If you’re Rick Williams and Roland Coit, life’s pretty good right now; Beautiful families, successful tap dancer, successful emcee-slash-DJ, successful entrepreneurs, and a shout out from Jay-Z during a performance at Eastern Michigan University, things couldn’t be better for the duo.

In part one of our three part interview with the Burn Rubber owners, Rick & Ro discuss everything from how they met to their process of acquiring Burn Rubber.

WHUTUPDOE!: How did you guys meet?

Rick: We met through Ro’s cousin, One Be Lo. I was doing some event up at Oakland University and Ro just came up to DJ for us. And that’s basically how we met and then we went on and did some other projects together. We were in a band together and just seeing each other through him coming to DJ and different things like that. The relationship kinda grew from there.
Ro: That’s pretty much it. Through that we [fostered our appreciation for sneakers when] he had seen some shoes I had on and asked me about ‘em and I had seen some shoes he had on. And he would come back like, “I was on Hypebeast, did you see this?”
Rick: Actually, he put me up on Hypebeast. I was helping him sale a pair of shoes on eBay, and he came by my crib and was like did you see these? I think it was like the Tiffany’s? He was in my crib and he pulled up this site. It’s when Hypebeast was bootleg. It was not what it is now. And then from then on I’ve been addicted to it.

WHUTUPDOE!: What year was this?

Ro: Maybe like 04?
Rick: We knew each other a long time before then, but that’s when I found out about Hypebeast. Then we started calling each other about shoes and stuff.

WHUTUPDOE!: What year was it when y’all first met?

Rick: I was in high school, so like 98 or 99.
Ro: Yeah, I had just got to college.

WHUTUPDOE: Rick, you’re a tap dancer. Explain about your background in tap dancing, to becoming co-owner of a sneaker boutique.

Rick: I guess being like a hoofer, that’s like a cultural group. It’s like its own group in itself – it’s like a culture. Everything started out in NY and it’s a lot of heritage with that. I guess I have always been attracted to things that, you know, everybody wasn’t on. Even with my own style, I try to do things classy things that other people aren’t really looking at. When they’re jumping on the new trends, I’m trying to go a different way. And that was one of the things that attracted me to Ro ‘cause he has his own unique style. You know what I’m saying? When you see him, he does his own thing. I guess it’s like a mind state that got me into this. Just liking sneakers, liking to have things that cats really aren’t on, and we just had that mutual love for the sneakers and the clothing that comes with it. And my mentor used to own Burn Rubber, and then I did the first website for the shop. So I kinda worked for Burn Rubber before. Then we took over and he got promoted and now he works for Nike.

To back up a little bit, [this] was around the time we were doing stuff in the band together. I think we was at somebody’s house and Ro was about to record and he was like “Man I’m thinking about doing a store.” And we both cut hair and we was talking ‘bout possibly cutting hair in the store and selling sneakers. So we was kicking it about that and that was years before [we took over Burn Rubber]. So, when that came up, I was like, “I can’t do this by myself ‘cause I don’t have bread like that.” But then I was like, “Who could I trust and who would I want to do this with?” So I just went hollering at Ro like, “Yo, you wanna do this?” And of course he did because around the time that he was gonna start his store [when] this actually popped up. So then he kinda fell back and then when the opportunity came, I just hit him up. And the rest is probably history.
Ro: Sug!
Rick: Shout out to Big Sug! Mike Sugameli, he’s a champion.
Ro: Esquire.

WHUTUPDOE!: He sounds like a champion.

Rick: He is. He’s our secret weapon, but y’all can have it.

I always just do me because I know nobody can do what I do. Nobody can do me. – Roland Coit

WHUTUPDOE!: So explain your background Ro, and how you came from emceeing, to DJing, to co-owning Burn Rubber.

Ro: Yeah, pretty much same thing with DJing, man. It’s a culture in itself – the whole hip hop scene. Just being fresh, being different. My whole thing with music and everything I ever did was to be me. Whether me was like everyone else or whether me was completely different than everyone else. I always wanted to be a leader. Basically, like all you can do is you. Growing up, the only person I wanted to be in my life was my cousin Lo – my favorite cousin. I can’t be that man. One thing that he taught me was like, “Yo, all you can do is you.” So that’s where I took my fashion, that’s where I took [my] music. Even when I get on the track with somebody like an eLZhi, or whoever, I’m not tryin’ to top that person. I’m just trying to do me to the best that I can do so I can stick out that way. A person like that is super lyrical, you know what I’m saying? I always just do me because I know nobody can do what I do. Nobody can do me.

[And it’s the] Same thing with the fashion and the way we run the store. With other stores, and I’m not pointing no other stores out what-so-ever, but not even within this kinda culture but stores period, y’all gon’ do what y’all gon’ do. Whatever we gon’ do, we gon’ do it. And we not waiting on nobody. That’s what the problem is with a lot of these people – they’re waiting to see what we do and they’re waiting to see what the next man gon’ do instead of just going out and living their life. But that’s the [gist] of it, man.

WHUTUPDOE!: So when y’all first started the process of taking over Burn Rubber, did it ever run through your mind that, “Man, we may be in over our heads.”

Rick: It was scary. I had to look at him a couple times like, “Dog, do you think that we can do this?” *laughs*

We basically convinced each other like, “Yeah, we can do this. It’s nothing.”

Ro: It was the look. Like, “Yo, I got yo back, you got mine.” It’s like [when] back in the day you’d go in like, “Yo, we either get jumped or we gon’ stand there and fight – or we gon’ run. Tell me now so I know.” And once we got to the point where we were paying such and such amount of money for an attorney, it was like, “It ain’t no turning back now.”

Rick: And it just went up and up. We sit back and look at it like, “You just can’t do that.” You gotta keep it moving forward. With me personally, my grandfather was very instrumental with me being here and the faith that he had in me and him pushing me like, “You can do it.” He was like, “Rick, you have always been a hustler. You can do it. You’re gonna be successful in this.” So, that also gave me that feeling [like I could do this]. It helped me go to Ro like, “We can do this!” I knew that if [my grandfather], someone who was there since I was born believed in me, I was like, “I can do this.”
Ro: And as far as the scariness aspect of it, it’s like at that point I had just got married [and] just had a daughter. I had a decent job. [It was] something I hated doing, but it was money on the table every two weeks or whatever. Like, just that fact that I’ma try something that I have never done before that may work, that may not work and it’s basically all on our heads? To completely leave [my job]? If I was by myself, no question! Let’s do it! But I got a wife AND a daughter. I’m trying to build, not trying to go backwards what-so-ever. My mindset was, “I can’t fail. It’s not even an option.” It’s no if. We gon’ make it happen. And then it’s a thing when it comes to goals. If your goal is to be Foot Locker, you’re gonna fail. But if your goal is to stay in your lane and be a sneaker store and do THIS? You can succeed. It’s just people have misguided goals or something. We had a goal and we knew what we wanted. We knew it wasn’t gonna happen that next month. It’s a lot of stuff [that goes into running this store]. [Take] the redecoration of the store. We had this plan a year and a half, two years ago, but it just happened. It took two years, but if you on the outside looking in you may be like, “Man they movin’ slow.”
Rick: It actually happened faster then we actually planned it. We set goals. There are certain things that we talk about, certain things that we want to do and I feel like those things evolve. ‘Cause if you would’ve asked us the first couple months when we was here, you know we had a different view on what Burn Rubber was gon’ be. If you ask us now, our goals are way loftier than they used to be because our growth was at a point where like we didn’t even expect it to happen this fast or like this. We didn’t even expect the store to look the way it does. So you don’t really know what God has in plan [or] in store for you.

Check out part two of our three part interview with Rick & Ro next Monday!

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