As Told To Rob Kenner
Once upon a time Marc Ecko dreamed of launching his own magazine, mixing and matching street art, hip-hop, fashion, and pop culture without regard to race. What sounded crazy back then now looks like a stroke of genius. Ten years after the first issue hit stands, Complex is both critically acclaimed and widely imitated—with a digital media network that’s second to none. “We worked hard to keep it simple,” says Ecko, “and make it fun.”
“The way Complex was able to respectfully document this cultural stuff, broadcasting it on a mass level without bastardizing, is a real achievement,“ says Sacha Jenkins, a founder of ego trip magazine and part of the original Complex brain trust.
“Marc is a big proponent of doing shit without being afraid,” Jenkins adds. “He took chances your average person wouldn’t have taken. The reason why Complex is still here is because a guy like Marc said, ‘Fuck it, I’m gonna go for mine.’ And he found like-minded people to help make that vision a reality.”
Marc himself is the first to admit that the idea was a long shot. “History will be good to Complex,” he says now. “But it could have gone so wrong.” Not that he ever entertained second thoughts. Let’s take a trip down memory lane as we recollect the dawn of the Complex era.
2000
MARC ECKO, Founder: “The mag was just a dream. We initially wanted to call it Climate. I had these two pet projects—Climate and the video game Getting Up—that I used as a way to medicate myself when we were going through some difficult times with the clothing brand. The initial concept for Climate was slightly heady and intellectual.”
ALAN KET, Founding Editor 2000–2002: “I knew Marc and Seth Gerszberg, the owners of Ecko, since the mid-’90s. I was starting a magazine called Stress and they were one of our first advertisers. In 2000, I shut down Stress and Seth said, ‘Yo, come out and meet me and Marc in South River. We might have an opportunity.’”
The name “Complex” began as a reference to the Ecko.com website. In the early aughts, Ecko Unltd. merchandise had tags that said “ecko.complex.” The idea was to evoke images of an "Ecko Complex" as in the Ecko Place, Ecko Factory, or Ecko Zone.
2001
ALAN KET: “I signed on to create Climate, then at some point Climate was changed to Complex—the name was a reference to “Ecko.Complex,” a phrase that appeared on the merchandise. The Ecko complex. The Ecko factory. We looked at other men’s magazines to see what wasn’t being done for men in the U.S. There was Details and GQ, but they were older and whiter. Marc and Seth wanted something else. We infused humor in the publication. British lad mags and Japanese shopping magazines mixed with hip-hop and street art—all those things together became Complex.”
TINA IMM, Chief Operating Officer 2001–2003: “Ben White and I were brought onboard by Marc. We had worked in digital since ’95 but we always collected magazines—we had a huge pile. The flip cover was inspired by Japanese magazines. We wanted to show the best of both worlds: the mag on one side and the shopping guide on the other.”
MATT DOYLE, Photo Director 2001–2009: “I was there from the time when there was four of us. A big part of Complex was that young, creative atmosphere where everyone was just cool and was good at what they did. Very few egos for the most part.”
Swag! Not even belt buckle aficionado 2 Chainz could afford this one-of-a-kind chromed-out promotional buckle, on loan from the Alan Ket archives and soon headed to the Smithsonian.
2002
CHERYL LOMAGLIO, Administrations Director: “The early days were very intense for obvious reasons. We had that feeling, like, They can still pull out the rug from underneath us. Print is expensive, and we were bleeding money. Everybody was walking around on eggshells: ‘Are we going to get fired?’
“We finally got the prototype out, and immediately did the first issue for May of ’02. It was like giving birth. Everything that could go wrong did. When we printed our insert cards the truck driver got into an accident. We were like, ‘Oh my God, the first-issue hex!’ Then our server freakin’ blew up, so we lost all the data. I thought the art director was going to jump out the window.”
2003
RICH ANTONIELLO, CEO & Publisher: “I came from a publishing background, but this magazine was run by a retail company that believed in boot-strapping to an insane degree. We had to make wine out of water.”
MATT DOYLE: “It was always interesting bringing two people from different worlds together. Whether it was Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Ludacris, or Xzibit and Tony Hawk. We had Bowie and Mos Def together—they got along really well. Mos Def can get along with anyone.”
RICH ANTONIELLO: “We made things much harder for ourselves with the double covers. It’s tough enough to book one cover and do it well, but Marc wanted to show two people from different backgrounds on the guys’ cover, and then we still had to book the girl cover.”
2004
BRADLEY CARBONE, Intern/Associate Editor/Lifestyle Editor 2005-2011: “I started out interning for Matt Doyle, who was the photo director, and [former Photo Editor] Tina [Greenberg]. Jimmy Jellinek, who’s now at Playboy, was the editor-in-chief. I would be in the photo studio and all these characters would come through—T.I., Slim Thug—I had no idea who they were then. Our office was in the shittiest part of New York—on 36th and Eighth, right by a methadone clinic.”
RICH ANTONIELLO: “We were budgeted to lose about a million and a half bucks in the second year—which, by the way, is nothing for a magazine with momentum. If we were going to grow this thing, I needed an extra 500 grand. So me and Seth had a four-and-a-half-hour budget meeting. Neither of us would budge. Then finally he’s like, ‘I’ll wrestle you for it.’ I was totally taken aback. We did it on the conference room table, about 10:30 at night. He should have realized I was so mad at him that there was no way I was going to lose. A year later he said, ‘The best thing that ever happened was me losing.’”
2005
CHERYL LOMAGLIO: “Moving from a small suite to our own big floor of an office was a turning point. We hired more staff. Richard Martin replaced Jimmy as editor-in-chief. We moved to our current offices in the Ecko building on 23rd Street. You felt like part of this huge brand.”
DONNIE KWAK, Senior Editor/Senior Deputy Editor 2004–2011: “One of the things I miss the most was that every once in a while you would hear Rich go off. Like, the sickest barrage of profanity you could imagine. Slammed doors, slammed phones, just a stream of vitriol. It was a little bit scary but also entertaining. In the old days it might have been once every week, then as the years passed it would be more rare. But I miss that. He used to say ‘You gotta be fucking kidding me!’ and then a door would slam. I kind of wish somebody would do that in my office.”
2006
DONNIE KWAK: “One of my most distinct memories is a meeting Seth had with the staff in which he held up an issue of Complex and literally ripped it apart, page by page. His point was that each one of these pages cost $4,000 to produce. So he was like, ‘Every page that isn’t worth $4,000 I’m gonna rip out.’ That ended up being 95 percent of the book.”
MATT DOYLE: “We went to Toronto to shoot Fergie in this little shitty studio we found online. It was a dump, but Fergie was so cool about it. She was like, ‘Oh, I like this place. It’s charming.’ Then after the shoot we went out to this strip club—and ran into Fergie there.”
RICH ANTONIELLO: “Seth was not happy with the editorial direction, so he set up this shadow magazine staff. He picked a bunch of people and brought them to the office for a secret meeting.”
DONNIE KWAK: “Richard Martin was away on vacation and that’s when Seth had the plan of radically making over Complex. It was a totally bizarre meeting Seth held in one of the Ecko conference rooms. We were all kind of like ‘What the fuck is going on right now?’ In the end Noah [Callahan-Bever] took over for Richard Martin and the rest of the staff was retained.”
RICH ANTONIELLO: “It was definitely a weird moment, but it expedited us ripping off the Band-Aid and building a new magazine with Noah. His first issue—the December/January Lil Wayne/Travis Barker cover—was what I always envisioned Complex should be.”
NOAH CALLAHAN-BEVER, Editor-In-Chief: “My first issue was supposed to be a Nas cover but while I was flying to the shoot, his publicist canceled on us. So I’m listening to Lil Wayne’s Dedication mixtape, and I made the call during a layover. By the time the plane landed in L.A. the whole thing was set up. Toshi [Kondo] did the cover story and we had the hottest rapper in the game talking shit about the biggest rapper in the game. Then it was like, ‘How do you follow that?’”
2007
PETER RUBIN, Features Editor/Executive Editor 2006–2011: “What was so magical about when Noah became EIC is that he assembled a team where everyone had a similar sense of humor. Being inappropriate didn’t really matter, as long as it made you laugh. It was smart people making dumb shit for smart people.”
DONNIE KWAK: “Kim Kardashian was a nobody at the time, but Paris Hilton was the shit. Kim was just the hot chick who was always with her. Then the Ray J sex tape rumors came out. She didn't have PR, so we got her email from Nick Cannon, who we'd heard she used to date and was randomly visiting the office to meet with Marc. I emailed her and we did her first cover."
RICH ANTONIELLO: “We saw that magazines were slipping, so we said, ‘Let’s do this digital thing, but let’s not half-ass it.’ Instead of one brand online, we wanted to embrace the specialization of the internet. We launched the Complex Media Network in September 2007. That was a game-changer.”
NOAH CALLAHAN-BEVER: “[Senior Editorial Strategist] Joe La Puma helped Rich pick the first sites—NahRight, Nice Kicks, SlamxHype, and MoeJackson.”
2008
DONNIE KWAK: “[Deputy Editor] Brendan Frederick sent an email to the whole edit staff. The subject line was, ‘You are all now bloggers.’ It had our WordPress passwords and logins. That was a baptism by fire.”
MARIAN ISEL BARRAGÁN, Photo Editor 2007–2009: “That Aubrey O’Day shoot was something else. After that was over I felt like I had to go home and take a shower.”
TIM LEONG, Deputy Art Director/Design Director 2006-2010: “I took over as design director for Aubrey O’Day’s shoot. An unmatched shoot in terms of raunchiness. For the very first shot, she came out topless, saying, ‘OK, let’s go.’ And we’re saying, ‘If this is the first shot, what the fuck is gonna happen next?’”
NOAH CALLAHAN-BEVER: “The Aubrey shoot was the first time we broke the internet. The images were so raw, and she had just gotten fired from Danity Kane a week or so prior to that. We did 5 million page views and the servers went down.”
TIM LEONG: “[For the November 2008 issue] we shot Tracy Morgan and Christopher Mintz-Plasse, probably the funniest shoot I’ve been on. It became apparent during this shoot that Tracy Morgan does not act on 30 Rock. Joe did the interview [with Morgan] on set, so to give them some privacy we left them in a secluded area. We could hear them talking, but after a while I noticed that Joe was standing to my left. I’m thinking, Who’s back there? I looked and it was just Tracy, talking to himself.”
2009
NOAH CALLAHAN-BEVER: “For our second Kim Kardashian cover, we accidentally leaked an image of Kim that was not retouched. Her publicist hit us back and asked us to fix it. We didn’t really think much of it. But Bucky ‘Dumpster Diver’ Turco, our former web editor, ran the two photos on his site, AnimalNewYork.com, and it became a national news story.”
TIM LEONG: “We did a CGI cover with Kanye West [April/May], his fourth appearance at the time. We’d had lots of meetings about this whole thing—phone calls with him and Chris Milk, the guy who did the CGI, and the video director. We talked about how the headline was going to work, how it would be rendered in 3D. Then Kanye came in for the layout meeting. Actually came into the office to approve it. It’s impressive that he cares that much about how his content is presented. Nobody else really gives a shit. It’s usually just an interview and then fuck off. So. He came into my office, looks at the cover, and says, ‘Who did this?’ I was like, ‘Uh, that was me.’ He says, ‘It completely undermines the artistic integrity of the whole project.’ I took a beat and said, ‘Well, how do you want to fix this? Let’s run through some options.’ So, we redesigned the cover feature while he sat there.”
Kanye West (April/May 2009)
KID CUDI: “I want my closet Complex like the magazine.”
[From “I’m Good (Remix).” Clipse appeared in a concept cover created by artist/toy designer KAWS.]
2010
ORLANDO LIMA, Managing Editor: “Cudi appeared on the cover of the October/November issue and talked a lot of shit about Wale in the interview: ‘We don’t fuck with you musically, so we’re not going to provide music for you.’ Pretty soon ‘We don’t fuck with you musically’ became an internet meme. ‘We don’t fuck with you... fill in the blank’ became slang for any time a person didn’t want to associate with someone or something.”
2011
NOAH CALLAHAN-BEVER: “Two guys in our music department—Jacob Moore and Ernest Baker—found Earl Sweatshirt from Odd Future. He was supposed to be missing but they found him at Coral Reef Academy in Samoa. We beat everybody to the story.”
ERNEST BAKER, Assistant Editor: “Then The New Yorker did a piece about Earl, and they had to credit me and Jacob for our guerilla-style reporting. Their piece had quotes emailed by Earl’s mom, but they didn’t sound like anything a 17-year-old would say. So we did a follow-up story calling those statements into question.”
DOMO GENESIS OF ODD FUTURE: “It was all a dream/I used to read Complex magazine.” [From “Window”]
PETER RUBIN: "I show up at the Wiz Khalifa and Danny McBride shoot [April/May] after it’d been going on for an hour and a half or so. Obviously the first thing that hits me is the weed. Wiz and Danny are totally shrouded by smoke. I thought it was smoke machines, but no. When they’re done, Danny sits down with me and Wiz goes off to roll one. I start talking with Danny, and he says, ‘They handed me a joint when we started shooting, but I didn’t know it wasn't gonna end. I smoked the first joint for real, and then I had to slow down. I thought I was gonna have a seizure. But I’m not gonna let this young dude out smoke me.’ It turned into this crazy battle of wills between Wiz and Danny. And then Danny called me after the fact, saying, ‘I don’t know if I gave you anything to work with. I was not in the right frame of mind to be doing an interview, so if you have any other questions, let’s do some now.’”
RICH ANTONIELLO: Four years later, by September 2011, our network crossed the 80 site barrier. We had broken 40 million monthly uniques—in four years.”
2012
MARC ECKO: “Clothing guy launches a magazine: That’s an easy bet—it’s going to fail. Some advertisers told us that we needed to decide if we were hip-hop, skate, or something else entirely, but we just moved on and did it. Ten years later the Condés and Hearsts of the world are reacting to us.”
NOAH CALLAHAN-BEVER: “We respect our competition, but we don’t think they’re smarter than us. And nobody works harder than we do.”
WAKA FLOCKA FLAME: “#Complex #1 Mag.”