YouSaid · the spoken record

Dapper Dan

lines on the record: 84
first: 2019-09-02
most recent: 2019-09-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, I used to make everybody listen, what's it? Know when to hold them, know when to fole them, know when to walk away, and know when to run. Kenny Rogers never count your money while you're sitting at the table. There'll be plenty of time for counting when the deal is done. That was my philosophy.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't know where to go. I'm on an island. I didn't know where to go. So I started ripping up all the... All the receipts, and I'm on the beach, ripping up the receipts Next thing I know, they pull up on us and I didn't know. I didn't see freedom for nine months Man, you do not want to get in trouble in a foreign country. Please. Please. And so for nine months, all I did was read, read, read, because that was my out. Read, read, read. When I got out of that there, then I became more proficient at that.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We leave Barbados and we go to Venezuela. And we in Venezuela and some soldiers pull the guns out on us, right? And I'm looking at Calidon and this race is getting all excited. I said, damn, what's wrong? I don't even know what's wrong. I wanted to know why the soldiers was taking us into the bush anyway. He said, man, they was going to kill us and robbed us. So we got back in the car, we went back to the airport. That was the second warning. Now we get to Aruba, right Then all of a sudden, I'm trying to call my friend and I can't get them. And then I see these cop cars and ram. Then we figured it out. They're looking for us. Had already got one of the two friends”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I was a bank official. Me and my friends, all of us Muslim but broke away from ancient Islam for the same reason. I never accepted the concept of a biological devil. So it wasn't suitable for me in an ancient Islam. I couldn't accept that part. We come across this credit card scheme. So I'm the one who initiated the scheme. So now we go in country hopping. Catch a plane here. We go to St. Thomas, St. Croix, Aruba, Venezuela. He's spending these folks' money like you belong to us.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Con Game. You know what I mean? So these are all the things that we learn from a professional. So I definitely wasn't going to get involved with anything that's going to be detrimental to the community. So I said, you know what? Alma studied this paper gate. Yeah. Yeah, the paper gate.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let me give you an idea what you learn in the streets. You learn the paper game. That's credit cards and checks. You learn how to do that illegally, the paper. The con game. Everybody knows what that is. Everybody in here been con some kind of way.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We would have to study the Battle of Algiers where young people was kicked in the dope dealers down the steps and just cleaning up the city. And at that time, the drug dealers was considered the blood suckers of the poor. Those are the reasons that we were doing so bad. So the Nation of Islam was moving on the drug dealers. Panther Party was moving on them. Then father, the head of the 5%, all of them was zeroed in on the problem with drugs because that's what had the devastating effect. The reason that they were doing that because everyone during this time knew what Harlem was like before drugs. But the second generation that grew up with a drug culture don't understand What we will like before that happened. I refuse to go back and get drawn into that. So that's when I got into what is called”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, Muhammad Ali while he's training. So I said, man, I got to stay here a month and a half, wait for him to get well. So I said, you know what? I might just travel around again. So I stayed in Zaya for a while. Then I went to back to Lagos, Nigeria. And then from Lagos, Nigeria, I went to Liberia. And so Monrovia Liberia had a Fulani Taylor. And that's where the whole concept for me getting involved in fashion. I'm going to tell that story. So come back. I'm hustling again. It's like, as I mentioned earlier, you get these tools when you grow up poor and you use these tools. But as you move along, you start learning things. But in 1968, when I came back from Africa, I was in the Panther Party, Nation Islam. The Panther Party had got really radical.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, that was really interesting. I went back to Africa on my own in 1968 because I went with a group. And when we went to that group, it wasn't no hotel things. We stayed with families. We did livins, everything like that there, you know? So 1973, I went back because they had the Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, the Rumble in the Jungle. So my hustling skills kicked in. Wasn't selling drugs, but I was a professional gambler then. So I go back to Africa for the fight. George Foreman would get bust in the head. You know what I mean? And training. Fight and training.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You see gentrification don't kick in. So that's how radical we were and how advanced we was. And we were all young, all from 18 to 23. But we had so much energy. We had all these revolutionary and these Dr. Ben Jakaman, all these scholars coming in and talking to us.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you go to the library and you read 40 acres in a mule and you can see that the Schoomberg Library on microfilm and you see the things that we were talking about. To give you an example, I wrote an article in 1968 when they was building the state building, the state building in Harlem. In 1968, I did a study on the state building and found out what this plan was about. Constant Baker Montley had mentioned that plan earlier, but the state building was the first building they was going to put in Harlem. To start gentrification taking place. So I had got a prototype of that state building, and I put it on the front page of 40 acres of the mule, and I made it look like a Trojan horse. You know, to let people and hall them know. And this is 52 years ago. To let people in Hollum know that gentrification is coming up.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We never found out who he was. I guess he didn't want the state department to So when we get to the first leg of the trip in Ghana, Ghana, our passports disappeared, right? And the passports turned up at the State Department, at the United States Embassy. So we go there to pick it up. We didn't find out till later on that it was the CIA agent following us around. 1968. Young black radicals wasn't going to Africa.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They withdrew the reservation, but then a black parenthesis put up with the money at the last minute so that we can go on this trip to Africa.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was fortunate for me. I'm in Harlem. Martin Luther King is alive. Malcolm Max is alive. All that energy. I go to Africa. I'm in Ghana. Kwame Nukuma with the Pan-Africanism movement that just got disposed. Then I get to Tanzania. The area is governor is the president. And I get to Kenya, Jommu Kenyatta. So I got all this energy and we're studying African history. I stayed in Tanzania. I stayed at Curasini International School where they were training South Africans to fight in South Africa. So we were like a really radical group. And even Urban League had gathered money, had gotten Pan American Airlines to donate the airfare for the seven countries we was going to visit in Africa to us. And when we got to the airport, the State Department, United States government, didn't know how radical we were. So when we got to the airport”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He never elaborated on that. So when I was going to Africa, I went looking for what he was talking about. You know what that took a little bit of the anger away and gave me like a focus here. I'm going to find out what's wrong because whatever it is that's wrong might be what's wrong with me. And when I say me, us. So I had to figure out a way to get to that. So when I went to Africa, I traveled”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I wanted to go to Africa. Dr. Andy Clark I want to find out what happened. So Dr. Henry Clark said one day he said at the paper, right, you know, we tend to think of ourselves as victims all the time. So one of me and one of the students, we always have these conferences every week with a different scholar, Dr. Henry Clark, Dr. Ben Jakaman, all kinds of scholars used to come through. And so Dr. Henry Clark, he's the one who mented Malcolm. So he's at the paper one day and one of the students like myself on the editorial board asked Dr. Henry Clark. He said, if we are the first people on the planet and we're the chosen people, why are we going through what we're going through today? And Dr. Henry Clark says, that's because of a transgression we made before Europeans came into our life.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was 1967 when I got out, I went back to school. I was 23 then now. I went back to school, high school. That was like murder, being on the bus, going from home. Hell yeah. Oh man, because I'm seeing the young kids that I'm going to high school with doing that, making mistakes and mistakes I'm making. I'm coming out of it and I'm seeing them go into. Oh man, it was hell. And I started writing for a newspaper 40 acres in a mule, a student newspaper. And then I got real revolutionary and I said, you know what? I had from writing for 40 acres in the mule, I was offered a scholarship over the summer of 68 as an intern at Columbia University. Either I take that or I can go to Africa and study in Africa with 40 acres of the mule.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a different time. Like Malcolm X today, the Malcolm X these young people in here know today at the time was there was a schism that was taking place in the nation of Islam, right? So to the Boga people when Elijah Muhammad was still alive, Michael X was considered a traitor. Martin Luther King was considered an uncle Tom. So history has showed that that wasn't true. It's just that these men chose a path that was the right path to choose. They were all like idolized them because people didn't really know what happened. But anyway, the story is like when I saw that respect he got, I said, I might go to jail again, but I will never go to jail for doing anything like that to my people. And that's what changed my life. So that was”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We never used to have to roll our doors. Nobody locked their doors until the drug epidemic hit. And that changed the whole complexion of Harlem. And I got caught up in that because of the lure me and all my brothers. My sisters never did nothing wrong, but me and all my brothers got caught up in that. And I remember it was June 19, 1967. I got busted for selling drugs. I got out three months later with probation September 27, 1967. One of the assassins alleged assassins from Malcolm X was in there, Johnson 3x Butler, right? And what I observed, he was in lower A1, I was in upper A4, so it was tears, and we had to pass by. And I saw all the respect that this man used to get. And the way they treated him”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nowhere near like the drugs. Then in the 60s, when the drugs hit, and then we start seeing all the drug dealers with all this money, all the shiny things that we wish we had. And then we started drifting away. drifting away and then a drug it went from a street game the street thing went from a number culture to a drug culture and that's when Harlem changed”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, he was a handyman. They had him doing like Ruddin Evans. But he hooked up with the... The magician told him all these kind of tricks with the cards. So Eddie Henry taught me them tricks. So those tricks helped me out later on in life. You all heard a lot about them tricks later. So anyway, the harlem that I grew up in, I'm the last product of a generation that sow a harlem without a drug epidemic. I'm growing up in the 50s. The drugs epidemic didn't hit to the 60s. So the first part of Harlem, you see, was like numbers, the number game policy that used to take place, and everybody used to bet on numbers. And it was like, they had people who was like, had maybe drinking problems, but they were functional.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When they gave their poker game, and I used to stay up every time my father win a hand, this is the first time I was exposed to gambling. Every time my father went a hand, he took all the change and put it in my pocket. I'm just standing there. I couldn't stand up no more and take it away. So the first exposure I got to anything was like gambling. And I became real proficient like that. But I had an uncle, Eddie Henry, just him and my mother, right? Eddie Henry had ran away When he was young and he had joined the circus and was one of them guys joined the circus.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Life is about the tools that you get based on how you come up, you know? It was seven of us, me and six siblings and my mom and dad and three had three bedrooms, you know. So my father in all the relationships, like we have people, that's aunts, these so-and-so. But, you know, it's just that it wasn't blood relationship, but communal relationship that you take on those titles, right? But the ones that were in my neighborhood, they were all hustlers. My father's the only one wasn't a hustler, right? But my father used to have poker games, what we call rent parties, a rent party. A rent party is a circle of people. Just one week, this one giver party have a poker game, you know, have Red Rice, chicken, collard greens, and they sell dinners, you know, like that. So when my father...”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I saw the tears well up in my father's eyes. And he said, boy, don't you know you could read, boy. You can read. But I'm saying how emotionally getting, I'm seeing the tears. But what happened was my father only went to the third grade and he had to teach himself how to read. Because you got to know during times of slavery back then, you know, it was against the law to teach the slaves how to read. And my father only got to go to the third grade. So he had to teach himself how to read. And from that point on, I learned something. I said, man, no matter what happened or what kind of fix I get in, I'm going to read my way out of it.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But my I told her that Thurman wait outside the window. And I would take this clothes and I drop my side the window. And I go in the hallway and change them, right? But then by the time I'm 13 now, right, my father's going to take me to get my first suit. I'll never forget. No. No, 13, I was already hustling about 11 years old. So we're going to Ripley department store. And my father's going to buy me a suit on credit, right? And I said, wow. I saw charcoal brown suit with pinstripes. Say, daddy, you want to get me? I said, yeah, okay. He said. He going to pay on credit. But I had just learned mathematical equations to tell, you know, interest time rate and see how much you're going to pay. And then when I read the contract, I said, Daddy, don't buy it. This is going to cost you. They're going to charge you two and a half times what the suit worked. So we're coming down the steps from the store. And this is the moment that changed my life. And we coming down the steps from the store. And my father stopped me. And he looked in my eyes.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I will never forget that. But, you know, as you know, all our clothes was hand me down, right? But my brother, right older than me, he always got the first pick You know, so he had the best clothes from Goodwill, sor So I wanted to go to school, man. I wanted to be flying. I really wanted to be sharp as I could stand up front of the school with the girls and everything in front of the candy store. But my brother wouldn't let me wear his clothes, right? So I had to sneak him out. And he got to the point where he would sit by the door where I had to go out. So I couldn't walk out with his clothes on. So what I did, I had my two.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I come on saying, Mom, my feet is killing me. Mom, my feet is killing me, man. And before my mother could say anything, my brother was there. He said, don't worry, Mom. He said, come on. I go with my brother and we walk four blocks. And I never forget we walk. Four blocks from 109th to 124, four or five blocks. It turned the corner, and it was a good wheel there. So we were in the goodwill. And my brother said, you see any shoes you like? I saw something. Nice mahogany split toes with the tassel. I said, I like them right there. He said, try them on. I said, they feel good. You say, okay, pick your shoes up. I pick my shoes up. He said, put them in the rack. Put him in the rack. He said, let's go.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yeah, that was like Growing up, like even a neighbor down the street from me used to laugh at us a lot because they was just doing slightly better than us. And a lot of the times I had holes in my shoes, man. So we used to put paper in our shoes to keep our feet from touching the ground. Then we got more innovators we stopped using linoleum because it lasted. But one day, man, my feet was hurting so bad because the borders of the shoe could not no longer hold linoleum in, right? So I think I was like about eight.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, when you look at What happened to With the slave trade. First, you get captured. I read in before the Mayflower, they talked about sharks used to pick up the slave ships on the coast of Africa and just follow them across the ocean. And that's how many slaves were thrown off. So you had to survive that middle passage. Then you then your family had to survive 300 years of slavery, right? And then you had to tolerate the Jim Crow. So I learned from the people who were the best hustlers and people like my fathers who were The best workers because my father worked 15 years straight For the city, and he was never absent, and he was late once. And that was the great snowstorm of 47”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it's like it's hard to imagine because we tend to think that slavery was a long time ago. But, you know, it's been like maybe 153 years. And my father left home when he was 12 years old. My father was born in 1898. That's 33 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. My father's father was born a slave and laid a free. So when my father came here, this is the Reconstruction era in 1910 when my father came to Harlem. He was 12 years old, but at 12 years old and 10 and 12 years old, young blacks was leaving the South because they didn't want to put up with that. And that's what made Harlem so unique in every aspect what made Harlem unique is that we had the most revolutionary spirited people that you could find, the ones who were not going to tolerate Jim Crow and”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And today that still goes on today. Like the big churches on Sundays, they still serve meals. But, you know what? The most significant thing about Harlem that you won't see today in Harlem was that I grew up with the diversity you know i didn't even realize how diverse harlem was until i began to travel like places like detroit chicago and i always had different ethnic groups as friends of mine you know and i think that cultural part that like gumbo of of culture was what made harlem the way it is”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the most warming thoughts that I have with Harlem then is like 11 o'clock Sunday morning, 11 o'clock Sunday morning, you see everybody leaving out their houses, everybody converging on the church. My family went to the church. We had a little storefront church we used to go to. The congregation was like 23 people and 18 of us was in the same family. Yeah, we called it a hallelujah Sunday, even though we was poor. I think nothing made me feel as good as, you know, leaving church on Sunday. We was poor. So food wasn't plentiful back then, but we used to say, you know, after church, you get them meals.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it wasn't many, but they were there. All the neighborhoods was comprised of mostly in Harlem, even though it was sectional. You see this neighborhood here, everybody be from a particular part of the south and next neighborhood, a particular part.”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the Holland that I grew up in was a village. Now the Harlem you find today is like a little city. The difference between a village and a little city is like I grew up. I'm the first generation of the great migration that came from the south. So my mom and my pop got to Harlem. They were still... And this sounds crazy. There were still horses and buggies in the street”
2019-09-02 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source