A DASH OF TROUBLES – After Splitting with Jay-Z, rap mogul Damon Dash is down, but not over
Damon Dash only had his ass whupped once, but he’s still talking about it.
The fight happened three years ago, when he and some pals got jumped by a gang of street thugs in Paris.
“There were about 17 of them, and I caught a good four or five,” as Dash remembers it.
“But then this kid caught me on the head twice with a blackjack. Bang, bang!”
Dash still has a scar on his head, but the smacks left a deeper mark.
It doesn’t matter that Dash sits atop a $350 million-a-year empire that includes rap music, the fashion label Rocawear, ProKeds shoes, Arma-dale vodka and America magazine.
He’s still vulnerable.
And to this day, Dash keeps the scuffed Nike sneakers he was wearing during the fight in his office, under a Plexiglas museum case labeled “Paris Street Incident, 2002.”
“They remind me I’ve always got to stay on point,” Dash says. “Anything can happen.”
Four months ago, Dash discovered just how true that is, when he lost the cornerstone of his empire – Roc-A-Fella Records itself – to his partner Jay-Z.
The pals had been drifting apart for a while – “Jay probably felt we were making too much money off of him,” Dash says.
And last December, they split for good after selling Roc-A-Fella to its parent company, Island Def Jam, which named Jay-Z president of the whole operation.
Dash made more than $3 million on the deal, but he lost several of Roc-A-Fella’s top artists, including Grammy winner Kanye West.
Adding insult to injury, the Def Jam brass surprised Dash by giving the Roc-A-Fella name to Jay, forcing Dash to form a new label, the Damon Dash Music Group.
But he isn’t sweating it.
“I’m a hustler,” Dash says, fingering his Parisian scar.
“I’ll make money regardless.”
THE COMEBACK
At 33, Damon Dash is starting over, leaving Roc-A-Fella behind and building his own brand name.
But Dash has never been shy about self-promotion.
To some of his detractors, he’s a publicity whore who loves to see his name on Page Six with society friends such as Nicky Hilton.
But it’s not all about ego.
“Being a media darling is smart business,”says Fahiym Ratcliffe, editor of the hip-hop magazine The Source.
“It gets the product out there, and that will help Damon since he’s lost Jay-Z.”
Recently Dash has been all over TV and radio promoting the first CD from his new label, “The B. Coming” by Beanie Sigel, who isn’t around to represent himself because he’s in jail on a weapons charge until this summer.
Last Tuesday, Dash sat in his top-floor corner office in the Fashion District, watching himself on TV.
At one point, an assistant rushed in to say Hot 97 was playing another Sigel cut, “Bread and Butter.”
“There’s our third single!” Dash crowed, slapping the palm of his old friend DJ Clark Kent.
Pretty soon, the meeting had turned into a party.
Dash put on a track called “Operator,” from the posthumous Ol’ Dirty Bastard CD that will be his company’s second release in May.
Everyone bobbed their heads while Dash and Kent conferred over Rocawear business – specifically, sketches of a proposed ProKeds sneaker that will be the colors of the Jamaican flag.
“You’ve got to have Trinidad if you’re going to make it on Flatbush Avenue,” Kent counseled.
“If you don’t have Trini, you’re wack. Man, even Haiti is bigger than Jamaica now!”
Dash raised an eyebrow and made a note – so don’t be surprised if you see black, white and red Trinidadian Keds in the Flatbush Dr. J’s this summer.
CRACKING HEADS
“What’s up on the street?”
It’s one of Dash’s favorite questions, and he asks just about everyone, from Rocawear employees to the guy stocking green-room snacks at a TV studio.
Looking cool on the street is essential to Rocawear’s success.
But if anyone knows that urban market, it’s Dash, who grew up in Harlem with an absent father and a mother who died when he was 15.
He was a scrapper from the start.
“This might surprise you, but I’ve always been a dude with a slick mouth,” Dash says.
“I had to learn to fight.”
He kept scrapping even after he went away to a preppy boarding school in New Jersey.
“Can you imagine how tough you have to be to go back to your block in a pink button-down shirt and penny loafers?” he asks.
In the early ’90s, Dash got started by managing rappers, most notably Brooklyn’s Jay-Z, whom he sought out after hearing the rapper freestyle on a tape with Big Daddy Kane. The pair started Roc-A-Fella after every label in town passed on signing Jay-Z to a contract.
Outside the rap world, most people first heard his name in 2001, when his then-girlfriend, the rising star Aaliyah, died in a plane crash.
Now Dash lives in TriBeCa and has a family with his movie-star-gorgeous girlfriend, Rachel Roy (a fashion designer with her own Rocawear line), their 4-year-old daughter and his 13-year-old son from another relationship.
He is living the high life, but he still operates by “the ideals and codes of the street,” he says.
“A certain level of respect has to be maintained.”
Perhaps that’s why he described last Tuesday as “a pretty quiet day,” despite an altercation during a one-on-one meeting, when Dash suddenly yelled, “You’re supposed to be f—ing looking out for my interests!” before closing the office door so a reporter couldn’t hear.
The shouts were audible anyway.
“I don’t f—ing work for you!” the unseen offender responded.
“You wanna bet?”
“Yeah, I wanna bet, you crazy motherf—er!”
GOING HOLLYWOOD
Though music is the most visible part of Dash’s empire, it’s hardly the most lucrative.
The real money is in Rocawear, which grosses around $350 million a year, 10 percent of which is profit that Dash splits equally with three partners, including Jay-Z.
Dash does music for the fun of it, and as a way to promote Rocawear.
Now he’s doing the same with movies.
Dash has produced several films, including such art-house indies as Kevin Bacon pedophilia drama “The Woodsman” and a new thriller with Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding Jr. called “Shadowboxer,” slated to premiere at May’s Cannes Film Festival.
Meanwhile, he’s directing his own movies, starting with the comedy “Death of a Dynasty,” which was made in 2003, but finally gets its theatrical release on April 29.
Critics were tough on “State Property,” an urban gangsta pic starring Sigel and a posse of other Roc-A-Fella artists that Dash produced in 2002.
But despite the critical disdain, “State Property” has become a hit on video.
In 2002, Dash built on the success with a line of State Property clothes, and now he’s continuing the franchise with a sequel that hits theaters April 13.
His success has made him something of a guru for those who want to follow in his footsteps.
Last Tuesday, Clark Kent brought in a fashion designer from Philadelphia to meet with Dash about an urban-oriented brand he was starting. Dash offered him some advice.
“People are going to want to know the history,” Dash said. “Who’s wearing it? You’ve got to create the story.
“You’ve got to live the story.”
WHO’S WHO IN THE HUSTLER’S ORBIT
* Ol’ Dirty Bastard: Dash will release the late MC’s CD in May.
* Kanye West: The Grammy winner chose Jay-Z over Dash.
* Jay-Z: The ex-partner
* Kevin BAcon: Star of Dash-produced indie flick, “The Woodsman.”
* Helen Mirren: In another Dash indie production.
* Joe Pesci: Dash pal and movie-biz consigliere.
* Patricia Field: Works with Rocawear.
* Charlotte Ronson: Used to have Rocawear line.
* Lizzie Grubman: One of his many Park Avenue pals.
* Rachel Roy: Mother of his daughter.
* Aaliyah: “I spent time with an angel,” Dash says of the star, who died tragically in 2002.