FUBU CEO Daymond John on how homophobia affected the fashion line in the ‘90s: “Nobody wanted to talk to us”

When we were coming up and we were doing clothing, hip hop was very homophobic. And prior to us coming out — of course Karl Kani, Cross Colours — the idea of a clothing designer was some flamboyant person in Europe. 

So, we were being almost harassed by some of our friends like, ‘Yo, [I] see y’all doing that clothing sh*t. Yo, y’all alright?’ And so we came up by ourselves because nobody wanted to talk to us.

Imagine you out there, one of our boys is moving kilos, the DMX of Belly, and we up there talking ‘bout, ‘Yo, I’m about to go make this strawberry pattern, son. You gotta see this hoodie it’s gonna make.’ 

We came up realizing nobody wanted to mess with us for a while until they started to hear we were doing $350 [million] a year.

‘Shark Tank’ star Daymond John speaking to the “Drink Champs” podcast about the criticism he and the co-founders of FUBU received from hip hop industry peers for getting into fashion in the early ’90s.