In Conversation with Dame Dash

This month, host Louis Carr speaks with entrepreneur and record executive Damon "Dame" Dash.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
All right. I'm Louis Carr, founder of the Blueprint Connect
podcast and founder of the Blueprint Men Summit, and we're
live here in Chicago for the sixth annual Blueprint Man
Summit and I have as my special guest Dame Dash.
Welcome Dane. Thanks having me was having Thank you so much. So.
Our think this ship is being your best self, what

(00:24):
it looks like, what it sounds like, and what it
acts like. You have reinvented yourself over and over and
I'm assuming so you're continued to look for your best self.
Where are you at right now in that process? Um? Well,
to me, being my best self was trying to be
the best parents and being able to really raise my

(00:47):
child without having to fight, have a really healthy relationship
with the mother of my child, and see what that
was like. And um, I have a child now, he's
two years old, just about and I'm with the mom
rock Healcy's my partner. And being able to show my
other children with life with me looks like when I

(01:08):
don't have to visit them, and how much happier I am.
You know, that's been being able to art detect the
life where I can actually raise my child every single
day has been the biggest accomplishment for me, and I
couldn't even see having a child any other way moving forward,

(01:30):
you know, for being able to take a year off
to raise my kid and and give them the luxuries
and wake up and put into bed, that's been experience
in a world where there's so many influences. What are
some of the fundamental things you're trying to teach your
children as they kind of start their journey and go

(01:52):
through life. The fame thing is my kids are the
hardest to teach. They're like numb to me. But honestly,
it's just that the validation should not come from someone else.
The validation has to come from us and that we
don't need anybody. All we need to do is stick together.
So culturally I try to have and bring us together

(02:12):
and it's been the hardest and the thing one thing
I haven't been able to do as it yet, but
I'm still trying. And family has been hard for me
to have us stick together. It's so crazy how we're
programmed to think that other people have to validate us
with us that got a validate us, And that's been
the number one lesson is not to always believe what
you're told, because most of what we're told is meant

(02:33):
to control us period. As a creator and both into dream.
They got a dream, I teach them to dream. And
again you tell asking kids, you ask what their dream is,
is easier than asking an adult. Most adults don't know
what their dreams are. As a creator, For those people

(02:56):
out there who talk about the creative content has too
much influence on young people today, how do you sort
of go about trying to do your content in a
way that doesn't have negative impact on children. Well, I
try to teach within entertainment. So what I find is

(03:17):
if you tell someone you're teaching them, it's a trigger
for them to shut down. But if you teach them
why you're entertaining, and we give them the visuals of
exactly how life should look like, like what does it
look like when we win, not when we struggle it?
What does it look like when we have you know,
lineage and we can pass you know, our wealth to
our children like second and third generation. So you know,

(03:39):
I make those movies and then if I'm making a
movie about where I've come from, it's not to glorify it.
It's to showcase the problems that come with it, like
a painting full. So my intention when I made Paying
Full was for people to watch that movie and to
say I don't want to sell drugs, but also entertain them,
you know what I mean, And then leveraging my celebrity

(04:02):
and using that for the people that are really helping
us when people aren't looking like principles and OSG and
senators that are passing laws and lobbying force. Because at
the end of the day, that's the only way to
make change is to make it a law if you
want a legal change. But again, conveniently, I've never seen
or I was never taught how to lobby or past
a law in school. While that you just had to

(04:24):
make a change legally. Got it. So at the Whope
lunch and we just had an interview and you talked
about your next project, what's gonna be getting the Black
community to work together for change, impact and influence. Talk
about that, Well, again, I'm trying to bring us together.

(04:48):
I have the Commission UM and the and UH. The
OSG OSG is two UM principles that are from economically
challenge its environments. And I teach the principles how to dream,
how to be entrepreneurs, how to be the plug. I
leverage my celebrities so when they're doing things that they

(05:09):
can do it and and and I could put the
cameras on them when the cameras are on me. The
commission is the two therapists Melania Tis to give us
the therapy for unrecognized trauma in our language. When for
children one for adults. We have Dr Chris Parnell to
teach us how to be healthy, because health is wealth
and that's really all that really counts. We've got money

(05:30):
in the bank and you've got you weasing and you
can't do nothing. You broke. Um Senator any medals running
for me. He's out there right now and he's passing
laws and he's lobbying, and just in conversations I see change,
but more change the better. And he's also teaching us
how to do certain things. And Dennis mckeezie, Dr mckeezee,
the head of the O S g Um Uh do

(05:54):
It All, the first UH platinum selling artists to become
an elected official in Jersey, you know this Uprenell to
teach us about about religion and the right wording for
certain things. And Um Congressman Andre Carson Um and again
passing laws the big boys and you know, we come

(06:17):
together and we deal with things, you know. And then
also how to do things in web three. I got
my land Or network and I built a museum, so
showcasing how because web three is another way we can
monetize it gets created, uh, create creatives the freedom to
make money without a middleman if they understand it. And

(06:38):
also the tracking of the money. The way it's the transparency.
It makes life a lot easier. You could build things
and Web three that costs a lot less, but sell
them for a lot more. And also it's pandemic proof.
So also anything that I do moving forward has to
be pandemic proof. I've been part of it. Right now.

(06:58):
My company has com books out, children's books out, Disko
goes to Space, a children's television network which is like
TV on is like school on demand and intervals of
seven minutes and you go see it. Right now. We
got dramas out, movies A Prince to Detroit. We got
comedies out, um of Movies, um Stones. We have all

(07:23):
these different VERM Magazine, American News. All this is done
right now and independently and now It's just time to
make a network, get distribution, get those ads, sales. You know,
the subscription doesn't work too good. We know that you
gotta give it away for free. But if you don't
have a sales team, you ain't got nothing. We'll be

(07:47):
right back with more of my interview after this quick break.
You've mentioned two or three people running for political office.
How do we get our communities to understand the importance

(08:09):
of voting, whether it's mid terms, or whether it's national elections,
or whether it's local elections. How do we get them
excited and charged about running to the polls? Cool people
have to do it and lead by example. You have
to make it cool. It has to be uncool not
to vote. It has to be aspirational to vote. You know. Again,

(08:32):
the people that have celebrity to leverage it, leverage it
and put the light on the right people and the
right things. So yeah, uh, the senator through a um
a fundraiser at the Hard Rock Cafe Casino and um
Gary Ship was flit dancing around. Ship was flot I

(08:56):
don't know if I could curse him, sir, but at
the end of the night he was like, yeah, we
had a great time. But will all these people vote, Well,
the people that come to the party, the people that
are drinking the liquor and you know, want to dance
and want to be around the famous people, you gotta vote.
Will they vote? It's like you know, I have gallery

(09:18):
our galleries and they're the best parties, but no one
buys a thing ever that's at the party. So you
have to make sure if you're coming to the party,
your ticket is you vote, and you vote for the
person that you know we're gonna do things. So if
a person says they're gonna do things, they don't have
a plan for me, I don't want to hear about it.

(09:40):
If a person is just telling me the problems but
don't tell me the solutions, I don't want to hear
about it. So also when we make sure is there
any problem that we see, we have a solution for
it immediately. So you know there were these issues of
again in Gary, because I talked to me, is my
friend like my brother, so he'll be telling me what's
going there. Like you know, they're trying to pass the

(10:00):
Lord and they won't be able to teach black history
and Gary, and you know why because they say black
kids don't appreciate education, and they might trigger the white
kids because they're gonna know. And it was it was
a thing that we had to really sit down, We
have to really talk about it, understand. But the end

(10:22):
of the day, unless we come with the curriculum, we
can't complain because they're gonna be like, what's the curriculum.
They're gonna be too scared. So the thing is on
the other side, they think our solutions means not that
they can't exist no more. They gotta know what comes
with our solutions. Doesn't mean y'all gotta be scared. It

(10:42):
means you'll could actually breathe these You would rather ust
not be broken than be broken. But the problem is
when we're broke, instead of going to them, we fight
each other. We fight our families. You ever noticed when
when when these neighborhoods get regentrified, if a certain neighbor
Black people, I don't care how reag and I ain't
who ain't moving out there. White people go anywhere because

(11:06):
they know you nobody's gonna touch him. Period. It's like
no one will do nothing to him today. All right,
with us being broken, they should be wanting us not
to be broken, just like we don't want them to
be broke. Ain't nothing. You know what, the broke white
person is usually a racist. They're just overcompensing. Be like, damn,
he wasn't broken. You wouldn't be blaming it on us.

(11:27):
You wouldn't be scared, you wouldn't be mad because somebody
took your girl with up. But the only way for
them not to be any problem is for everyone. It's
pretty easy and understand that. You know, we ain't going
home with your accountable for what your grandparents did unless
you're still thinking like your grandparents. You see what I'm saying.
I gotta work together. So, Dame, we had way maker.

(11:49):
We believe that every successful person in life has had
a way maker at least one who was some of
the way makers in your life that helped you along
the way. Muhammad Ali I like Mamma, rely a lot,
and very disruptive and nice with his hands. And you
know he was courageous at the time when people were

(12:12):
Martin Luther King see a lot of people talk about
racism and be mad at it. He was outside. He
was right there. He convinced black people to actually put
their hands down and get water holes as a very
strategic way to bring awareness. I was like, how do
you convince people to do that? He was in the
church when they was outside banging and the governor wasn't
gonna let it. Like yo, I thought, she's gonna hold
me down, you know what I mean? Like he was

(12:34):
that was gangster. I was like, damn he was. Really
It's easy to talk about racism when you're not in
the racist town. But to be up in there with
racist and be up you know at that time, pretty gangster,
you know. Um Russell Simmons. I liked his lifestyle, you know,
the yoga and just breathing easy, you know, back then,

(12:57):
and understanding how to uh take a brand and make
it mean so many things so that when things one
thing is not working and the other is, it keeps
everything hot. I learned that from Russell. So final question,
pretend to be seventeen years old looking at the world
of day. What would damon dash dude? I don't know, man.

(13:22):
The world today has an Internet. I didn't have that
before social media, you know, close it. I don't know
what kid I would be. I think about that every day.
I'd be like, I wonder who I'd be in seventeen
right now, what would have influenced me? What I thought
would if that was, you know, the coolest because the
new cool kid is different. It's on one extreme side,

(13:43):
you gotta have a body to be cool, and that's
not cool, especially when the body is from your brother's body.
Another extreme is you have to be like tech savvy
and you know, you have to be good with the
web three and n f T s that that also
determines how cool you are now as well. I don't know.
I don't know. You know, you gotta play video games.

(14:04):
I don't know. You know, it's a different The cool
kid today is a completely different cool kid. But I'm
not knocking it. You know, the circumstances were different. Apparatus
is we're different. That people were different. It was a
different time. The drugs are different. So so when you
were seven, when I was seventeen, it was only crack
and coke, these pills and all this up. None of

(14:25):
that was it wasn't no gangs, and none of that
was happening in New York. So I really don't know
what would have influenced man. I really can't tell you.
I don't know. Okay, that's fine. I would have probably
stuck to whatever my family was telling me. But would
I'd be like a skinny jeans with the ripped Jane.
And when I have dreads and they be died, I
don't know what kild i'd be. I don't well. Brother,

(14:47):
We want to thank you for participating in the Blueprint
Men Summit in two. We hope that you've influenced a
lot of young people that were in the audience today.
Then we thank you for coming on the Blueprint can that,
Thanks for throwing this, thanks for having us. So it's
good to see a Google Black men in the room,
not fighting, being calm, wanting to change and be better.
And that's great and that's the energy. We want to

(15:09):
stay on and keep that energy. Thank you a minute