’s when I realized I should move to New York. At that point, I quit my job and dropped out of school. Everyone figured if you don’t have a degree you won’t be anybody. I had a dream and I felt it was attainable. Fab kind of opened me up to the New York portion of everything. Everything that happened in Detroit ended up happening in New York. One of my buddies I worked with, Redd, introduced me to Kareem Johnson, an OG video commissioner responsible for some of the most iconic music videos of the past 30 years.

G.V.: I realized video commissioners are the gateway to artists and everything else. Once I shot the Wiz Khalifa Promises video, I turned it around the next day. Nobody had any revisions. They were blown away. We eventually did other videos and a movie. Through Wiz, Fab, and everyone in between, it made me realize this is what I wanted to do. I dove into the craft and learned more and more about production. I mixed knowledge with hard work. That’s how success happened for me. I was perseverant.

J.E.: What was the transition to label work like?

G.V.: Mally helped me manage everything. I wanted to be on the level of the other directors I aspired to be like: Hype, Benny, X, Dave Myers, Anthony Mandler and Joseph Khan. I was chasing a hit single, like a big song, to make it to the next level of where I wanted to be as a director. So, fast forward five years later to 2018, I was in Dubai with Fab, and got an offer from RocNation to do a Yo Gotti ft. Lil Baby video, “Put a Date On It”. I thought it would be turnkey. But that’s not the case. You always have an idea of the next level, but it’s just perseverance. How I was taught, you can’t be shooting videos by yourself, you need a crew. That’s what I learned when I started doing label videos. It’s a big transition from ‘run and gun’ to label videos. The best videos are the ones where you have a relationship with the artist. Sometimes a concept gets approved through the management and label. It’s part of the game.

G.V.: You have to realize that when you go from getting money quickly to when you’re getting label stuff.. when you start doing bigger jobs - more money, more problems. You do $100K, you get 70% up front, and you still have to be accountable for that other $30K. People have to realize, I talk to some of the younger guys, you have to be comfortable with waiting 30-60 days. You might not see your money for a month or even longer. I shot this video for one artist, and I got a check months later. You have to be responsible enough to manage your finances once you get in other leagues.

J.E.: How did the pandemic change your business?

G.V.: I was questioning my whole career, but Mally helped me through it. The pandemic was clearly creating demand for video content, albeit with simpler production given all the complexities of the situation. The industry reverted back to simple ‘run and gun’ videos with a camera and a light. Those videos were doing numbers. Mally started cultivating relationships with labels explaining they don’t need a big budget to work with me. That’s what brought me back into it.

J.E.: What’s next for you?

G.V.: I want more. I want to do long form stuff. I started looking for a writer to help write a good story to help me create a vision. God blessed me with a phone call with this guy named Sam, who brought to my attention that over the past 20 years, there’s been less than 10 hip-hop movies. Hollywood has been afraid to touch hip-hop movies. There’s so many artists that haven’t gotten the chance to tell their story. We’re so in tune with the culture. After doing 400+ music videos, I want to leave an even longer legacy for my family, and I feel my storytelling, the look, the style, the feel, is something I could bring into the long-form portion of stuff. What’s expected of me these upcoming years is TV shows and movies, sprinkled with music videos. It’s one of those things where you realize, “If God gives you a gift, you share it with the world.”

J.E.: And you have your own company, Shot Selection.

G.V.: We created Shot Selection not only as a production company, but as a hub for other handpicked creators to help them maneuver and transition with the aspirations to get to where I got, since there’s no clear cut path to this destination. I share my knowledge and shortcomings to help guide the future directors. Since so many videographers get stuck and don’t know how to get to the next level.

J.E.: Having worked with you, I know what a great resource you can be to an up and coming director.. just in terms of problem solving in the field. You know what I mean.

G.V.: Always. Recently, we were shooting a video for Yo Gotti in Atlanta and found ourselves waiting for 42 Dugg.. he was at a hotel in Houston! Gotti had another thing to do and had a private jet waiting, it had been parked since morning. The jet was supposed to take off 5 hours earlier. They finally got Dugg on a private jet. The beauty of me coming from ‘run and gun’ videos, is you have to be very adaptable. So, for me, I am a problem solver. I thought, “This is how we structure the day.” Since Dugg is in the middle of the song, we’ll flip one of his scenes, we’ll shoot interior, but we’ll light it for daytime. Dugg eventually showed up. We banged out his scene.

J.E.: Any other work you would like to put out?

G.V.: My love and passion is R&B, but I got pulled into rap very early. I still want to do a video for Dru Hill. Joseph Boyd and I are huge Dru Hill fans. When I listened to music as a kid, I thought it would be so cool. I was supposed to do a video for one of the group members, but it never came together due to scheduling logistics. I would also love to work with Kanye West and Drake. Their videos are so different, I would love to just understand the thought process. The beauty of the best visuals is when you collaborate with the artist.

G.V.: Lastly I’m doing this to create a legacy for my family, that you can do anything you want if you work hard and never give up. I want to Thank GOD, my parents for instilling in me hard work, perseverance and support in my non-traditional career path. My brother for indirectly starting my career by letting me “borrow” your camcorder. Terrance for putting me around all these rappers to show them what I could do. Octane (Ro Spit) and Illite for being my first real passion project that let me get seen by the Detroit scene. Jae Barber for being my first mentor/manager in this video production game. My guys Joel, Tom, Carl, Cort for really teaching me the production aspect of it, bring me around sets, cameras, lighting and helping me know that this is a team sport.

G.V.: Thank you to every artist in Detroit that I had the pleasure to work with in the begging of my career that help mold me into who I am. Thank you to everyone who has lent a hand from my Run and Gun days and to every PA that has worked on any of my productions. Thank you Mally for seeing what others saw in Detroit and bringing my talents to Fab and then eventually being my business partner/manager.

G.V.: Thank you Fabolous for taking a chance on this kid from the Midwest and bringing him around the world with his camera. Thank you Redd for pressing Kareem in Atlanta to give this guy from Detroit a shot at label videos. There’s countless artists that I could name which would be forever, since there are so many people that crossed my path and lens. I just want to say thanks to all the people that believed in me. I wouldn’t be here without any of YOU. Special thanks to my Shot Selection Team for helping grow and share the vision for future creatives! Sam I can’t wait to show them what we can do in the long form space!

Two of the biggest trends from quarantine.. the resale market went bonkers and people watched a lot of videos. One woman named Rochelle Pendarvis aka Rome Saint emerged at the center of it all, sniffing and inspecting sneakers in record time with an infectious smile.

J.E.: What is your life like?

R.S.: I lived in the projects in the Bronx with my Mom and five sisters. I was wearing Shaq O’Neals to the point where they were busted. I thought it was crazy. I can’t keep going to school with holes in my shoes. So, I tried to get money. My mom would get Pop Tarts. I would break it in half and resell them. She’d be saying “You’re selling the food I’ve been buying?”

R.S.: I got my first job working at the Botanical Gardens. I dropped out of school for a little in high school after my grandmother passed away. But, when I went back I wasn’t going to graduate, so I had to do after school programs. But, I still wanted to cop shoes while working through the motions.

R.S.: There was a lot going on, being a black gay girl in the hood. I didn’t want to become a statistic. My friends would always say, “You had those jobs that kept you focused.” I still live in the hood, but I’m getting better, I keep working hard and stay humble. I always keep God in the back of my mind. Without him, I would be nothing.

R.S.: Before working at Ebay, I was working at various different sneaker stores. I was a manager at Foot Locker, I was a Nike Pro Athlete at their headquarters. I was at Modell’s, but I wanted something more serious and to give back to my community. I saw the SneakerCon test for authenticity and aced it on the first try. I just kept going through the motions dealing with the hardest pairs, no insoles, no boxes. I’m 24, so I don’t have that sneaker knowledge from the ‘80s in the back of my mind. I just trained myself and had people training me. After a while, I didn’t have to ask any more questions and I knew what to look for myself.

J.E.: Now everybody knows you from the videos of you authenticating sneakers.

R.S.: I think it’s just about brushing up on your knowledge and spreading that knowledge around people. At one point, I didn’t know much about authenticating sneakers. Now I know. This is what they need. I’m humble at all times. I came from being in the projects, so when I got into this position, all I wanted to do was help people. It’s hard work and dedication. As soon as you got it, it can get taken away from you.

J.E.: What drives you?

R.S.: I personally think people are being taken advantage of. Nobody wants to waste their money on an unauthentic item. It’s like, this money could’ve gone to something else. So I’m checking everything for you. Smells, stitching, sizing, the velcro strap. Some fakes will be really off, they’ll be a flash orange color instead of a solar red. Maybe one thing is off with the box or the accessories. When I find really good fakes, I try to set them aside to educate my team on what the trends are.

J.E.: I can imagine you get a thrill of seeing the special real stuff too.

R.S.: I recently had the pleasure of checking the Oakley 8 PEs, the Drake Edition with the White and Red. They were crisp and pristine when I saw them in person. They were probably worth more than the building I was standing in. Me personally, I can’t do it. But if I had the money, I would. It’s all about the culture and I respect that part.

R.S.: My favorite shoe though is the Black Union Jordan 4. They are so clean, so crisp, with a buttery mid-sole, and the black on the top with the red and blue. It will match with everything in my closet. I would sell six sneakers to own that one.

J.E.: Where do you see it going from here?

R.S.: I actually have no thought, I’m literally just going through the motions. I’m trying to do other things that keep my mind stimulated. So, I started doing freestyles and my own merch. I’m going on the computer, Adobe Illustrator, and just making art and designs to show people, I have something else under my belt besides authentication.

R.S.: In terms of my future in the footwear game, I want to continue to help my teammates on the floor. I want to get more in-depth with designer shoes like Louis Vuitton. I want to be able to look at designer shoes and say, this is the X-Y. I’ve been designing my own shoes on Nike ID for years. Now, I’m thinking about designing my own sneaker. I went to the FIT school, breaking down how to make a shoe. Even working at Nike, they taught me the whole history of Nike. If I could live in a house full of shoes, I would.

Stefan Cohen and Tia Chinai, the New York-based duo better known as Krool Toys, make one-of-a-kind pieces that are excitingly novel yet comfortably nostalgic. The two young creatives work within a variety of mediums, designing and programming fully playable Gameboy games loaded on physical cartridges, hacking and reprogramming classic console and computer games as well as producing handmade toys and art. Their pieces often reflect on the different characters, iconography and mediums that inspired them as kids while tying them into modern cultural contexts.

The two sell their work on their early 2000’s Yahoo! looking webshop and have worked on collaborative pieces with musicians such as Lil Uzi Vert and Megan Thee Stallion. They have even begun showcasing their interactive pieces to the public in two gallery shows this past spring. Their most recent game with the beloved New York Instagram account Subway Creatures sold out in less than 2 minutes showcasing the strong brand and hyper-engaged fanbase they are just beginning to cultivate.

J.E.: How did you guys get started?

S.C.: Tia and I began by just creating 1-of-1 bootleg toys for artists we knew and were fans of and documenting everything we made online usually just for our friends. Our goal was just to make stuff that we would want to see available to buy and just have fun with it. We usually try to take what we learn from previous projects and go crazier on the next one which has led us from designing fake Gamecube and PS2 game boxes to learning to develop our own retro video games and working in all types of mediums.

J.E.: Why do you think people are so drawn to your work?

T.C.: I think people are drawn to our work because it instantly brings back memories of their childhood and a simpler time in life. We often get DM’s from people telling us how happy our work has made them and as an artist what more can you hope for? Another reason is because people can’t believe that we have actually made this physical piece and it’s not photoshopped or 3D rendered.

J.E.: Do you have a spontaneous approach with your work or is it all very calculated?

S.C.: I mean I think it's a bit of both. Usually when taking on a project or starting something from scratch it’ll take at least a few weeks of our time so we definitely try to narrow down our ideas to the best ones and loosely map out how to get it done. Another piece of it also is just working off of trying to create a feeling. Online you really only get a few seconds to catch someone's attention so we always try to create this immediate feeling of confusion and happiness.

J.E.: Aside from retro video games and nostalgic characters, where do you guys take inspiration from?

T.C.: With our Indian and Syrian backgrounds, we can’t help but have our culture sneak into the design we make. Coming from India, my style and design infuses into our work because of how bright and vibrant it all is. We try to leave a little bit of ourselves in everything we make - for example we try to make all characters brown because most video game characters are traditionally white. We’re also interested in different cultures and when building worlds for our games we are inadvertently inspired by the cultures we study or learn about from books or traveling.

J.E.: Do you have reservations about working with other’s intellectual property?

S.C.: Not really. We’ve made a bunch of stuff using artists' brands and likenesses and they usually just end up reaching out and it turns into an official project or a friendship with them. We’re not a video game company trying to compete with Nintendo and we’re not negatively impacting anyones brand. We’re just creating fun pieces that we would want to see in the world and treat our pieces more as standalone art so I think companies and other artists understand that.

T.C.: Also a cease and desist these days just means that you're making noise so it’s not the worst thing. It would be worse if we weren’t getting heard at all.

J.E.: Where do you hope Krool Toys will take you guys?

T.C.: We’re on a journey with Krool Toys that we could not be more grateful for. Every year we have set new goals and reached new heights so I never know where this will take us but I do know that it has already made us grow as people and as artists.

S.C.: Totally. We both just want to continue to make stuff that genuinely excites people as well as introduce new mediums and develop our pieces on a larger scale.

The duo’s first collection is now available to purchase on their online webstore.

When I got to know @NathanIkonCrumpton many years ago, he was a college graduate who was thinking about what he would do next. Imagine my surprise then a decade later when I saw Nic, as many of his friends know him, on the cover of The New York Times and Sports Illustrated websites, an international sensation competing in the Olympics. In a way I wasn’t surprised though, he always struck me as a person destined for big things.

J.E.: What was your life like growing up as a global citizen?

N.I.C.: Well, I was born in Kenya and spent most of my childhood growing up in sub Saharan Africa. There was also a three year tour in Switzerland sandwiched in there as well before mostly settling in the US for high school. And looking back, it was a fantastic experience. I didn't know any better at the time but it was a rare opportunity to live in a variety of countries amidst a variety of cultures, languages, and ethnic groups. I suppose that was a fitting upbringing as I come from my own ethnic and racial mix, with English and French heritage on one parent's side, and Chinese and Polynesian on the other.

N.I.C.: So far I've been lucky to live a cosmopolitan life, in the traditional, Latin sense of the word. Hawaii is a bit of a spiritual home for me, given that I never had a consistent home for more than 3 years at a time growing up. I have more known relatives there than anywhere else, and it makes for a great place for family reunions!  Utah was where I moved to in 2012 to train for skeleton. There are only two tracks in the USA for skeleton, with one in Lake Placid, NY and the other in Park City, UT. Utah was the better of the two options, particularly given my affinity for dramatic natural landscapes.

J.E.: You had a wild Olympic journey.

N.I.C.: I could write a book on that 11 year journey and how improbable it all was. I started skeleton racing at age 25, after college and after I had already wrapped up my career as an NCAA D1 athlete at Princeton, where I was a jumper and short sprinter on the track team. But I saw skeleton on TV at the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver and thought it was the coolest sport I had ever seen. Head first ice sliding at 90mph? I had to give it a try. So in 2011, I tried it out and loved the thrill - it’s a unique sensation unlike anything else. I've met a former fighter pilot who flew at supersonic speeds and who also completed at skeleton school, and he said that supersonic flight while buzzing the earth at 500 feet above ground doesn't hold a candle to how fast skeleton feels simply because of how close a skeleton racer's face is to the ice.

N.I.C.: My track and field background and some good genetics made pushing the skeleton sled - a critical component of a race - come quite easily to me. But learning how to control a fast moving sled while sliding on ice on geometric planes that were both parallel and orthogonal to the ground took about half a decade to develop. It's an incredibly niche and esoteric physical skill, and for a few years it was unclear if I would ever develop it adequately to compete at a world class level.

N.I.C.: But I persisted. And even after being cut from the US team and repeatedly denied the racing positions I had outright earned, I loved the sport enough to seek out my own coach and my own engineering team, and stubbornly soldier on. And by 2016, at the World Championships in Austria, I finished as the #1 American and #8 skeleton racer in the world. I had a handful of other top 10 world cup finishes and everything was on track to qualify for the 2018 Olympics until I herniated a disc in my back the week before the US National team trials during that Olympic season. And I thought my Olympic dream was dashed.

N.I.C.: Nonetheless, I persisted again, and after making a switch to American Samoa in 2019 following a bitter arbitration battle and fallout with USA Bobsled Skeleton - which, though unwelcomed at the time, ultimately allowed me far more flexibility and financial support to compete - I qualified for the Olympics in Beijing in 2022. And as a bonus, I qualified for the final heat of the Olympics, and beat all my former US teammates in both the international rankings and at the Olympic Games. It was sweet vindication for me, and a rather embarrassing outcome for Team USA, who lost to little old Team American Samoa operating on a comparatively tiny budget!

J.E.: Tell us Specifically about this opening ceremony moment and crashing the global internet. Coincidence? Luck? Or was this the ultimate marketing move. You made yourself the global talk of the town overnight, this is usually reserved for world leaders, etc.

N.I.C.: It was pretty surreal. Luckily I had a great team behind me, including our chief of Olympic mission Ryan Leong and his wife Bonnie who organized the traditional Polynesian outfit for me to wear. I knew that shirtless Olympians had attracted a lot of (and perhaps unwarranted?) attention in the past, and I figured it could happen again. Walking out in -5C weather at the opening ceremony without a top on and slathered in baby oil just added to the hoopla. It was an intense few weeks of interview requests, Olympic stardom, and global notoriety, but thankfully things have returned to normal.

J.E. Then you wrote a book.

N.I.C.: It's a chonker! Over 550 pages of licentiousness and nerdiness. It's a nonfiction novel called "Alpha Status," available on Amazon, and chronicles the wild life of a New York hedge fund manager who is obsessed with making money and sleeping with women, often by using aggressive and ethically questionable tactics. I like to think of it as a spiritual mix of The Economist and 50 Shades of Grey.

J.E.: You are also a photographer right?

N.I.C.: Photography is more than a hobby but less than a full time profession. It's just something that I enjoy doing, and make some side money with it, usually by selling limited edition or commissioned pieces to well-heeled people with extra wall space. Fine art nature prints of landscapes are one of my favorite things to produce, but I also enjoy pushing the envelope with some supra-realistic portraiture and scenery, including blending multiple exposures into a single image. Here’s a draft of a piece I'm working on that I created on this trip to NYC.

J.E.: What’s next for you?

N.I.C.: I'm touring around the US for the next few months, giving corporate keynote addresses and speaking at high schools. Inspiring sales staff, corporate executives, and America's next generation is my current endeavor. After that, we will see! I would like to keep running for American Samoa, and see if I can qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympics in track and field. But that will take some extra sponsorships or some sort of job since I've wrapped up my skeleton racing career. I've been told I could command a decent stud price for my sperm if I wanted to sell that, but I'm exploring some other options first.

Life after sports is a difficult transition for some athletes. For countthebasquiat_, venturing into writing and filmmaking was smooth, because he'd been preparing for it all along. I noticed that after he graduated college, Ty was shifting gears towards the arts with a similar dedication to what he put in to hoops. Now that he's working on his second film, with his debut novel on the way, I wanted to check in with Ty about all of that and his work in the community of Jamaica, Queens.

J.E.: You have a background that's heavy in sports, can you speak to that?

T.H.: Yes, basketball will always be life for me, but the people who really know me, know that I've always had equal love for writing and storytelling. Some of my earliest memories consist of me watching early Allen Iverson games and sneaking away during the commercial breaks to write articles about it as if I was a writer for Slam Magazine. As I started to get more known for basketball, I noticed that people would actually be surprised to find out that I had other interests. I guess that was my introduction to the notion of "Shut up and dribble".

T.H.: One moment that stood out to me as a teen was when I wrote my term paper for high school and my teacher told me to redo it without plagiarising. That taught me two things - One, that I'd have to deal with those kind've expectations and two, that my writing must be pretty good.

J.E.: How did you start to transition into filmmaking?

T.H.: By the time I came of age, the print industry was dead, so the whole idea of writing for Slam had kind of dwindled. I knew I wanted an outlet to write and tell stories, so film felt like the best option to have a platform for my work. It was during a time when I was feeling really down because my grandfather had passed away, and I was in college away from my family. I inherited some of his money and bought a camera on a whim and started recording everything.

T.H.: I made tons of documentaries of my teammates, and then I'd go home and follow my brother around and document him dominating on the summer basketball circuit. Looking back, it was really amateurish but I'm proud that I got out of that rut by creating. From that point, I started putting myself through "Film School" which for me meant watching old, sometimes obscure movies that were considered classics. Everything from Citizen Kane, to Scorcese, Fellini, etc, I'd be watching it while I was headed to games or just chilling on my own.

J.E.: Talk about your first film "April Again"

T.H.: I've always been a quiet guy, and at first I couldn't see myself directing a film. I thought I had a pretty good script so in the beginning, I'd send it off to directors and see if they wanted to direct it. Quickly, I found out that no one wants to tell someone else's story. It was my story, my passion project, so I had to go out there and do it.

T.H.: I learned so much working on that film because I had a hand in every single part of the process. Making films on an independent level has a certain lawlessness to it that I love. It feels a lot like graffiti -- you set up quickly, create your art, and get out of there before the cops bother you. You never know what's going to happen on set, when the set is a public street. There were some crazy moments throughout, but it created an authentic rawness that I'm really proud of. We were able to win several awards on the festival scene, but more importantly, it gave me some experience to tell the story that I'm working on now.

J.E.: Which story is that?

T.H.: Right now, I'm working on a film called The Sound of Southside. I'm still using the run and gun techniques that I picked up from April Again, but this one is more polished and a higher budget. I scored a bunch of grants from the city from my script, and I'm pouring it all into this project. The best part about it is, it's coming with a full length novel, too. My plan is for this to end up on both bookshelves and TV screens.

T.H.: The way this came together was hectic. Just before COVID, I started working on my second film but when March 2020 came around, everything shut down and I lost the money that I had already invested into it. I was bummed about it, but during one conversation with my dad, he convinced me that COVID lockdown would be the perfect time to write a book. I took a few months and turned my script into a novel, and I started shopping it around to agents. I ended up getting signed by Howland Literary Agency and they're helping me shop the book around to get a book deal currently.

T.H.: Meanwhile, I kept the original plan of the film in my sights so I kept raising money for it, and we started shooting last week. The process has been exhausting but when it comes out, it'll all be worth it. The story follows this young Jazz musician who is trying to keep his father's legacy alive and reopen his old Jazz club. In an effort to raise money, he gets involved with a shady local philanthropist and everything goes left. It has a little bit of everything -- there's crime, politics, love, etc. And it's all to the backdrop of some great music.

J.E.: What do you do for work and how do you find that balance with your creative pursuits?

T.H.: I'm lucky enough to be doing a job that I really love, working as the Director of Marketing at Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (JCAL). First off, I'm thankful to you for giving me my first opportunity out of college. I was able to leverage the writing that I did for you into a career in marketing that I like a lot. Working at JCAL allows me to collaborate with artists all day, meet new creative people and make a contribution to the community.

T.H.: As a creative person, the place is like a playground for me. It's two buildings and tons of different art studios, theaters and gallery spaces. They've allowed me to shoot pretty much all of my interior scenes in their buildings and I'm thankful for that. Also, in addition to the marketing that I do for them, I founded the 10 Minute Film Festival in collaboration with them, so each April I produce a film festival where I get to meet all sorts of other dope artists and give out cash prizes. All around I feel good about the work that I do there.

J.E.: What's next for you?

T.H.: I just want to keep creating on an independent level and getting better. The feeling of elevating with my wife is especially rewarding. We met as ambitious college kids, and now as I do this interview, she's out in the Dominican Republic filming for a Hulu show. Things like that bring me joy.

T.H.: After The Sound of Southside, I have a crazy script that I want to be my next film. It's called "Brown Leather Poets", and it's a basketball story. It's always been my dream to create a hoop film, but I knew that it had to be the right story. With "Brown Leather Poets", basketball is the vehicle to explore a lot of themes that I dealt with first hand as a young hooper. In a way, this film is for the young me, the kid who wrote about Iverson all day, or wrote term papers that got discredited. It really holds up a mirror to society.

T.H.: A dream for me would be to connect with LeBron's production company for this film, because it's a story that he'd get, and would resonate with a lot of people. But first things first, I need to complete "The Sound of Southside" and make a splash on the film festival circuit. Look out for that joint coming soon.

Music and fashion are common themes here and I’ve profiled an eclectic mix from the legend who threw a Biggie concert in the penitentiary to a teen who photographed ASAP Rocky for Gucci. Today we visit the world of hoops with @RealGriffinTaylor, fresh off a winning summer at Rucker Park and a championship run in The Basketball Tournament on ESPN.

J.E.: There’s a lot of talk in the city about The Program. What’s going on?

G.T.: The Program is a startup I’m working on. It ties together my two passions - New York City and basketball. We are planning to build a basketball facility that will feature regulation courts, turf training, cryotherapy, weights, cardio, classrooms, locker rooms, a juice bar and retail.

G.T.: The goal of the project is to restore New York City as “the Mecca” for basketball at the youth and grassroots level. By supporting the talent of NYC in-house and providing rigorous instruction and resources, we are aiming to start getting back to higher levels than what has been achieved in NYC the past couple of decades.

J.E.: And you have big names involved.

G.T.: My co-founder on The Program, Jared Effron, is a lifelong childhood friend and former basketball rival of mine - our playing careers peaked in the tenth grade. The support he’s garnered for this project from his network has been unreal. I am really lucky to have Jared as a co-founder.

G.T.: Thanks to Jared, we have secured incredible investors on this project; individuals like Marc Lasry owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, Kenny Chenault from American Express, JJ Redick, Carmelo Anthony, Kenny ‘the Jet’ Smith and others who love what we are building and really see the need for it.

J.E.: How can people who read this interview get involved?

G.T.: Go to our website and contact me. If there is a kid in your family who you think should hoop with us, let me know. If you are a like-minded individual looking to invest or partner with us, just say the word.

J.E.: You were on TV the other night on ESPN leading your team in a basketball game for $1 million dollars. What was that like?

G.T.: It was surreal. We were playing for more than money, we were representing children with special needs; three of the players in our starting five are parents to children with autism. We won five games in a row to get to the final game. Sixty two teams went home. Then, in the million dollar final game, as you saw, in prime time on ESPN, in front of millions of viewers.. we got blown out by twenty points.

G.T.: From the moment we were eliminated last year, we waited for this year’s tournament to start. We won five tough games in a row, advanced to the championship game, and the game was over in the blink of an eye. I felt like I let everyone down. Our team, our coach, our families, our friends, our sponsors, our fans.. everybody.

G.T.: Having been in this tournament before, I didn’t go in with expectations. The competition is serious.. you have NBA players and the best players in the world all balling their hearts out for life-changing money. You wouldn’t believe the talent that gets eliminated in the first game. The thought of winning the money didn’t enter my mind.

G.T.: We went on a run and they were calling us “a team of destiny” on ESPN. Five minutes before the championship game started, Kevin Durant posted a story on his Instagram with one of our players. At that moment, I started imaging what life would be like if we won the money.

J.E.: You were named “GM of the Year” - an award that would go to the GM of the winning team. You’ll be back in that championship game.

G.T.: I am so grateful for the recognition and thankful to everyone, but being a GM in these things is bittersweet. When you are winning, there is little satisfaction.. You don’t have much to do with the wins. But when you are losing, you can’t help but feel responsible. You want to be on the court helping your team defend the basket. You want to be next to the coach drawing up plays.

G.T.: There’s no silver lining right now. We will be back next year and compete again, but it’s going to be a long year and a lot will happen during that time. The team that beat us will be back too and they will want to win another million dollars. This isn’t the Adam Sandler movie, “Hustle” on Netflix.

J.E.: It isn’t and it is.. you really do work with Kenny “The Jet” Smith, one of the big stars of that movie.

G.T.: I recently put on a skills camp in partnership with Kenny and the NBA Players Association in the Hamptons. Cole Anthony, one of the best players out of NYC, and Miles McBride from the Knicks were the coaches.

G.T.: Kenny grew up in LeFrak City, Queens and went on to be a key part of some of the greatest teams in NCAA history. He played for Dean Smith alongside Michael Jordan at UNC and won two NBA championships alongside Hakeem Olajuwon with the Houston Rockets.

G.T.: He informed the kids that since the NBA began in 1949, only 5,100 players have ever appeared in a regular season game. Many, many more than 5,100 people won the lottery since 1949. “I am telling you this not to discourage you,” Kenny said, “I am telling you this to let you know that the margin for error is slim, and every minute of your life, beginning right now, counts.”

G.T.: I also just had the honor of attending the Kenny Smith Basketball Camp in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I coached a team that consisted of some of the top 9th grade players in the country. Kenny and his son KJ have been such great partners to have.

J.E.: Is there anyone else that you want to shout out?

G.T.: I grew up with a single mom who was a blues musician - she is now in the Blues Hall of Fame. My mom is incredibly talented, she used to hang out at the Mudd Club with Warhol and Basquiat and to this day has an incredible network of creatives that seek her out for advice.

Readers of this newsletter know I’m into music and profiling up and coming players in the industry such as Nate McCartney, Stacia Mac, Hovain and Starker. I started working as a teen, so it was fun catching up with Julien Mitchell, a high school student who is rising to the top with music artists in an adjacent field - photography.

J.E.: You were 16 when you shot ASAP Rocky for Gucci and The North Face?

J.M.: I was 15.. I was having dinner on a Friday night. One of my friends, who’s close to ASAP Mob called me. He said ASAP Rocky was working on a music video. My friend said all of ASAP Mob was there in Harlem and for me to come. It was pretty hectic getting there and I had to go with my brother, Gavin, he was the one who pushed me to do it. I got the shot of Rocky while he was leaving. I sent it to a few people, but never expected it to blow up like that. At that time, ASAP Rocky’s stylist reached out to me and wanted my email. Then Gucci reached out to me. I knew I had something there, because the photo was crazy, even unedited.

J.M.: Gucci wanted to buy the photo. I was wondering how they would pay me. At first, I asked for the jacket. They pulled all the jackets out of the store due to that photo. I never got paid for anything before. They actually just wired me the money. It was wild seeing all that money in my account for doing what I loved doing. It came all the way from France. Communicating with them was crazy too.

J.E.: Do you realize how lucky you are?

J.M.: For sure. But, I was always shooting before that. I took photography pretty seriously. I was heavily influenced by what was going on. When I wanted to be on that scene, I was thirteen. Photography was more than just an art form to me. I always wanted to play some type of role and contribute to what was going on. I’ve always been down to work.

J.M.: Anyone could have a camera. You either know how to use it or you don’t. You need to know how to compose the photos and have quality to every image. I make sure every image is the highest quality it could be. You have to put some effort into it. Every day, I’m learning more about cameras. I didn’t go to any classes. The first way to being good at something is being bad at something - because that’s how you learn.

J.E.: What’s it like doing this from a young age?

J.M.: It partly limits me because of what people might think of you because you’re so young. But it also helps you because it teaches you how to act in certain situations. The sooner you get started the better chance you have to get in the game. Even for something like accounting - the earlier you get into these things, the better.

J.M.: NYC has been an influence on me because I grew up surrounded by stars, that you could meet anybody from the game just stepping outside your own front door. I think if I didn’t live in New York I would definitely would be somewhere completely different in my career. New York also gives young creatives like me opportunities that I would never get to have.

J.M.: It also gets hectic at times especially for me with the fast-paced scene I landed in, for example all my high school friends could all be hanging out while I’m in a studio or somewhere working. You definitely have to learn how to adapt to any scene no matter what the situation is, I think that’s definitely the most important lesson I learned very early on.

J.E.: Any crazy stories to share?

J.M.: One crazy story that comes to mind is when I flew to Miami with Smooky Margielaa from ASAP Mob. That night we went to one of the top clubs in Miami with Lil Wayne and Rich The Kid for their album release party. That’s where I was able to capture that photo of Lil Wayne. At the time I was around 16. It was the most packed club I’ve ever been to. We walked in straight through the back door.

J.M.: Another crazy story is when I linked up with my boy Val. We ended up going bowling with Nav till like 3 am and I had to go to school the next morning. Bowling is not an activity you see rappers do. It was surreal. You always have to have a professional thought process, but you want to show people you have a personality, and there’s more than to you than just work.

One artist that stuck out to me was meeting someone like J. Balvin. He’s one of the biggest artists in the world right now. Meeting him was a surreal moment. A lot of people who are really big get ahead of themselves. Working with him was a surreal thing. He’s very down to earth and ready to work. I connected with him through someone else. I was able to work with Polo G, his Mom. That was definitely a great experience. It was a whole different lifestyle. When I worked with Digga D in London, that was popping. His photos were crazy.

J.E.: How do you go about getting your name out there?

J.M.: You have to be good at marketing yourself and showing people what you have to offer. You can say anything, but until you actually show you’re nice with the camera, it doesn’t matter. Marketing yourself and networking any chance you get is important.

J.M.: Luckily for me, I’ve done this for a decent amount of time and know what to do and what not to do. I’ve felt nervous going into shoots, but never felt uncomfortable. My parents have been skeptical, but I find my way. There’s definitely been some situations where it’s not the best - but I’m just trying to do what I can.

J.M.: I mean, my advice is market yourself and always show people what you have. The only reason people reached out to me is because they saw my work. Never doubt someone. See what they have to offer. Always be open to ideas. I try not to limit myself. If someone suggests something to me, I try to do every type of way to go from Point A to Point B.

J.E.: Where is it going for you?

J.M.: I’ve gone into rooms that not a lot of people have gone in and I’m trying to offer a perspective that nobody else could see. I’ve tried to demonstrate in my photos what I see and how I foresee it. Where does it go? I want to do more editorial stuff, brand work. Galleries. I do a lot of creative direction work. I work with my artist xammy from Daytona. I’m his day-to-day manager. His sound is popular these days.

J.M.: Besides ASAP Mob, I have spent a lot of time my close friend 27Delly who is a New York artist from Harlem. Also Mikey Phelps who is one of my boys who pushed me a lot and connected me around. I have also spent time with Dipset, which has been a cool experience because they’re a group from a whole different generation.

J.E.: Do you deal with any adversity at all?

J.M.: I had a million things that never worked out. A lot of people would get discouraged. They think there’s just one path to stuff. I’ve been with artists like Skepta, Playboi Carti - I couldn’t get a shot of them. I’m not gonna say, “I didn’t get the photo, my career is over.” There’s other opportunities. There’s no ceiling to this type of stuff.

J.E.: Are you in a position to put other people on now?

J.M.: If they have something to offer and have something to contribute, but I’m not gonna put someone who isn’t ready on. I mean there’s a lot of people that don’t want to work, due to their situation. At the same time there’s a lot of people who are hungry to work and I’m going to try to put them in the scene.

J.E.: Who are your inspirations?

J.M.: A big inspiration to me is the photographer Slim Aarons.  He was able to capture a certain time period of the rich and famous.  I feel his work takes you back to a place in time, like a unique experience. Some other photographers who inspire me are Garret Bruce, Gunner Stahl, Cam Kirk and others. I feel all of these photographers are able to capture a moment and what I use as inspiration before heading into a shoot.

J.E.: What’s going on right now and in the future for you?

J.M.: The last person I shot was Sfera Ebbadsa who one of the biggest artists in Italy. Recently, I was able to shoot for Pusha T as well as the Flatbush Zombies. Also was able to shoot for gov ball this year, it’s always a surreal experience being on the other side of any concert seeing that many people in front of me.

J.M.: For me, I plan on doing a coffee table book filled of portraits with both released and unreleased photos. I also plan on doing a few gallery shows and hopefully a museum one day. I would love to  do some more album covers as well as work on my Co-sign with Timberland.

J.M.: Music has definitely always been a part of my life and still today music is a day to day necessity for me. Besides my brother putting me on, my Mom has always been playing me old songs she used to love for as long as I can remember. I definitely think it’s a blessing that I am able to work with artists.

Jeff Bezos once said, “All overnight success takes about ten years”, and in the case of @ghostnacekillah, the Amazon don is spot on. It’s been a decade since the independent rapper, real name Nacio, aka Starker, burst on the underground scene with “Lo Ceasar” – a duo debut with his friend, YL. Now, ten years later, the underground king is knocking on mainstream’s door, while starring in ad campaigns for the red hot Aime Leon Dore and Polo Ralph Lauren. Starks is known for weaving punchlines in while speeding up the flow and this interview did not disappoint, hopefully I caught everything.

J.E.: How are you approaching the music business?

L.T.D.: I just continue to be consistent with my work. I’ve been doing this for over ten years now. Still sticking to the same sound over time, the work speaks for itself. Not piggy-backing off anyone else’s movement or sound. At the beginning, nobody cared. I started sharing material on IG and Soundcloud, which led to me making global connections. One day, somebody called me and said, “there’s demand for you in Japan.. we need you here to do a show”. I went to Japan. Now I’m getting hit up from Germany, London and so on. When people see something is going on and they appreciate it, they want to add on to the situation.

L.T.D.: I’m developing relationships with the next generation of professionals in this industry. I tap in with them on a personal level. If it makes sense, I go. I don’t do anything that any artist can’t do. It’s not all about the music. Execute. If you’re fooling around with the music shit, it might amount to something - it might not. Two years ago, I was speaking with a friend and said, “I wish I could get some little looks like GQ or something”. I wanted to be in a Polo ad. All the effort I put into it from then to now is what got me here. It’s not a really mistake. Be consistent.

J.E.: Where do you see things going from here?

L.T.D.: I’m a full time rapper - I’m engulfed in my career. People are paying attention. I don’t know where it’s going exactly. I’m meeting with labels - people hit me up now - the higher ups. I’m opening up for Boldy James in August. I am trying to be more of a household name in the underground scene. Roc Marciano, Earl Sweatshirt. I’m in the conversation and now I want to stay in it. I just did some artwork with Westside Gunn. He sees me as more than a rapper. We did his album cover. I drew this character he likes. I drew on the back of my court papers the other day when I got arrested with Post. Just my luck.

J.E.: How important is a cosign to you?

L.T.D.: Half the battle of being an artist is having another artist take an interest in you. You have people that won’t put you in position, that go out of their way to show you there is no handout. That’s the process dealing with artists that are doing better than you; paying your dues might never end. I have to put myself on. Nobody wants to put me on. The story of getting put on is people see you in a different context. Fuck this little homie shit. I’m going to come outside on my own terms with my own name and put myself on. If you are not going to notice my music, you are going to notice the fashion. If you aren’t going to notice the fashion, you’ll notice the graffiti. Something is going to give. I’m not really a one dimensional person.

L.T.D.: I don’t need to pay dues and do the oki-doke to fit in with traditional people and their system for success. I use the internet to my advantage. I use the platforms we already use, instead of thinking some artist is going to let me open up for him next week and then it doesn’t happen. I’m going to Goblin Studios on my own accord. I don’t need an invitation from a third party. You hear stories like, “I’m a rapper from Kentucky, we had an EA Sports rap battle in my neighborhood and I won”. Here’s the truth about being a New York artist. You are up against a lot of talented people and it is every man for himself. That’s human nature. I found a way to prevail while still being a standup dude. Nobody can say I didn’t do right by them.

J.E.: Where did your fashion sense come from?

L.T.D.: Growing up, I was exposed to someone very materialistic at a young age - my Dad was fly. I would get in trouble if my sneakers were dirty. If i went outside to play and wore Jordans, it was a nightmare. I was supposed to know better, to treat things better. I couldn’t have dirty things as a kid. I was amazed by it all. One time, we were going to play golf. I wore white low top patent leather 9s. He said, “you really think you are going to wear those to play golf”? He turned the car around.

L.T.D.: I’m like that with my son. I tell him, “don’t mess up a good pair of shoes”. It’s definitely a particular way to be about objects that are going to depreciate in life. I tell my son, “Be nice to your clothes. You can’t be playing in the street”. He says, “Clothes are not people”! He’s right, but you have to be mindful. My parents didn’t have it like that, so i had to take care of these items. I was 7, 8 years old and everybody was kicking and screaming and I’m like, “I can’t mess this up”. So I’ll get my son Crocs, or slip-on Nike’s. He’s a child, I just want him to enjoy his life. I’m tired of imposing myself on him. Am i going to wear Crocs? No. But I just want him to be normal.

J.E.: A lot of people think they were born into fashion.

L.T.D.: Yeah. A lot of fashion kids find a picture of themselves with Oshkosh and fire red ‘5s and say, “I was born into this”. No you were not. As a kid, you weren’t participating mentally. Every parent was buying their kids that. A lot of these kids paint themselves into fashion. Fashion came to me. I never had it out for fashion.

L.T.D.: It’s funny because those same fashion kids put the clothes on the wrong way. They are not scientific with their outfits. They let the outfit wear them. They let the shirt wear them. Believe me when I say this - I go out of my way to put on these clothes - it does nothing for me with women. This Polo shit is borderline a costume to these kids. They see me and now they want to wear it. The more I get into the fashion world the more I realize I don’t want any part of it. They chew you up and spit you out.

J.E.: What drives you to dress this way?

L.T.D.: I’m putting it on for the generation that came before me. I’m a Five Percenter. I believe in mathematics and that you will live on through the youth. If you are on good terms with the youth, they will talk about you ‘til they die, like, “That was the older God who put me on”. I’m an oddball, one of the only people wearing Polo like this. I make it look less strange to a young man. The kids wearing Amiri don’t care about Polo. I might wear a Stadium shirt to a strip club while all the kids there will be wearing the same Christian Dior. I put on for the people that did it before me at the end of the day. This really isn’t coming out of thin air.

J.E.: You were a sneakers guy before Polo, right?

L.T.D.: Correct. Me personally, this Polo shit is secondary.. I come from sneakers. If I care about you, it’s a must that you have nice sneakers. I need my family to have the right footwear.. my son, his mother, my own mother - who refuses to wear everything I bought her in my life - everybody needs proper kicks. If you have nice sneakers thats the beginning of something special to me.

L.T.D.: Shoes paint a picture beyond words for me. Before I spent $200 on any Polo, I was buying sneakers. Polo is just a whole different sport. Whole different animal. I wouldn’t wish this sickness on any of my loved ones. Don’t compromise your whole life on shirts you’ll never wear.

J.E.: On to the Polo then.

L.T.D.: Yeah. At first, I thought Polo was for big and burly dudes. Guys that I saw wearing Polo were big like Post and Mayhem. I’m looking at Post or Tommy Rebel, they would be wearing a long bill hat, Cycle Jacket, Snow Beach. I’m thinking, “my little ass is never going to look right in these clothes”.

L.T.D.: I started rocking it and my Mom told me, “You do a disservice to yourself wearing these clothes”. I’m wearing North Face and Carhartt pants with Polo. That type of shit to me is scientific. I like to see people wearing a shirt from 1992 with Olympic ‘7s. I like people who are very considerate about every thing that was going on at that moment when a piece came out. Polo is meant to be worn. I like when people wear their shit. My tolerance is running low for people that put their shit on the floor. Polo is Hermes for us. That’s what we’re all fighting for - that’s our luxury brand. Just put it on.

J.E.: How do you feel about where Polo is going, both in terms of retros from the company and input from fans in the form of customs?

L.T.D.: I bought the retro Stadium tank top and paid an astronomical price for it because I’m a rapper and need to make sure I was seen in it before any other rapper. I’m going to assert myself as the Polo artist. I’m not going to get beat out of my position by another artist because they have more money or followers than Starks. I’m supposed to be the Polo guy. As soon as I wore it in a video or performance, I sold it. I have never had a custom in my life. I hope people start having a little imagination. Beyond the garments there’s so many other things you can do to recreate a conversation.. to rekindle a flame. Reproducing it with a different fabric doesn’t do anything for it. Silk shirt for a rayon? That’s like whole wheat pancakes.. thats a healthy snack - not pancakes. That shit is not Polo its a nice try. You lose integrity if you put that on your back. You have to have integrity. You can’t be wearing these replica shirts and hoodies. It takes away the allure. We don’t wear them because of the image but more the story behind them. I wanted a white P-Wing hoody the other day, so I bought one - I didn’t make one. I go hard for hats and I won’t accept a replica hat.

L.T.D.: Me personally, I’m not here to bring interest in something people aren’t interested in. If you like shirts, buy them. I’m not here to get in your way. I’m not going to buy all the Polo Country graphic shirts. I play for hats, thats my game. I pride myself in hats, especially in my age these hats come around in gaps of years every five years. Thirty years ago, someone left that hat in school. Or they were riding their bicycle and the hat flew off their head. The hat got dirty or someone gave it away.. because no one knew it was going to come to this point.

L.T.D.: Hats are so special, they are the cherry on top of the banana split. The icing on the cake. The crown on your head. You have the RL 2000 fleece on, it just might be your dads. Nothing’s a mistake when you have the hat on. Everything’s well calculated at that point.

J.E.: So would you say a hat is your favorite all time piece?

L.T.D.: The terry cloth cotton Cycle hat is definitely one of the best hats ever made. In terms of favorite all time pieces I would have to say my P. Tennis; I want to be buried in it. Whoever takes care of my body puts the P. Tennis on my back. It’s more morbid than anything. I look at that piece and think about when I’m going to die. Normal people like a piece they got laid in or something nice happened for them in. So my Climb rugby. Especially since I got in a large, that is the best thing that ever happened to me. Nah.. the best thing that ever happened to me is my son, Milo, aka Baby Milo!

With over a decade in Hollywood and tech on his résumé, Chase Ellman has seen tech culture grow from curiosity to mainstream. Now, after working for nearly 5 years with some of the world's biggest names while on the Partnerships team at Facebook and Instagram, Chase is moving on to what he sees as the next place to make an impact in culture.

J.E.: What was your childhood like?

C.B.E.: I grew up in Chicago. Michael Jordan and the ‘90s Bulls were a big part of my childhood. Although I was particularly drawn towards more creative hobbies as a kid: building with Legos for hours, never following directions but creating my own characters & acting out different narratives of the universes I had built. Drawing. I was also fascinated with solving technical challenges - I remember I would take apart old electronics we were going to get rid of and try to put them back together. So I was the one who always volunteered to solve what seemed at the time like a very complex challenge of organizing the cords and setting up a new TV or computer for my parents (laughs). Looking back I think this diversity of interests set the foundation for a lot of what I aspire to achieve in my work today - use both my left and right brain to help bridge the gap between the creative and tech worlds. I hope for most people that if they look back to what they were interested in as a kid they will see a lot of similarities and overlap in their current day-to-day.

C.B.E.: As a kid with a desire to connect with interesting people, I was also captivated by watching movies. I was maybe the only person in my middle school who had seen Goodfellas & every Tarantino movie. My bar mitzvah was Hollywood themed - “Cut To the Chase” - and even though I had just turned 13, no one called my parents out on the guest tables being named after R-rated films! When Harold Ramis was filming a movie once in Chicago, I snuck on set with my mom and met John Cusack, telling him I loved his performance in “High Fidelity” to which he replied “aren’t you a little young for that?”

J.E.: Sounds like you just knew what you were going to do in this life.

C.B.E.: Not exactly. Not at all. I remember sitting in business school and being told I had to pick a career. None of the majors were particularly of interest to me because they all felt like they were lacking the creative excitement I was so used to in my hobbies and interests as a kid. I guess it’s different now with the evolution of social media, but at that time, starting out, I felt pretty lost - no one was explicitly confirming that it was an option to do something different other than what was being offered in front of me. 

C.B.E.: Then I learned about a childhood family friend who was working in L.A. for the partners at a small Hollywood talent agency startup called Endeavor (now WME) and a lightbulb went off - even though L.A. felt like a different planet, why couldn’t I explore a career in the entertainment industry, mixing my background in business with my love of movies and desire for something creative?

J.E.: Hollywood from Chicago does feel like a stretch. If you didn’t know people, how did you you break through?

C.B.E.: Once I decided a career in entertainment was my goal, I went for it. I subscribed to every industry trade mag and blog I could find. I read books and watched documentaries on the industry like “The Kid Stays In the Picture”. I cold emailed alumni from my university database who seemed to be doing something interesting tied to this world. I mailed handwritten letters to the presidents of all the top talent agencies asking for advice. 

C.B.E.: Something I realize now, reflecting on that moment - when I’m interested in something new - maybe it’s researching and learning about a company, industry, hobby or individual - I have a habit of obsessively going down the rabbit hole pretty quickly to gain as much knowledge as I can. I did the same thing later in my career when I decided to pursue a role at Facebook, and this remains true today.

J.E.: At some point these efforts paid off and you made it in the door. What next?

C.B.E.: We’re of course leaving out the dozens of meetings, phone calls, early mornings, late nights but this “rabbit hole” approach also led me to a few summers in LA where I hustled to make enough money to survive while doing unpaid internships at a variety of entertainment companies. Only to find myself a few years after graduation working full time in the Commercial Endorsements department at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), one of the leading talent agencies in Hollywood. 

C.B.E.: CAA was an incredible experience. You really felt like you were at the center of everything in one building. But as I would look at offers for CAA clients, a trend I continued to notice was social media was basically an afterthought in deal terms. For context, this was only a few years after “House of Cards” came out and people were still laughingly referring to a pocket of west LA as “Silicon Beach”. But as someone who grew up with Facebook & was a heavy user of Instagram, I felt like these platforms weren’t being shown the respect they deserved.

C.B.E.: I became obsessed with the concept of bridging the gap between entertainment and tech. So even though I finally had the opportunity to pursue a dream career at CAA, I had the gut feeling I was being drawn to work in a different world. This is another trend I can identify from my career so far which I recently shared when I spoke to a class at the USC Business School - trusting your gut. Even though on a surface level things might appear great, if you have the feeling it’s time to make a move, that is what matters the most. I still have an email I wrote to myself talking through pros and cons of what at the time seemed like a monumental decision. 

J.E.: The tech game pulled you in.

C.B.E.: Definitely. So when I knew I was ready to make the move to tech, I repeated the same approach I took with entertainment - extensive industry research. Books, newsletters, etc. Making it a priority to meet as many people as possible in tech to hear their story. Remaining persistent. Funny enough, one of the friends I had made in LA was now working for Instagram, and she thought I might be a good fit for a role working for Kevin Systrom, the co-founder of Instagram. I ultimately didn’t get that job but the resulting interview process put me in the FB system and after consistent follow-up, I interviewed and was eventually offered a role in Media Operations at Facebook in the LA office, focused on Entertainment. I had no idea what the title of this role meant and after learning what its responsibilities would entail - spreadsheets and data, it didn’t seem to carry the cachet of working at CAA. But there’s a well-known story in the tech world around “if you’re offered a seat on the rocket ship, get on and don’t ask which seat”.

J.E.: Take us inside Facebook just a little bit.

C.B.E.: The first poster I saw on the wall at the office was “Every Day Feels Like A Week” and this was never more true than when I joined..but as the company launched more and more features directed towards accounts creating content - Video, Stories, Live, Shopping and IGTV - they began to understand how important it was to maintain strong relationships with the influential accounts using these features. Kylie Jenner tweeted once that she wasn’t using SNAP anymore and the company’s stock dropped 6%, wiping out $1.3B in value - so FB/IG made it a priority to avoid a situation like this and built out a partnerships team comprised of people who had industry expertise but were also familiar with FB/IG policies & operational procedures. It turns out I was in the right place at the right time.

C.B.E.: Even after formally joining the partnerships team, it was still the wild wild west - there were less than 50 people globally on the team at the time and eventually that grew into 500 focused specifically on different partners. But for the majority of my time there out of bandwidth necessity I was thrown into working with just about everyone -  actors, creators, artists, sneaker designers, media entities, brands, entrepreneurs - you name it.

J.E.: Speaking from first hand knowledge here. You are known in this industry for your empathy. What do you say to that?

C.B.E.: Thank you! The people I work with are building their livelihoods on these platforms, and therefore every question, issue, challenge, idea, no matter how small is important. So instead of ridiculing or ignoring their situation - I always do my best to understand their point of view and create a solution, while treating everyone the same whether it is the assistant or an Oscar winner. I worked at a restaurant growing up and it had a major influence on the ability to have patience and working with a lot of different people.

J.E.: You strike me as a person who is “endlessly curious”. Would you agree?

C.B.E.: I think so! From all of the unpredictable &  different situations I was thrown into, I made it a priority to learn from whatever I was doing, even if it wasn’t apparent if it would have an immediate payoff. I remember one of the agents I met with for coffee once when I was interning in LA told me to be a sponge - essentially soak up as much as you can without regard for how it will come into play later. This has definitely had a major effect on building my own taste. Something I am most curious about right now is DALL-E by OpenAI - I don’t even think we know the potential / implications of this technology. 

J.E.: So you are curious about AI, but at the end of the day you are also a relationships guy.

C.B.E.: Yeah. Facebook and Instagram was getting me in the room with all these incredible people that inspired me, but it was up to me to build and solidify the relationships. I want my working relationships to be genuine, not transactional. For some people this is never going to be possible. I can tell you about the thousands of cold, all-caps emails or hectic DM requests I’ve received over the years. But it is amazing the response when you approach people with the intent of a a genuine friendship - many of whom I support however I can to this day.

J.E.: Sounds good to me. What’s next for you?

C.B.E.: So while my experience at Facebook and IG was incredible, it all goes back to trusting your gut, and eventually I could feel myself hitting a peak there. “Ships are safe in the harbor but that’s not what they’re built for”. So after 4.5 years, I joined a startup for a while around January 2020 and then about a year ago started my own company where I consult for various individuals and projects, applying many of the life experiences I have had in my career up to this point to help with a variety of different business goals. Every client’s needs are unique but I am always aiming to maintain the perspective I’ve gained in every interaction I have.

J.E.: Last thing.. I have to ask about the tennis.

C.B.E.: Ha. I really picked up tennis while in LA due to COVID but there is actually a bigger backstory - my grandfather played till he was in his early ‘90s, so I would go with my cousins and hit around casually at his complex, never taking it too seriously but developing a foundation to play. He passed away almost a decade ago, so in a sense tennis is a way for me to continue his legacy every time I step on the court. That being said, there are so many elements I love about the game - it’s a lifetime sport, the global culture & elegance surrounding it, and how many of the lessons from tennis are applicable to real life as well. One is actually a principle I’ve read about in one of my favorite newsletters, Brain Food, called “Occam’s Razor”, which at its core is “the simplest solution is almost always the best”. This is something I aim to do in tennis, that I also aim to apply to my life off the court. While there is always more to learn and improve on, and I certainly am far from where I want to be, tennis has introduced me to some of the most interesting people in my life, brought me to some of the most beautiful places in the world and created amazing memories.

Atlanta has been dubbed the pop culture capital of the USA, which should come as no surprise since they have Hall of Famers in Future, Childish Gambino and Ludacris on their roster. One of their biggest stars is @FredSaintFoster, who has served as a model of consistency throughout Atlanta’s rise. Whether he was investing, designing, or creative directing for superstars, Fred woke up a lot of people with his work.

J.E.: What was your childhood like?

F.F.: I  was born in London and grew up in Ghana. I grew up with 4 brothers and 1 sister in a pretty normal middle-class household. My dad was an architect and ran his own firm, after a while he moved his practice to our home. He built his office on the same property as our house to spend more time with us.  Being the youngest of six kids,  I was a mama’s boy by default… but I always felt like I didn’t get to spend enough time with my Dad, so I would just sneak into his office from time to time trying to figure out what he was doing. Every moment he got, he would show me how to draw something, how to doodle. Teach me little things about architecture, like how to use curves and lines. Drawing objects and perspectives. Looking back, that’s where I fell in love with design. Watching him work, and being in that environment was a warm feeling.

F.F.: Most of my siblings are boys, so growing up I inherited a lot of hand-me-down clothes and shoes. I really hated that as a kid but thinking about it now, as a parent, it makes a lot of sense.  We also all went to the same school and my brothers were popular so I had to find ways to alter or customize their old looks. At least make it less obvious when we went places.  I was doing botched dye jobs at like six or seven years old. I guess it was more about having my own identity but that’s where my spirit of ingenuity comes from.

J.E.: When did you travel to the United States?

F.F.: In 2001. I was a young teen. I had family in New York so I assumed we would move to New York. Growing up Hip-Hop was run by New York. Nas, Biggie, Diddy, Jay-Z, Wu-Tang Clan. We really were kids having East Coast, West Coast arguments in Africa. My brother and I were heavy East Coast hip-hop guys so we couldn’t wait to move to New York and be in that mix. My parents had a different idea. They wanted us to have a good education so they moved us to Athens, GA to prep for the University of Georgia.  “What the fuck?”.  I was very disappointed. I had never heard any of my favorite rappers' rep Athens, GA. 

F.F.: Moving to Athens was a culture shock more than I think a major city like New York would’ve been. When we moved in 2001 there wasn’t any representation of African cool for most people. We hadn’t made our mark on pop culture with Afro-Beats yet. So most people's point of reference were those sad commercials with the kids with flies on their face. The bullshit! . I had the burden of proving we were cool. I had to be overconfident. Because it’s either that or - especially in high school - you’re a kid from Africa and they would take every opportunity to poke fun. And it wasn’t about the jokes, I could take the jokes but I felt like I owed it to my home to somewhat kill the stereotypes. So I started stunting as much as possible. I’ve always been the fashion guy. I literally found a job just to buy clothes. I had a lot of BAPE, Mitchell & Ness throwbacks, and all the Jordans.  I overdid it. Fast forward now, we have guys like Burna Boy and Wiz Kid, who have helped change that dynamic a lot. Not just them but so many others have helped shape a new worldview. Ghana is one of the most popular vacation spots in the world now. I take that attitude to Atlanta, wherever we go.

J.E.: Where did you go from there?

F.F.: Well I didn’t go to U.G.A. I moved to Atlanta after graduating high school and started making t-shirts.  I understood from my high school experience that fashion was a universal language that breaks cultural barriers and I wanted to be part of that.  I also didn’t want to wear what everyone else was wearing, BAPE and throwbacks were old for me by the time everyone caught on so I started making my own shirts. I would give a few to my friends and we would mob out to a club or something. We would get asked questions about what we had on a lot so, I started selling them. That turned into manufacturing, branding, going to trade shows, etc. At the same time, I was just doing different corporate jobs to pay the bills.

F.F.: But I wasn’t satisfied with just making t-shirts, so I started trying to figure out the cut and sew business. The person who inspired me to do that was Scott Sasso of 10 Deep. 10 Deep was one of the companies that killed the cut and sew game early on. I really wanted to do that. So, I did a lot of research and found some local manufacturers. The work wasn’t as good as 10 deep then but fuck it, I made it work. I started taking custom orders. That’s actually how I met Future. Ebonie who still manages Future now - used to run a store in the city. She was one of the first people who put my clothes in her store. She called me out of the blue and needed some custom pieces for Future for a video. I pulled up with that heat and the video turned out to be “Love Me.” With Drake and Lil Wayne. Shout Out Ebonie Ward.

J.E.: How do you decide what to make?

F.F: I have a rule. When I get an idea, I believe that’s a higher power picking me to do something. I always follow those instructions. Any thoughts or feelings I have in fashion I tend to prioritize. I don’t rationalize. I believe that certain people are on like a conveyor belt and there are frequencies and signals sent to us. If you don’t act on it when the signal hits you, the belt will keep moving and the signal will hit the next person in line. There are certain people that are going to be hit with a signal and that signal is going to make its way into the universe. You can either be that person that receives that signal and runs with it or the person that says, “I don’t know how I can do that”, only to see someone else bring that idea to the universe. Even though everything may not land, I’m still taking every shot.

F.F.: I also have a sixth sense of what’s going to happen next. I usually see things much earlier than most people. I’ve been adjusting my timing a little bit because I don’t want to be so far ahead that I’m misunderstood. Being right on time is the true genius.

J.E.: You - talented people - make it sound so easy.

F.F: Let me say this.  I didn’t know I had talent. I knew I had passion. If I would’ve waited for someone to acknowledge my talent in this industry, I might have given up a long time ago. It’s cool to have talent, but I believe it’s better to have a purpose. I’ve always been the guy that never fit in. That didn’t belong. I had to rewire my brain to keep going because I knew my path would be different. There’s no metric for passion and purpose.

F.F.: Does it hurt that I don’t get recognition? It does. I would like to. Is that enough to stop me from doing what I’m doing? No. At the end of the day, this validation of people spending their hard-earned money on something that I conceptualized and developed trumps any type of industry accolades. That’s the goal - to create and develop ideas.

F.F.: The longer it takes for them to notice, the bigger of a monster I become. It’s all ammunition for me, I have even more to prove. Doubt is a motivator for me.

J.E.: What’s next?

F.F: This is the frustrating part of the journey. I have so many ideas that I’m not able to scale as fast as my mind develops these ideas. My vision for the long term is for Cease & Desist to be its own world. Take everything I love from Sci-Fi movies to architecture to furniture and merge them into something unique. it’s a broad vision that takes a lot of time to get right but I’m staying on this journey.

F.F.: Eventually, a lot of these concepts will be realized. You’re going to start seeing a lot more of this vision. I eventually want to end up doing the family business, architecture. I want the take this world we create and put them in structures for the world to see.

J.E.: At the end we do shoutouts and inspiration.

F.F: Thanks to my family, my wife, and my kids. Thanks to my Cease & Desist team and everyone who has had my back throughout my journey. Love!

One internship: that’s all it took for @NimaZaribaf to make his mark on the fashion world. Like many of you, I want to relate to the people behind the brand, so I enjoyed catching up with Nima about his journey, love for the process and nurturing up-and-coming talent.

J.E.: Your job looks glamorous.

N.Z.: I joined a startup before it was a startup. It was at a time when paying interns was not mandatory. My responsibilities included taking out the trash and building the office furniture. Driving across town to buy supplies that were no longer needed by the time I got back. Unpacking boxes, printing shipping labels, repacking boxes. Following up, coordinating with UPS. At the end of the day, I loved every second of it. Not for a single minute did it pop into my head that I was deserving of any more.

N.Z.: For anyone who wants to enter an industry like Fashion where the workload can get extreme, you really have to fall in love with the process. People post memes about Kobe Bryant and Mamba Mentality all the time, but Kobe loved that process, he loved being in the gym. Not everyone is going to blow up on TikTok and become a millionaire overnight. You have to respect your process and those steps at the beginning, and remind yourself - If I keep working at this, I’ll be able to do something else one day. It’s a journey.

N.Z.: As an employee, the only thing you’re entitled to is the opportunity to show up and do the most you can. One of the things really gratifying to me is when we hire a new intern and I say, “I started exactly where you are and I worked to where I’m at now. If you do the work, nothing is impossible. Love that you’re an intern. Love the process.” And it’s great to see that intern move up in the organization.

J.E.: How did you arrive here?

N.Z.: Very early on in my childhood I definitely identified that I was leaning more towards creative interests. You know, very quintessential childhood creativity - drawing, writing short stories, trying to take whatever game we were playing at recess to another level. I always had a knack for telling a story.

N.Z.: My parents were really supportive of that. For immigrant parents that came from Iran - where creativity isn’t necessarily a beacon of success and going to school and getting an education is much more important, it was hard for them to understand at first. Although I felt more creative, I still showed academic talent. I was in advanced courses and my teachers reached out to my parents and told them I was running through lessons with ease and that they should find ways to challenge me. At a certain point academics stopped being an interest for me. I went from getting straights A’s to failing classes and ultimately decided to drop out of college two weeks into my first semester. My parents were definitely concerned.

J.E.: I can relate! Did you find solace during this period? Where?

N.Z.: I found solace in my creative pursuits and the greatest one became music. For the first twenty years of my life, I was pretty certain that was what I was going to do. I graduated high school, all my friends moved away. I was left in LA by myself. I was pursuing music full time and passing out CD’s in Venice Beach and paying out of pocket to perform at dive bars on Sunset. Throughout that process, no matter how farfetched my dreams and goals were, I never visualized them as unattainable. That’s something that’s been strong in me from the beginning. I always felt if I worked hard enough I could accomplish whatever goal I was going after.

N.Z.: Around that time I was approached by Mike Amiri. He had already been in fashion for many years. I was eighteen and hadn’t signed up for college classes yet. He said, “If you have some free time, I could use some extra hands around here.” I was a teenager with no experience, so he wasn’t asking me to help him run the business or do anything serious. It was taking out the trash, mopping the floor, quality control - labor intensive stuff. On my first day, I was on my feet for ten hours straight and my fingers were blistering from this quality control stuff I was doing. At the end of the day, I felt like I was at home, though.

J.E.: Did your upbringing prepare you for the opportunity?

N.Z.: The one thing I will say, Iranian parents or just immigrant parents in general have a stigma that they’re super strict and hard to please. That’s not necessarily the case. The most important thing in Iranian culture is family. That’s number one. Iranian parents love like no other. I think part of the rigidity is ultimately them wanting the best for their children. They’re thinking down the line and want us to create lives for our children and our families. My parents may not have always understood my career choices, but they always reinforced work ethic and dedication. I reference a lot of the lessons they taught me to this day.

N.Z.: My father and I always had a mutual understanding. When he left Iran, he went to Germany and got a degree in aviation engineering. When he got to the U.S., he realized engineering wasn’t his passion and decided not to pursue it. He wanted to own a restaurant. He started as a dishwasher, then server, then manager in Miami. Then he opened his first restaurant in Old Town Pasadena. He always understood that chasing your passion wasn’t just about grabbing low-hanging fruits. He could’ve gotten a job at PanAm and made a great salary, but that wasn’t where his heart was.

J.E.: Did we ever discuss the Polo G. song, Rapstar? Billboard number one, over a billion streams. He was going to name the song, “Amiri” but couldn’t clear it.

N.Z.: I wish you had told me that so we could have helped! It’s always an incredible feeling to see your work recognized. Mike has always been super organic in his approach as a designer. He didn’t embark on this journey with the mindset: I’m going to make something and get someone to wear it. His focus is making the best product possible and I think that resonates with people. He’s building the wardrobe for the modern day rockstars so it makes sense that someone like Polo G loves the brand. He’s one of the rockstars of our generation.

N.Z.: So many kids who want to get into fashion want to get into it for prestige. They see certain designers out there partying with rappers and think that’s what it’s all about. I was never interested in impressing anyone or being a cool kid at the club. I was at a pivotal point where I didn't know what my path was and I felt a lot of pressure to figure it out. As soon as I found a place where I belonged, I was fully bought in. People see how large and how recognized the brand is now, but at the time, if you told me it would become this big, I don’t think I could have comprehended it. If you told me it would be three of us in a basement design studio for 20 years, I would’ve been OK with that. It was more about a personal connection and feeling like I had a purpose. That spirit has stayed with me throughout my career.

N.Z.: I am extremely passionate about everything I touch. Everything I do, I put my heart into. I’ve been relentless in my pursuit and I never let myself feel content. Yes, it’s really satisfying to finish a report, get a promotion, get a raise. All these things are great. But as a generation, we have an issue with complacency. People feel satisfied and they don’t go after the next goal or next accomplishment. For me, I’ve always treated every step of my journey as an opportunity to go after the next thing. To this day, I’ve never been satisfied. I habitually work and do things with an effort that not every person is willing to match. Working is an addiction. I’ve been addicted for many years now and I don’t plan on rehabilitating that at all. If you’re looking for me, I’m probably somewhere working.

J.E.: What’s next for you?

N.Z.: I don’t have any interest in walking away from this painting before the canvas is dry. There’s plenty of canvas left. For me, it may be a never ending story here. Until this brand has reached its full potential and until I feel like I’ve done everything I can to help it get there, there’s no reason to do anything else. I don’t compare what we’re doing to other brands or my work to other people. You have to stay true to yourself. While I’m not in competition with anyone, I’m absolutely in competition with myself everyday. The part that people don’t consider about becoming the best is that to become the best, you first have to become the best version of yourself. Everyday is an opportunity to become the best version of myself. I am so lucky to get to go through that journey in parallel with a brand that is still ascending to its highest form. We’ll see. I’d love to have my own brand or a few someday.

J.E.: Last thing, I usually like to ask people, do you have anyone you want to shout out?

N.Z.: Special thanks to Mike Amiri, the AMIRI Brand team, and all the colleagues and friends who have helped me throughout my career. This one is for you, Dad.

I remember the first time I went to Ezra’s loft in SoHo in the mid ‘90s. It was a house party atmosphere on a school night with Ezra and his brother Jonah holding court with all of their friends. Copious amounts of Polo and North Face strewn about. I was wondering why Ezra and Jonah had the camcorder out filming everybody. Now I get it.

J.E.: You’re working on a movie.

E.W.: Yes, I’m proud to announce that I’m currently making and editing a movie about our shared experiences growing up in downtown New York City in the 1990’s. It really was a time and a place. Back in high school, I bought a Sony Camcorder at J & R Music World that I used to capture video at various parties, hip hop shows and art gallery openings. We used to interview art gallery owners, or strangers on the street and even got some random footage of classrooms at Beacon, my high school. The movie is a mix of my own archival footage following my group of native New Yorkers navigating through their teen years. Illustrating how a group of friends explore hip-hop, house parties, graffiti, fashion and drugs.

E.W.: It’s my love letter to downtown Manhattan showcasing the end of the SoHo art scene, and the birth of SoHo as the luxury retail fashion hub. It’s a story about change, progression, class and survival. We have interviews with art gallery owners documenting how downtown was evolving into a fashion area, as we have footage of the opening of SoHo boutiques and just showing how so many clothing stores started replacing old art galleries.

E.W.: We would go to a lot of hip hop shows and we captured footage of showing live performances from Fat Beats and Wetlands from 1996-98 with Company Flow, The Arsonists, Bushwick Bill and many more. I used to bring the camcorder to house parties and get footage of us downtown kids just being kids. Sometimes it was all love with a make-out party, other scenes show how beef can pop off, even among friends. Close friends of mine would occasionally pick up the camera and get footage of a party room I was not in, which I love, because it’s a whole new perspective and voice for the footage. I don’t want the final cut of this film to be only my story, the goal is to really tell ‘our collective story.’

E.W.: There are so many differences in the old footage compared to how our friends interact these days. In the ‘90s footage you see us kids talking, really engaging with each other. Distractions like a cell phone was a rarity. The language we used is interesting too. We spoke differently then, but even with the disrespectful words, it was all love, unless a kid took another’s last beer or last cigarette. One of the risks you see and hear in the documentary footage is that as much as we wanted to capture footage of people on the streets, at night, that made you a target for anyone that wanted to steal the camcorder itself.

E.W.: There’s hectic Grafitti bombing footage of us on the streets, but also low key moments of kids writing quietly in their black books. My goal is to really capture the era and show all of the different elements of music that we embraced, but also elements of downtown, with art galleries and the party scene.

E.W.: Drugs and alcohol use also plays a role in the story. You can see how the kids evolve from 9th graders experimenting with their first beer or joint, and laughing through it all. Compared to later scenes in the movie where the same kids are seniors in high school and have moved on to harder drugs and are struggling with their addiction. There’s lots of weed footage at the parties and in the street scenes, which is similar to today. The main difference is herb was still illegal back then and kids were getting locked up for having a nickel bag on them, so there was more risk overall with all of our activities. We knew kids that got arrested because a cop saw them take a toke of someone's blunt. There was more guilt by association back then. If one person smokes, the whole group is getting arrested. If one guy catches a tag, the whole squad is going to central booking, including girls who didn’t even write. Because of these stories there’s also footage of us kids running from the cops, because no one wanted to get caught.

E.W.: I’m still editing the film, so the final story is still being written. It’s been a challenge to be concise because when I watch the raw footage I want to include so many details, but I’m trying to turn some complex issues into a simple story that everyone can relate to. There are elements of music, art, fashion, drugs and youth culture in general. I’m trying to tell a long story about growing up, but I’m also not trying to sway the viewer. I don’t want to say ‘this was right’, and ‘that was wrong’. I just want to say this is some stuff that happened to me, to many of us and attempt to show people what was so interestingly authentic about coming of age in the ‘90s in downtown New York City.

E.W.: I feel privileged to have grown up downtown, I thank my parents often for taking that risk. I was born in 1980, my parents moved into SoHo that same year, heading north from Tribeca. SoHo 1980’s was a small community of artists and art galleries, but the streets were desolate, dark and quiet. Despite a huge influx of new families and kids, it was still the Etan Patz kidnapping era. 

E.W.: But year by year the area developed, got safer, less art, more stores and that led to the fashionable ‘90s when downtown really flourished and became valuable. The scary loft staircase in Martin Scorsese’s ‘After Hours’ is how I picture Soho ‘80s, whereas Tom Hanks in Big with the arcade in his loft is how I picture SoHo in the ‘90s. The ‘90s brought on the pop art and fashion movement. An art gallery next to Leo Castello on West Broadway had closed, and Think Big (a pop art oversized furniture boutique) had taken over their space. The pop art movement became Keith Haring’s Pop Shop on Lafayette Street. There was progress, it was somewhat safer, but as kids we were still getting robbed at local parks in broad daylight for rollerblades, bus passes or even Starbursts candy on the 6 train.

J.E.: By any chance, will Polo be making an appearance in this film?

E.W.: Yes. My journey with Polo started the first time I held a kids Polo shirt. I was about 10 years old, it’s 1990, it was a red mesh cotton shirt, navy embroidered horse, 2 button collar and the most interesting neck label I’d seen up until that point. We got it at a yard sale, I wore it, but as I grew each summer, I tried to keep fitting into this shirt, which was too small. As Lo heads this is an age honored tradition of literally trying to pull off a ‘fit’.

E.W.: Around ‘93, I was 13, that’s when my older brother Jonah put me onto Lo, he was speaking about gear he had seen at Humanities High School. The Polo Bear sweaters, Ski 92 jackets, Polo Hi Tech fleeces, Polo Country Boots. I was intrigued. It took years for me to get any of those pieces, but it all started as a chase.

E.W.: I’m happy with the journey so far, I had to learn from some OG’s, so now I have some knowledge and stories to pass on those details to the next generation. In the ‘90s I loved the gear and I loved the community, I bought, sold, traded, stole, begged for, worked for, chased for, lost and found numerous Lo pieces in that era. Fast forward to 2003, an important year for me. I was working during the day at an Ad Agency and going to FIT at night. I bought and traded to get lots of Lo pieces, slowly building the archive. I was so moved by the Lo and the culture, that I started a fashion line using the Bear bed sheets and some vintage sports graphics. I started selling online, out of my house and at a few small boutiques in LES. At FIT I’d find any excuse to turn a project into something about Lo. Fashion History: I’m writing about Ralph, Marketing: I’m writing about the Tyson Beckford/Polo Sport effect, Sociology: I’m writing about Lo heads. The teachers loved it, they’d never heard of the culture and the kids were leaning in.

E.W.: That same year I went to Kanye West’s College Dropout show at Pace University. I remember Qudus was hosting, he was coming up to people in their seats with a microphone, he was asking me about the Polo Cycle Button Up I had on. After the show I met a guy named Success from Chicago, he was Kanye’s merchandise manager at the time, we were talking about Lo and custom kicks. He said Kanye might be looking for old Polo, so I told him ‘Perfect, I want to be Kanye’s stylist’. He said, ‘Well Kanye’s not looking for a stylist, but he is looking to get some Lo.’ So Success set up a few late night meetings with Kanye that summer and helped me close some deals. He also introduced me to Fab and Just Blaze for those rentals and sales we did. Thank you Success for connecting the dots. Success is now a dope A&R representing YBN Cordae.

J.E.: What else is on your mind?

E.W.: I’m working on putting together a new exhibition concept, I’m developing my first design collaboration with another brand and I’m releasing some new hats, new shorts and new shirts on my site over the summer. I’m also working with my wife on a design collaboration, creating a 1 of 1 sample replica of her and I, also known as a baby boy. A baby will finally wear my infant RL 2000 Bear sweater!

E.W.: However, if we're talking about current events in the world, then my heart is with the people of Buffalo in the aftermath of that horrific grocery store shooting, and my heart goes out to Texas and that horrible school shooting. So much sadness in the world, I’ve always watched the news on TV, to know what’s happening. These tragedies make Polo, sneakers, fashion, art and all these subcultures seem so frivolous. We continue to be a part of our cultures, but now we start to refocus on what’s important.

“For his weight class, by far, he smoked everybody. For a few weight classes under his too. He’s consistent with the drip head to toe. Shirts, shorts, pants, jackets, all types of trenches. Whatever. Footwear - immaculate. And it’s because he’s got a fashion sense, but it’s really because he’s got a good heart and his plugs are immaculate. You’ve got to be special to get everything. It’s not about money - we all got money.”

- Jadakiss on @Hovain

J.E.: Jadakiss says you’re the most stylish guy around.

H.H.: Kiss is one of the superfly dudes. It’s a secret society. When you see another Jedi, you salute.

H.H.: I’ve always had a love for fashion and sneakers. When I was a child, my sister worked in Harry’s, the sneaker store on Belmont Ave. in Brownsville, Brooklyn. She’d get paid every week and we’d get a pair of sneakers. My older brother was a fly dude too. So, I’d see that. Then, coming up and living in the area, you’d see the older guys. They dressed nice in Jordans and dope clothes - Polo, Tommy Hilfiger. So, that’s where it became part of my DNA, from as early as I can remember. Charcoal 9 Jordans. My 8th grade prom, I wore Prada. I started wearing Dior, Armani Exchange, other European stuff. Those were the gateway brands into European and high fashion.

J.E.: How did you come up in the music game?

H.H.: There wasn’t a ‘come up’ per se. I had a friend that was rapping and out of necessity, I became his manager. I didn’t intern anywhere. Nobody put me on. I just assumed this position and I started on my journey on a “paid internship.” I learned as I went and happened to get good at it. I was good at business before music. I was a business minded person. Learning the language and the position in music was the biggest challenge. That led me to working with other artists and partnering with my partner now, Johnny Shipes at Cinematic Management, and the rest is history.

H.H.: Now there are two separate entities.. at Hovain Doing Good Management, I manage Styles P, Lloyd Banks, Emmett Dupre and Tracey Chaney. At Cinematic, we represent Paris Bryant, Smoke Dza, Joey Badass, Big Krit, Big Yavo, Yungn Ace, and others. Cinematic Management is important. It was once the home of Nipsey Hussle.

J.E.: Who’s your top five?

H.H.: All time is Biggie Smalls, Jay-Z, Lloyd Banks, Styles P and Jadakiss. Favorites right now would be Lil Baby, Drake, still Jay-Z.. shit, I listen to R&B. I listen to a lot of R&B: Summer Walker, Jazmine Sullivan, Ari Lenox and Lucky Daye.

H.H.: My lifestyle has calmed down. I used to go out with 50 people and we’d be in the club turning up and in environments that cultivated aggressive music. Now, I’m going out with the fam, going to dinner, so it’s calmer music. Music is a soundtrack to my life, and life was a little more hectic at a certain point.

J.E.: What do you look for in a new artist?

H.H.: I need to see uniqueness, star quality, if you’re a hard worker. I need to see a sense of knowing where you are going. If I talk to an artist and they don’t see a vision for themself, that’s a problem. Because then I need to show you who you are. If you are interviewing for a job, and I’m asking what you bring to the job and you don’t know - that’s a red flag.

H.H.: It has to be a focused attack, you know what I’m saying? I love putting new artists out there. I liken it to running for President. Candidates have to present themselves in a certain way to connect with the people. So, running a successful music campaign, you’re running a campaign for President.

J.E.: You’re a college professor now.

H.H.: I want to share my knowledge. The older heads used to tell me, “Keep doing your thing.” What does that mean? There’s very few people that are open to giving the keys and giving advice. People try to hold that shit close to their chest. I feel like when you’re able to give information back to people, it helps the kids. It doesn’t make sense, like why would I want to keep this information? I’m not holding on to it until I die.

H.H.: If I tell you how to get on, and you use it, and you apply it, that’s not taking any money out of my pockets. That’s more money you’re bringing to the industry. You’re bringing more revenue into it. Then, on top of that, that helps me. Because you’re going to be using my name and saying: “Hovain helped me.” So now, my artist may need a feature with your artist. That grows my network. I manage Lloyd Banks but I also manage an 18-year old kid in Jacksonville Florida who’s coming up. There’s established artists who know what they’re doing, but I’ll always like the younger artists too.

J.E.: What else are you getting in to?

H.H.: I’m a hustler so I do all types of shit. I got AirBNBs, I got a podcast coming. I believe in the premise of saving your money because one day it’s going to save you. Products for your home. That’s a passion of mine. Candles, that type of shit. I’m looking to open something. I don’t know if it’s going to be a restaurant. I want it to be like Goodfellas where they go through the back and have a drink in the back of the office. Might be a sneaker store, restaurant, bar, lounge. I’m going to own something.

J.E.: What are you doing with fashion?

H.H.: Nothing. I’m buying art, collectables, home goods. I just designed my man-cave. Most of my spending is home-based, and then clothes are like, I don’t even think about it. That shit is like whatever. It’s come to the point I don’t even buy a lot of shit. Someone will send them. It’s not as important as it used to be. It’s just part of who I am.

H.H.: You know what it is, the way I dress, means more to other people than it means to me. They’ll say, “Are you getting ‘dressed dressed’?” But, I don’t think about it like that. Material shit means something to me until it means nothing to me. Then, it doesn’t move me. A lot of times I don’t take a picture, because what do I have to prove now? To whom? It’s not like anyone’s in competition. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. There’s going to be some pieces you want that are crazy, but then you’re like, what now? One is not enough, but 100 becomes too many. I used to be the type of guy that really loved the Air Forces. If I could wear a clean pair of Air Forces, a clean polo tee, and shorts, I would do that.

J.E.: You don’t care about your material goods any more, so it’s all for sale right?

H.H.: I feel lucky. I have a beautiful wife and beautiful children. To be honest, I won. I’m on my third life. I was running around the streets, then in the music business, now in other businesses. I know what’s important in life. I will always try to get back home for my kids. I have material goods, but it doesn’t make me.

H.H.: I mean, just making it to this point is fucking luck and hard work. There’s a ton of people that probably started in the business and they didn’t make it, and there’s a ton of people who have dreams of being here. So, just sustaining is something that doesn’t happen on the regular. There’s adversity in the music business. Now, in 2022 I’m more successful and more knowledgeable than 2014-2015 when I was ‘on top’.

J.E.: What about the lows. Did you ever think it was over?

H.H.: Never, never to that point. No. I had doubts, but I had people who loved me and I believed in myself. I never thought: “Damn, it’s over.” Self-doubt, preaching. That didn’t last longer than a couple months, under a year. Maybe 5-6 days in a row of “What am I going to do?” I had loved ones.

J.E.: And then what?

H.H.: I have two really supportive children, who don’t know what’s going on with this, but them just being there. The purity of a child, that’s inspiring enough. I had a very devoted fiancé, now wife, who was nurturing and tough. She is supportive and she wouldn’t let me wallow in self pity. I had a group of friends that are all entrepreneurs and hustlers in their own rite - Charlamagne tha God, Sickamore. People who will do everything in their power to be supportive. And, watching them do their shit, it gives you the motivation to get your shit together like no other. Great friends, great artists. A lot has to be said for other managers, other executives that I will see out and about. Just getting words of support from the people. You never know who’s watching, but they’re always watching. People like B.Dot, Rob Markman, Wayne O, Steve Carless, Sav, Karen Civil and many others, we were all on the come up together. It’s almost like we all went to college together. If we went to college together, and I see you driving the road with a flat, I’ll pull over, see if you’re good. We may be competing for market share, but it’s still all love.

H.H.: I feel there’s another level. Me running a record label. That’s the final level. I would love to be an urban marketing strategist for a home company or for a mainstream brand.

Often found at high end events or moving around with his childhood friend JB Smoove, who’s career blasted off as ‘Leon’ from the HBO hit ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ to the Spider-Man films today, @abbutler914 would come out to find you and your family at the VIP entrance with a big smile, and whisk you in to the mix. One time, JB invited us to the set of ‘The Last OG’ where he was filming alongside Tracy Morgan. A.B. said ‘Tracy, this is my man I was telling you about.’ Tracy shook my hand and said, ‘The guy with all the comic books! You are a very important person!’. A.B. has a way of blowing you up to people to make you feel special. I’ve been planning to pay him back for moments like that one day. Today is that day.

J.E.: In 1995, you produced a Biggie concert in the federal penitentiary.

A.B.: I was ‘on tour’ when I was in prison - meaning they would ship me around to different jails. When I got off the bus in Fort Dix, I saw the gym. I was like ‘OK!’ This was an open compound. I visited the guy in the office and said I wanted to bring a show there. He started going through my photo album and he goes, ‘Do you know all these people?’ Finally, he said, ‘Alright, I’m going to give you a chance.’ I called Puff and said, “I want to set this show up with Biggie.” Puff said, ‘What day?’ My birthday is May 7th. They came in that week. That was special because being in prison, you feel neglected. Everybody knows someone - Larry Bird, Michael Jordan - but nobody gets any mail or visitors.  

A.B.: The next day, everyone came to my table, including the officials. They said, ‘We appreciate what you did for the B.O.P.’ They got a chance to meet Biggie, Craig Mack and Puff. It felt good. Everyone in the fed system knew what happened. Crazy day. 

J.E.: You seem like a turn nothing into something type of person.

A.B.: I had a great mother and I had a great father. I couldn’t ask for anything else. For me, personally as a child, I hated ‘asking’, so what I did - I went and got it. In sixth grade, I worked at a gas station before school. Helped out, pumped the gas. Just to get a couple of extra dollars. Well, I got quarters. A quarter took you a long way, a dollar made you a big man. I worked at the gas station, worked so hard, but they never paid me. Me working at this gas station, my life changed. I talked to my father about it. I said ‘Dad, I’m helping a man at the gas station. The man isn’t paying me’. Dad said, ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll pay it. It builds character.’

A.B.: You’re gonna laugh at this part right here, this is the crazy part. Just like working in the bank, you see all this money but you’re thinking, ‘I’m not getting this money’. Every night, I used to sneak out and go to the gas station. Now remember, cigarettes were where the money was at back then. What I used to do was loosen the top out of the roof, then at night, call my friends and say, ‘Yo, listen. I got some money for us.’ Every night, I knew what time the police would drive by. We called ourselves ‘The Little Rascals.’ We were bad, but ‘good bad.’ One night I had a plan. I said, ‘Everyone, wear black.’ This was in 6th grade, going into summertime, so really 7th grade. When I tell you - we cleared everything out of that gas station.

A.B.: The next morning I see the police at the gas station. I go do my normal thing. I ask them, “What happened?” The owner goes, “Someone robbed me.” I thought, “Now you know how I feel.” From that day on, me and my homies had so much money. We got fly. I had all the ladies, all the cute girls. Girls like the Cosby family - their parents were doctors & lawyers. My parents would say, “These ladies must like you, they’re buying you all these gifts.” Little did they know, I was buying things with my own money. This is how my life started. I started running around. I had money. We started going to the clubs.. in the 7th grade. I started hustling. We were going to all the hot spots in New York because I knew everyone.

J.E.: Which spots?

A.B.: The T Connection, Disco Fever, Harlem World, The Fonz. So many clubs. The Armory. The Rooftop. I looked like a baby, pulling up to these spots. From there, running into people, because I never drank, I never smoked. I ran into Kurtis Blow, Stephanie Mills, Jim McDaniels. And then, you know, it just started… middle school, high school. I’ve always been a people person since day one. My mom used to take me out shopping on Fordham Road. I always talked to people, dealt with people. I never had a problem being afraid to speak to people. And then, I knew who I was. I knew all the entertainment people you could imagine, Cold Crush, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, G-Man from the Krash Crew. Anyone back in those days, I knew. Back in those days, if you spoke about Mount Vernon, the first name that came out of anyone’s mouth from Harlem, Brooklyn, Bronx, was mine.

My man JB and I went to elementary school together. Growing up then, it was about respect. We would get beat by someone else’s parents and then go home and get a spanking. I got plenty of beatings. It’s why I never hustled in my area.

A.B.: I was hustling in high school. The principal - I don’t know what happened - but he was putting pressure on my sisters. There were 8 of us - I had three sisters. My two oldest sisters were good girls, but the principal put pressure on them. When I got up there, he tried to put pressure on me. I explained to him: “I’m the wrong one to put pressure on. I’m a little different.” He didn’t understand.. I got kicked out of my high school. I was sent to Julia Richman which was basically a “Hustler’s School.”

J.E.: And from there?

A.B.: I was arrested in Harlem and then they sent me to central booking. I had a red brand new jacket. By the time I left, that jacket was as black as a tire. There was a guy from Wall Street there. In central booking, you come the way you come. They stick you in the lion’s cage. This guy from Wall Street, he was in there, and these dudes.. I knew them from Brooklyn. I was sitting there talking to the guy. The next thing you know, they tried to run him down. I stepped in and said, “This is my man right here.” I didn’t really know him. I wouldn’t know who he is today. He would remember me because they were going to air him out.

A.B.: I was on a scooter and a car hit me. Nothing happened to the driver but I split my whole leg open. This one man was like an angel. He had a white Golf convertible, white seats, everything white. He stopped and put me in the back of his car and took me to the hospital. I could stick my hand all through the back of my knee. Never saw this man again in my life.

A.B.: In the hospital, my mom came to see me. The nurse asked her: “Who is your son? Why did so many people come to see him?” I was loved. Malcolm X’s daughter came to see me. My mom taught me to love and respect people. It took me so far. But, I came up in New York. Me being who I am, hard-headed, I’m my own man. I made a decision that I’m going to hustle. I went to DC, got off the plane. That’s where that thirty years in the penitentiary started. If I could do it all over - I would move different.

J.E.: In the movie Top Five, Chris Rock plays a comedian and JB plays his childhood friend, ‘Silk’, who looks after him. It reminded me of you.

A.B.: I loved the movie and how he played the role where he was holding Chris down, making sure everything went right. Chris didn’t have any problems, you know, he made sure that Chris never got locked up for nothing. I could relate.

A.B.: When we were shooting ‘Top Five’, I had a brain tumor. I was supposed to go on the road with JB. The next thing you know, I was seeing my eye doctor. He said, “go to the emergency room.” He said, “If you don’t go, it’s a wrap.” I went and they gave me emergency surgery. They took the tumor out of my brain. I stayed there for about two months. The doctor told me it was the biggest tumor he ever took out of a brain.

A.B.: After that, I wanted to surprise my mom. I asked my mom to walk me down the stairs one day. I said, “We’re going to get something to eat.” Danny Glover pulled up and she was so shocked, like, “Oh baby. You tricked me.” I meet so many good people. I give people the chance to meet people they admire. I did 30 years then picked up from where I left off, it’s so easy to show love. I stay my own man. It don’t matter what you did. If you can’t get that car, you shouldn’t be mad. You should be glad.

J.E.: Is there anybody else you want to shout out today?

A.B.: My cousin was Chris Lighty. He managed 50, Fat Joe, LL Cool J, A Tribe Call Quest and Mobb Deep. I was there where it all started with Kool DJ Red Alert and Violator. My birthday is May 7. Chris’s is May 8. This August will be 10 years since Chris died.

A.B.: My man is gonna put it in a book and shoot a documentary on my life. I don’t wanna rush it because the story’s not done yet. The story doesn’t end with me, because it continues on with my son.