Dope Man
A kid from Kerr Village on Oklahoma City’s south side, with his mother, a judge’s one chance and a hustle. He got out of the game, went to film school, and brought the hood to the internet before YouTube. The American dream is real.
- 01The kid
Kerr Village, south side
He knows exactly where he comes from, down to the slave master’s name: his family line runs back to a girl freed from slavery at four years old and listed on the Choctaw Freedmen roll. His grandfather, Bishop F. Scott, was an entrepreneur. He grew up in Kerr Village on Oklahoma City’s south side. His father was in the penitentiary, so his mother raised him: no uncles, no money. He learned the game young: marketing, distribution, sales. The product was illegal, but it was still business. He caught a distribution case in high school, in the era of the harshest drug laws, and the judge gave him one chance. That’s where the name comes from: Dope Man.
- 02The turn
Mixing the D with the P
He took that one chance and never looked back. He started at OSU–Oklahoma City, had too much fun and failed some classes. Then the recruiter came around: U.S. Army, the drill sergeants, then 12 months in Bosnia with the ribbon to show for it. Same discipline as the corner, different uniform. He came home with education benefits, went back to OSU–Oklahoma City, made the honor roll, and went to film school. He had seen the other side of the dope game: the dealers were the biggest tricks, throwing their money away in the strip club. He wanted no part of that, so he took the hustle legal. Instead of cocaine, he sold videos: that’s the Dope Man. Instead of pounds of weed, he sold videos: that’s Chronic Central, named for the chronic, like Dr. Dre’s album. Then came Chronic Girls, and a Chronic beverage with its own commercial. The streets and corporate America run on the same rules. He coined the phrase “mixing the D with the P”: the dope man’s hustle with the pimp’s game. To straight-laced pimps that was out of bounds; if you pimp, that’s all you do. He did both, and put a camera on it. That was the beginning of pimpin’ ain’t dead. It moved to the web.
- 032002
It started with a drink
It started with the Chronic beverage. chronicbeverage.com came first, online before any of the shows. Then chronicgirls.com went live on 11 November 2002. Dope Man turns the camera on his own life: the block, his crew, the Chronic drink, whoever came through that week. Same hustle as the corner, new product. He took the hood, packaged it and sold it, online, more than two years before YouTube.
- 042003
Chronic Central Network
With Tim (@netdoc66) designing the look and the Flash header, one show becomes a network. Paying members stream DV-shot hood reality from Dope Man’s own servers. Back then, almost nobody in the hood had a website.
- 052004
Throwback Bitch
Pimpin’ P is Dope Man’s childhood friend. They reunite, and Dope Man gives him a show. throwbackbitch.com goes live on 8 March 2004, with D-Loc, King, Mayhem and Fat Mack around them. Then Hood Porn Pass, Hood Strip Show, Trash Man, Henny Red and Fat Tricks. More than 2,700 memberships sell.
- 062004–2007
Pimpin’ ain’t dead. It moved to the web.
Pimpin’ Ken credits Dope Man with explaining the internet to him around 2004, and says the two of them “did millions on the internet.” Dope Man got the game from Ken, and Ken put him in the book: Pimpology (2007) opens Law 2, “Get a Name in a Game,” with a Dope Man line, “A good name is like a credit card, you can use it when you don’t have no cash at all,” and chroniccentral.net is in there too. Ken introduced him to Pimp C at a hotel, with Pimp C’s money all over the table, and a few days later Pimp C invited him to Dallas. They saw the D and the P the same way. Ken tells the rest: Dope Man came in the room and said it first, pimpin’ ain’t dead, it moved to the web, and Pimp C used it after that.
- 072008–2009
Behind the mask
In 2007 Trash Man sent him his first video. Dope Man held it a year, then put it out in 2008, and the first call he got was from DJ Kay Slay; everything Trash Man released after that came through Hood Box Office. Then Dope Man went on camera himself, face behind a mask: it was the internet’s wild west, and the mask became his signature. On WorldStar from October 2008: $50K for anyone to bring him Jim Jones over the Trash Man and Stack Bundles controversy; Pimpin’ Ken and Z-Ro coming at him; his answer, showing how to mix the dope with the pimpin’; Ken firing back that if you sell dope you can’t pimp; a 46-minute webisode from the kitchen. The run passed five million views. His video with Ken set off 50 Cent’s Pimpin’ Curly character. By March 2009 Curly was telling people to go ask Dope Man and Pimpin’ Ken, and Hood Box Office answered with Pimpin’ Curly Goes to College, more than two million views on one episode. Then 50 left him a voicemail: “What’s up, Pimpin’? This 50. I seen your little clip on the web.” VladTV featured him in 2010. Chronic Central had grown into Hood Box Office.
- 08After
Bigger rooms
VladTV called him the founder of Hood Box Office in 2014. He filmed French Montana, Jim Jones and the Coke Boys, and he holds the Pimp C footage nobody else has. In 2017 he stood at Pimp C’s grave and made the case that Pimp C invented the cooking dance, and Pimp C’s widow, Chinara, confirmed his story of their first meeting. New York’s Forbez DVD sat him down twice in 2019, and he told them: “I looked at the internet like the streets.” In October 2014, as a film major at Oklahoma City Community College, he was one of the students Francis Ford Coppola answered in a master class, and he told the director of The Godfather what he’d been doing since 2002: shooting it live, like a movie. The college paper quoted him: “I learned that originality is very important.” The next summer Coppola came back to the same campus to shoot a movie live. The Chronic drink idea went to Thailand as Pig Boss.
- 09Now
The American dream is real.
The kid from Kerr Village is the chairman of Hood Box Office and a 32nd-degree Mason. His Tom Yum Lechon channel passed 100,000 subscribers and earned YouTube’s Silver Play Button. He runs an LLC and the Wendy Black Foundation, a registered charity in Oklahoma, and just signed a landmark deal with Too Real for TV. He’s a Black Republican who runs his business on Reaganomics: build at the top and let it trickle down. From a girl freed from slavery at four to her descendant running a streaming network with AI from the Philippines. If he can do it, anybody can.
He cleaned up.
See it for yourself.
Dope Man on the air.
The tapes.
They wrote it down.
“Pimpin’ ain’t dead. It moved to the web.”
The hustle is the business.
“All a drug dealer is… is an illegal, unethical entrepreneur. He’s not stupid.”
The people who become successful incorporated entrepreneurs were more likely to have broken rules as teenagers, and they earn more.
Dealers with no access to credit learn cash flow, image and branding the hard way. Executives could learn a thing or two.
Supply and demand, branding, leadership, risk and scale: the dealers he grew up around ran businesses. “You don’t have to sell drugs anymore.”
People who sold drugs or did time already have the problem-solving and organizing skills the digital economy wants. Train them and hire them.
Crime syndicates can be run like corporations, but success is more impressive when it plays by the rules.
Dope Man is the proof: same skills, legal product. He took the hood, packaged it and sold it on the internet.
On the record: the Young Dope Man entry in the American Pimp archive · his 46-minute WorldStar webisode, answering Pimpin’ Ken and the haters · Pimpin’ Ken and Z-Ro of Rap-A-Lot on the Dope Man, Trash Man, Jim Jones and Stack Bundles drama (WorldStar).