West Coast celebrity jeweler, Ben Baller has been in the game for a minute in different positions from the music industry to fashion to now moving them shiny thangs. Yet, it’s his outlandish and upfront personality that shines the brightest. So much so that his long oft delayed reality show is finally making it’s way to our screens…computer screens that is. His web show, Ben Baller on Youtube’s Loud channel finds the cool and crazy BB lacing up the entertainment world’s hot money pocket dudes. Check out interview with the man and read his words of success below.
Ben Baller
What was your starting point in the game? How did people get introduced to you?
BB: A lot of people know me from DJ’ing a lot of people know me from being a record executive in the music business, Vice President A&R, of Priority Records, Aftermath Entertainment, and a lot of people know me from being in the sneaker game. (Holding down the sneaker game) and also the DJ’ing thing. But what I’m doing know and how people know me, is that I’m a jeweler to the stars.
What’s it like to deal with the competition that comes with the jewelry field?
You can’t just jump into the jewelry game just because you wanna be a fu*king jeweler, you have to set up some things behind it. I had to study it, like I don’t respect a rapper right now coming up in the game if they don’t know who KRS One is, Cold Krush Brothers , Grandmaster Flash, I had to study the people before that and even deeper, like Laurent’s Craft, Tiffany and Co., Harry Winston, the piers and even though there’s blood diamonds out there, I try to take out the negativity, I understand it, I absorb it, but I also do my research and let me avoid all those areas. I don’t have to get my diamonds in Africa. It’s all good. You don’t have to worry about that with me.
Name some of your favorite pieces ever.
The pieces that are in my life were all made for my late best friend in my life, my best friend Jonas Bevcaqua , the founder and owner of LRG. I think every piece I made him was, well he designed them I just helped him execute his dreams. Those are notable favorite pieces I can think of.
What’s the show about and when can we check it?
It’s partially character driven, partially celebrity driven, but its about the craft, we take care and pride in our work and quality of what we do. Being in a store in South Central, Los Angeles in the hood, I serve as a diamond concierge and throughout the show it’s the journey of me meeting up with the clients, discussing what we wanna make and then we go through a process, and then we go through a delivery. So basically you got people like Pusha T, Q (founder of WSHH) Rob Kardashian, Pete Wentz, Benji Madden, Sean Kingston and we already planning season two, but it looks like a television network is interested right now so we’ll see what happens. In fact as crazy as it is, Oprah was interested. So that mess me up totally. The show comes on every Wednesday, 10 am Eastern/7 am Pacific on YouTube.com/loud channel & Ifandco.com