Long story short – this feature has been a long time coming. Email to email, meeting to transcription (which admittedly, has taken us a minute!) to publication, our interview with the homie Emeka from the good ol’ tenth brigade is overdue, but I think you’ll agree was worth the wait. Particularly in the forthcoming parts, there’s science droppage like freshman year. Gems like clumsy jewelers. Word to Elsworth! So! We got up with Emeka in a fav downtown spot of the astreet fam, which shall remain nameless as we’d like it to remain our favorite, and chatted at length about everything from computer science to strip clubs to rappers posing as their own managers via email (hilarious, by the way), and naturally, east new york. Yea doggy, it’s not a game. And, in case you ain’t peep the title yet, this is just part one. Dig in, and stay tuned.

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**After chatting briefly about the challenges of collaborating with different companies, and strip clubs, Emeka and Scheme order with the waiter. Scheme orders a water. Emeka gets a sprite. Scheme cancels his order of water.

Emeka: You being extra cheap today! You goin’ in!

[both laugh]

Emeka: You like lemme be as fruuugal as possible.

[laughs]

AS: Nah man (I just saw you eating) mad bread so…

Emeka: Oh oh that was on my part? You were being nice to me

AS: Tryin’ ta, was tryin’ ta

Emeka: I didn’t know fasting involved not drinking water though

AS: Well it depends for some people. Some people do the liquids, but I’m tryin’ to be…

Emeka: Totally no intake of anything

AS: No nothin’, sunup to sundown

Emeka: Wow…that’s uh…actually, I’m not even gonna say that’s commitment ’cause I do that shit everyday

[both laugh]

AS: Yeah that’s the thing. I be fasting on accident all the time. You do it on purpose though, you think about it

Emeka: You think about it. Like “I’m hungry as shit!”

AS: Exactly, exactly

Emeka: When you so busy you don’t even get a chance to sit down and eat, you don’t even realize it until the end of the day or the next day

AS: It hit me at like 5 o clock like oh shit, I have not eaten since like…

Emeka: Right. But it’s not like it’s a horrible thing. You feel like it’s an accomplishment. You’re like “yo I got through a whole day without eating, that’s crazy!”

[both laugh]

AS: Word. So I wanted to ask you – Emeka (e-mee-ka) Obi, what kind of name is that?

Emeka: Well it’s Emeka (e-meh-ka)

AS: It’s what?

Emeka: Emeka (e-meh-ka)

AS: Sorry

Emeka: Yeah, it’s Nigerian

AS: I suspected that. My boy’s name is Obi.

Emeka: Yeah. My father’s Nigerian and my mother is from Georgia.

AS: Were you born in America or were you…

Emeka: I was born here in New York. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York…I mean, I think about it sometimes…

AS: Yeah, what was it like in the household?

Emeka: Sometimes…it was a little crazy. Well, it’s not crazy actually. My household, actually. Everybody has called me Theo Huxtable.

[both laugh]

Emeka: In school, when I was growing up, no one had two parents in the home. So everybody called me Theo Huxtable. My father was an accountant, and my mother’s a microbiologist.

AS: Damn

Emeka: Yeah. Still I grew up in East New York, Brooklyn in the most hood of all hoods

AS: That’s like Pennsylvania Ave, 3 train

Emeka: It’s close to there. And you know even close to there Pennsylvania Ave 3 train is pretty fuckin’ wild for the night.

AS: I know

[both laugh]

AS: This I know

Emeka: I grew up close to the border between Brooklyn and Queens. So the city line…close to like, New Lots. Oh, I lived a couple blocks away form Pink Houses Projects and Cypress Hills Projects.

AS: Gotchu.

Emeka: So I lived right in between that.

AS: Did you have siblings, or were you an only child?

Emeka: Two sisters. One older, one younger. And um, it’s crazy because my parents were I guess, scientific professionals…and the rest of us had creative leanings. My older sister is the editor for all the for dummies books.

AS: For all of them?!?

Emeka: For most of them. So, when you have eggplant farming for dummies or some shit like that, my sister had her hand in that book. Which is crazy because she can’t tell you anything about that specific subject, like she doesn’t retain that knowledge, but she works..

AS: Prolly when she’s in the midst of it

Emeka: Right. I be like yo, so I’m having this problem with photoshop, and you just put out the photoshop for dummies book. Can you tell me…(She be like) “Boy! Get the book!”

[both laugh]

Emeka: “You got a problem. I got a book for that. I can sell it to you.”

AS: “You can buy it from me!”

Emeka: I remember one time she heard that I wanted to learn the guitar. She sent me learn the guitar for dummies. That’s my gift every year. I get random dummy books.

My younger sister, used to work from Blacksmith Management.

AS: That’s Kweli’s thing?

Emeka: Kweli’s shit. She used to be Kwelis immediate manager person. Now she works for Atari.

AS: Works for Atari? What are they up to?

Emeka: You tell me!

[both laugh]

I ask her all them time she’s like “Iono”

AS: In school, what clique would you say you were in? Outcasts? Cool kids?

Emeka: In high school? I was definitely an outcast.

AS: Yeah?

Emeka: But I see that as…you know when you’re in school all the non cool kids, all the nerds and shit like that, eventually they become the cool kids when they are the iconoclast of the adult set, you become…you’re cooler than all of the kids that ran in packs when (you get) older. I find that coming out of college, or in college, everybody ends up in…well for my school, I went to Brooklyn Tech. So in Brooklyn Tech, everybody either went to an Ivy League (University), like Princeton, Harvard, blah blah blah. Or went to a black college; Howard, Morgan, whatever. And people coming out of black colleges always seem to have the same mindset and always end up together. They always work in the music industry or the urban fashion industry or something like that. It’s very cliqueish and weird in the way that it seems to be all about money and not about any creativity.

AS: Was black college not an option for you?

Emeka: Nah. It wasn’t. When I was applying to colleges I was like I’m not applying to a black college because that’s not how life is.

[both laugh]

AS: That’s real talk.

Emeka: You know what I’m saying. Life ain’t all black. And if I’m going into the workplace, I’m going to be working with white people definitely. So I cant put myself in a four year mindset that I’m only going to be working with black people ’cause then I’ll be a disgruntled employee coming into the workforce. I gotta learn how to cohabitate and work with white..

[scheme interrupts] Different cultures

Emeka: Yeah different cultures…different cultures. But you know, in college that just mean white people.

[both laugh]

AS: Word. So where’d you end up going to school? I’m just curious. Or college rather. You said Brooklyn Tech for High School.

Emeka: Brooklyn Tech for High School. I got into a little trouble in Brooklyn Tech. When I was in high school, I got into a little trouble that made my parents say they don’t want me leaving the state, you know, so…I went to Brooklyn College.

It’s weird ’cause I went to Brooklyn College for a year, I went for accounting and then…I hated it. And then I went back for economics. That’s not too far from accounting so, I dropped out of school.

AS: After how long?

Emeka: After semester and a half. And then I went back for computer science. And then I realized that um, you have to do some math courses in order to read computer science and I managed to fumble my way through computer science and I ended up getting out of school and I worked as a computer technician for about two years. And basically being a computer tech means teaching people how to use ctrl alt delete and telling people to plug in their computers.

[laughs]

So…that kind of sucks so, I decided that, that shit sucked and I’m not gonna do that shit anymore. I guess this goes into how I got into marketing. I ended up taking retail jobs ’cause I said fuck it I just wanna be happy ’cause at that time when I was doing computer tech shit, I was hanging out at Stussy and Supreme with all my friends there, you know what I’m sayin? And I was like, idealistic…the kid that wanted to eventually own his own shop and shit like that so I would just work retail jobs. I started working at Triple Five Soul and that was cool, I did that for a while. And just various retail jobs from there. I worked at Barneys for a little while.

Then I ran into my good friend Will who is currently the manager at Stussy, (and he had just) started working at Nom De Guerre. So he became one of the co-owners at Nom De  Guerre and he was like yo we’re opening the shop…and my partner, he’s going away to Japan for a while, he has a shop in Williamsburg. He needs somebody to watch over the shop. So I was like cool I’ll do it. So I went and I watched over the shop. They liked me, so they brought me on (and I) started working at Nom De Guerre. And from there you know, working at Nom De Guerre, I got a lot of connections, met a lot of people. And everybody is like, super cool you know. I worked there for like 3 years and met a lot of people. And you know…just hanging out downtown.

And, I had bought this shirt from Union, where I would go everyday looking at new shit like, that’s where I got all my culture needs. I wanna be that dude (that always has) the coolest tee shirt on or whatever. So, I bought this shirt from Union. It said “Searching” and it had all these sneakers on it and shit like that.

So one day I’m walking down the street and this kid runs up to me like “yo, where’d you get that shirt at?” I said yo I just bought this shirt from Union. He’s like “we make that shirt. My company makes that shirt.” Alright, alright cool um, thanks…for…making the shirt. It’s cool. I’ll…talk to you laaater…

[both laugh]

So I walk away or whatever, and it ends up I serendipitously keep running into him over and over again…I would be at trade shows and shit like that, (and) I’d run into him, whatever. I’d be at parties, I’d run into him, whatever. And he’s like yo, you know a lot of people, you know mad people. Come meet my partner, my boss.

So I go and I meet Scott, who is the owner of 10 Deep.

**part deux, coming soon**