By VERONICA
CHAMBERS
There have been many manifestations of the ultracool black man, from Duke
Ellington's sophisticated swing to Miles Davis's icy panther stare, from Richard
Roundtree's ghetto stroll to Will Smith's getting jiggy with it. At 31, Damon
Dash, the chief executive of Roc-a-Fella Enterprises, is the godfather of a new
rebirth of cool. His uniform is as well known in hip-hop as Diana Vreeland's was
in fashion. Vreeland, the notorious Vogue editor in chief, always wore a black
turtleneck and black slacks. Dash always rocks a baseball cap, seldom wears more
than two colors at once, and never steps out in the same sneakers twice. Today,
he's in a red-and-white athletic jersey, jeans and red-and-white sneakers,
topped by a red-and-white cap. He likes Versace suits for formal occasions, but
finds laughable the idea of needing to wear a suit to be taken seriously. ''I'm
not trying to sound like a rebel,'' Dash says, ''but I feel that hip-hop is so
new there should really be no protocol about my culture. And if there is, it
should be my protocol.''
Dash has been a trendsetter since he was an up-and-coming producer trying to find the next big rapper. Back then, as he does now, Dash frequented a different New York City hot spot every night of the week. Before he ever produced a Billboard-topping record, to use a Dash term, his name rang bells. Dash's endorsement of a certain brand of Champagne was enough to send rappers to the mike spitting, ''Cristal!'' Kids repeated his ghetto edicts with the joyousness of the faithful. And if he now lives the life that most rappers only dream about -- private jets, exclusive Caribbean villlas, a mansion in New Jersey and a loft in TriBeCa -- it's because he never underestimated the intelligence of his audience. ''It's a tougher sell in the hood,'' he says, his voice Billy Dee Williams smooth. ''You have to pay attention to everything. It's got to be 100 percent real.''
Today, Dash reigns over an empire of No. 1 hits and one of the top-selling urban clothing companies in the country. Since 1995, sales of Roc-a-Fella products (CD's, clothes, videos) have totaled more than a quarter-billion dollars. Did I mention that he's now manufacturing vodka and directing movies?
Thrust momentarily into the spotlight last August when his girlfriend, the pop singer Aaliyah, was killed in a plane crash, Dash tends to keep things on the down low -- get the fortune; forget the fame. Yet there he was in Cannes this spring, the host of a party designed to court whole column inches of Page Six. ''I want my name to ring bells in the film industry, so they know I can deliver,'' Dash says. ''There's a big concern that urban movies don't sell in Europe, that they don't fill the seats in Japan. I know when I was making my first film, 'Paper Soldiers''' -- due out next year -- ''they were trying to make sure it appealed to the kids in Utah, without making sure that it would be validated in the hood.''
Dash knew a ton of international press would go a long way toward satisfying the money men back home, specifically Miramax's co-chairman Harvey Weinstein, who, according to Dash, had refused to release the Dash-produced ''Paid in Full,'' now due out in October. ''I thought it was time that everyone knew, in other than my genre, that I was a serious moviemaker,'' Dash says. ''I've produced four films. I wrote and directed 'Paper Soldiers.' I didn't feel that when I was walking into meetings, people were really respecting me as a moviemaker.''
Doctoral dissertations have been written about the significance of respect, and the consequences of disrespect, in the inner city and, by extension, in hip-hop. Dash is unique; he understands the game from both an inner-city and mainstream perspective. He grew up in East Harlem but attended a private school. When he was 15, his mother died. To honor her memory, he sent himself to South Kent boarding school in Connecticut with the small inheritance she left.
''I grew up in a lot of different places,'' he says. ''I always saw the bigger picture. I was around rich kids with country houses and private jets. No disrespect to those people, but I never thought they were super geniuses. I couldn't see how I wasn't going to have those things, too.'' What Dash learned from his private school years was that uptown was as intrigued with downtown as downtown was with uptown. If he could create a company that could capitalize on both of those desires, he couldn't lose.
Dash enjoyed moderate success as an underground producer and promoter, but when he met the rapper Jay-Z and formed Roc-a-Fella Records in 1995, the duo's profile soared. Six of their albums together have gone platinum. In the late 1990's, Dash and Jay-Z began to wear the then-moribund Iceberg label -- hardly the sort of faux preppy clothes you'd expect to be embraced by the boyz in the hood -- and according to Dash, the Roc-a-Fella endorsement sent sales skyward. When a meeting was set up to talk about a more formal collaboration, the retailer was less than grateful for all the free advertising that the Roc-a-Fella crew had provided. ''With Iceberg, I felt like they were looking through me,'' Dash says, a hint of indignation still in his voice. ''The vibe with the company was that they weren't sure they wanted to touch hip-hop. Or have us represent Iceberg. I said: 'Yo, I feel like we've tripled your sales. Help us do our own clothing company, or at least pay us to represent it.' I walked out of there like, I'm definitely doing Rocawear.''
It's fitting that ''Dash'' rhymes with ''cash.'' He started Rocawear in 1999; after a year and a half of business, the label was among the top-selling brands of sportswear for young men, with sales of $80 million. Since then, Dash has released a successful juniors and children's line.
While rap fans represent Rocawear's core demographic, the label couldn't meet Dash's expectations unless it expanded in scope. ''We wanted people who don't even know about Roc-a-Fella, who weren't fans of Jay-Z or fans of mine, to buy it, just because they like it,'' Dash says.
In the film industry, Dash hopes to work the same crossover magic. ''Death of a Dynasty,'' the film he is shooting when we meet, is a parody of his life: a long-term friendship between a businessman and his rapper partner who become enemies when they fall in love with the same woman. The plot twist is that it is all a business strategy, a cleverly orchestrated media war to hype the company's newest album. In the end, the fellas have the last laugh -- not just on the reporter they dupe into doing their bidding, but also on the entire genre they are spoofing. Robert De Niro may be Dash's favorite actor, but ''Casino'' this is not. No way is a woman going to get in the way of this hip-hop dynasty.
Despite the way he is always photographed -- a malevolent grimace plastered on his face -- he is a really charming guy. At his office, on a movie set, in the recording studio, he's always surrounded by a mix of business associates, rap superstars and childhood friends. And he greets them all with the same warm smile and open arms. He's the kind of guy who remembers to ask about your kids, by name.
Like most hard-driving young moguls, Dash survives on little to no sleep. ''Because of this movie, the early calls, I go to bed earlier than I usually do. But I'm also a social dude. I like to go out. There's always things to do. A lot of what I'm selling is my lifestyle. I need to be living it, to package it and market it. It could be Bungalow 8, Suite 16, Lotus. It depends on where the hot spot is. If it's not hot, I'm not going.''
For many people, language is a signpost of geography, class and education. Dash reads language differently; for him, it's a psychological Rorschach test that says reams about a person's sincerity, fears and dreams. ''I'm very, very meticulous about dialogue,'' he says on the set of ''Death of a Dynasty.'' ''I hate when slang is used in improper ways.'' As proof, he painstakingly corrects an actor he is directing who is having a hard time with a line that's supposed to be spoken, Ferris Bueller style, into the camera. Dash calls him over and says, ''I want you to go, 'Ha-ha,''' slipping into a sarcastic laugh that sounds like that old ''Saturday Night Live'' routine in which flight attendants wave a less-than-sincere,''Buh-bye.'' ''Your laugh should always be, 'Ha-ha.'''
Dash is a great businessman because he has a poker player's eye for people's tics. When a producer points out that one actor is always talking with his mouth full, Dash waves it off. ''He came to the audition with Twizzlers in his mouth!'' Dash says. ''That's his obnoxious thing.'' Everyone has something that reveals the way he or she does or doesn't want to be perceived, and Dash is always watching. Adam Moreno, the screenwriter of ''Death of a Dynasty,'' says that too many people make the mistake of taking Dash's backward baseball cap as the hip-hop equivalent of a farm boy with hay in his teeth. ''He'll laugh and play with you,'' Moreno says. ''But when he sits down to work on the script, he's really, really focused. He remembers everything, from what someone was wearing to what some guy in the corner muttered out of the side of his mouth. It's disarming. He's so casual. But he always knows what's going on.''
It's a Monday afternoon in Chelsea, at Eugene's, a nightclub that has been decorated to mimic one of Dash's favorite haunts, Mr. Chow's. Dash is sitting in the director's chair. His script supervisor, a young Latina woman, sits next to him. The subject is tennis. She wonders out loud if he's really as good as he says. ''I told you I took Serena to deuce,'' he says, casually dropping the Williams sister's name. ''Was she playing with her left hand?'' the script supervisor asks. ''Well,'' Dash says, revealing a charming grin, ''when she realized I was going to talk badly about her if I won, she turned it up a notch.''
After seeing countless pictures in which Dash never shows a tooth, much less a sense of humor, it's surprising how dazzling his smile is. It is red-carpet caliber -- humble and supremely confident at the same time. Dash calls, ''Action,'' and then, ''Cut.'' The banter continues. ''Would you be really upset if I beat you on the tennis court?'' the young woman asks flirtatiously. Dash lobs it right over the net. ''Upset, no,'' he says, smiling sweetly. ''Just surprised.''
Veronica Chambers, a regular contributor to O and Latina magazines, is the author of ''Having It All?: Black Women and Success,'' to be published by Doubleday in January.