Act one: the rapper came first
There was a catalogue of records before there was a clothing label. Desto Dubb, who was raised in Watts, in South Los Angeles, was working as a rapper well before anyone printed his phrase on a hoodie. XXL covered him on March 18, 2017, writing about his EP Born to Sale Juice, which had arrived in early October 2016. More about the brand is explained by that date than by the founding mythology, because it fixes the music as the earlier of his two careers. Design, limited edition tee retail or resale is where most streetwear founders come from; this one came from the studio, and the difference comes through in how the company later behaved. The graphics read like track titles, which they do because someone who writes track titles wrote them.
What is on the board
His recorded work places him inside the Los Angeles rap scene rather than beside it. On the track “Bankteller” he has recorded with Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Pump, Smokepurpp and 03 Greedo, a line-up spanning West Coast street rap and the SoundCloud generation. More recently, “Dead Homies” featuring Veeze appears on streaming services as a single, a distinction worth keeping straight, since several write-ups describe it as an album when the streaming listing does not. A handful of his other releases get the same loose treatment in press coverage, with tracks promoted to albums by writers working from press kits. Before naming a release, checking it on the platform takes a minute and avoids repeating an error that has now travelled a long way. The music continues alongside the business, which is not the usual arrangement for a founder running three storefronts.
Act two: a van, a parking lot and a phrase
The company now known as That’s A Awful Lot Of Cough Syrup started in 2018. That year is supported by two records: the trademark for the phrase lists first use in November 2018, and an AllHipHop profile from November 2023 describes the brand marking five years. According to its own about page, the selling began out of a van in a parking lot in downtown Los Angeles. Some later coverage places the van during the pandemic, and where accounts conflict the trademark filing and the anniversary piece are firmer. What is not in dispute is the method: stock in a vehicle, buyers in person, no wholesale accounts and no season calendar. That approach continues to shape the business, with small batches landing every week or two rather than twice a year.
The name was there before the company was. It originates in a viral clip in which an officer’s line became the brand name, and the circumstances are contested, with material online claiming it was staged and no primary transcript resolving it. What the phrase describes is promethazine-codeine cough syrup, known in rap slang as lean, which the company acknowledges rather than promotes; its website carries a standing banner reading “! PLEASE DO NOT SIP DRANK AND SHOOT FIREARMS !”. The part worth noticing is what Desto Dubb did with the line, because a joke that trends for a week rarely converts into a trademark and three shops. He registered the phrase, printed it large, and turned the wordmark itself into the product. The searcher spelling thats an awful lot of cough syrup is the version most people type, but the registered mark uses “A” rather than “An”.
Act three: the shape of the business in 2026
Nothing measures the distance travelled from the van more clearly than the Melrose flagship at 7669 Melrose Avenue. The street number has doubled as Desto Dubb’s own social media display name, which tells you how much of the brand is bound up in one address. Listed alongside it are two further locations, at 312 West 5th Street in Los Angeles and 5410 Almeda Road in Houston, though the company publishes no store locator and no opening hours. Alongside them runs its own online store, where the catalogue sits at roughly 154 products and refreshes constantly. The product copy states the garments are made in Los Angeles and describes the company as a Black-owned business. Prices sit steady at the upper end of independent streetwear, since a tee is about $150 at the brand’s own store as of September 2026, with hoodies and sweatpants about $200 each, and those figures move with stock and season.
Festivals, collaborations and a tribute
The most visible expansion arrived in March 2024, when the brand partnered with Rolling Loud California from the 14th to the 17th at Hollywood Park in Inglewood. That activation was not a merch booth but a carnival, with arcade games, a swing ride and two onsite stores, a large bet for a label barely five years old. That month was dense: a 310babii collaboration was announced on March 11, a Got Sole pop-up followed on March 19, and a Dodger Collection arrived on March 29. Earlier still, on April 28, 2023, came “That’s A Awful Lot of Legendary” with BlueBucksClan at the Melrose store, a limited drop honouring the late Drakeo The Ruler. That one reads less like marketing and more like a neighbourhood gesture, which is roughly how the brand has handled its music-world ties throughout. A Berner’s Cookies collaboration had launched earlier the same month, and Trapstar London published a joint piece through its own accounts in April 2024.
A note on what he is called
Search his name and two different legal identities come back, which is a problem worth handling carefully rather than repeating. The documentary record supports one of them: the United States trademark for the brand phrase is registered to Joshua Kashif Taylor, and every post on the company’s own blog carries a matching byline. That is two separate records agreeing, one filed with a federal agency and one published by the business itself. The other name that circulates appears on an unsourced commercial content site with nothing behind it, and it should not be repeated as fact. In practice this matters little to a reader, because the brand, its collaborators and its stores use one name. He is Desto Dubb, the name his own company uses for him.
Timeline of the career
Built from dated coverage, the trademark record and the brand’s own posts, the timeline below leaves out anything that could not be pinned to a date. Read it in order, because the sequence is the argument: music, then phrase, then storefronts, then festival-scale activations. Notice how tightly clustered March 2024 is, with four separate events in nineteen days. Note too the twenty months between the first XXL coverage and the trademark’s first-use date, which is how long the phrase took to become an asset. Dates for store openings are absent because the company has never published them. Whatever here involves prices or catalogue size was accurate in September 2026 and will drift.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| Early October 2016 | EP Born to Sale Juice comes out |
| March 18, 2017 | XXL writes up Desto Dubb and the EP |
| 2018 | Selling of the clothing starts from a van in a downtown Los Angeles parking lot |
| November 2018 | First use of the trademarked phrase, according to the US trademark record |
| April 8, 2023 | Cookies collaboration with Berner launches |
| April 28, 2023 | BlueBucksClan release “That’s A Awful Lot of Legendary” paying tribute to Drakeo The Ruler |
| 2023 | Brand makes its debut at New York and Los Angeles Fashion Weeks |
| November 10, 2023 | An AllHipHop profile marks the brand’s fifth anniversary |
| March 11, 2024 | 310babii collaboration made public |
| March 14 to 17, 2024 | The Rolling Loud California partnership, Hollywood Park, Inglewood |
| March 19, 2024 | The Got Sole pop-up in Los Angeles |
| March 29, 2024 | Release of the Dodger Collection |
| April 2024 | Trapstar London collaboration put out by Trapstar |
| September 2026 | Around 154 products in the catalogue; tees about $150, hoodies about $200 |
Reading the story straight
The version of this career that circulates online is tidier than the evidence supports, and the tidying mostly runs in the brand’s favour. A clip that may or may not have been staged becomes a documented arrest; singles become albums; a handful of unsourced celebrity sightings become a client list. None of it is needed, since the checkable version is already unusual: a working rapper from Watts turned a piece of slang into a registered mark, sold the first pieces himself, and built alocs clothing into a business with a Melrose flagship inside six years. The trademark, the dated collaborations, the addresses and the prices are the parts that hold up. What does not hold up is the origin anecdote in its confident form and the roll-call of famous wearers. Anyone writing about awful lot of cough syrup will do better with the first list, which is long enough on its own.
