Word: dashed
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After a day at the office filled mostly with meetings and phone calls, Damon Dash, CEO of Roc-A-Fella Enterprises, hops into the rear of a Ford V16 party van with two underlings. There will be no party tonight. His driver is taking him to XM Satellite Radio's New York City studios, where Dash and his Roc-A-Fella crew put on a weekly talk show to plug his rap, clothing and film empire. Slouched in his leather seat, Dash grabs control of the CD remote and makes a selection. It isn't Roc-A-Fella superstar...
...much street cred here. But Dash doesn't need any. At only 32, he is CEO of a $500 million company. Beyond the fact that he's a hip-hop executive, Dash defies easy characterization. He loves the disco rhythms of Blondie. He has seen friends gunned down in his Harlem neighborhood, yet he attended an exclusive New York City prep school and played lacrosse in Connecticut. "Do you know how hard it was to come back to my neighborhood in penny loafers with khaki pants and a blazer?" Dash asks. And he recently produced comeback singles for the former...
...Dash's new business plan fits him like a Roc-A-Fella hoodie. This fall he started Roc Music, the first hip-hop company to produce rock, alternative and R. and B. He's flipping the turntables: over the past decade, pundits have lauded rap for "going mainstream" and finding suburban skater punks far from the smoked-out city neighborhoods where the music was founded. With Roc Music, Damon Dash is formally inviting rock into the hip-hop world. "I've had 20 albums go gold or platinum," he says. "Why can't I have that in rock, soul...
...many see Dash as the one who is inheriting Simmons' throne. "Because of Damon's ability to sit down at a table with corporate partners and quickly figure out what's necessary, he has even more potential than Russell," says Erin Patton, president of the Mastermind Group, a marketing consultancy that has worked with both men. "It's all about his timing...
Given the condition of the music industry, Roc Music's timing isn't ideal. Web piracy has helped cause a 14% drop in record sales since 1999. In mid-November, Dash's biggest star, Jay-Z, released what he says will be his final record, The Black Album. It topped the charts in one week, but if Jay-Z, just 33, doesn't pull a Michael Jordan and lay tracks once or twice more, "the Roc" could lose some cachet. "Damon's done a great job, but he's clearly been in the right place at the right time...