Legacy — Black-Owned Brooklyn

Opening a record store wasn’t a long-held goal for Victorious De Costa, Barkim Salgado and Haile Ali. But the three friends, who came together over the years as members of the Five-Percent Nation, were passionate about music: Victorious, 44, and Barkim, 51, are former DJs, while Haile, 29, is a rapper and producer. The New York City natives also had serious vinyl collections teeming with rare and obscure LPs spanning jazz, soul, rock, hip-hop, African highlife, Jamaican dub, R&B, recited poetry and more. So last September, they made the exciting yet bittersweet move to share their treasured catalogs with the world by opening a record store, Legacy.

As one of less than 30 Black-owned record stores in the entire country — even as vinyl sales are skyrocketing — Legacy has another, bigger-picture mission. “When it comes to a lot of music, we don’t really have a hand in the business side of the industry, whether it’s marketing or distribution,” Haile says. “We’re the creators — but we don’t preserve our culture as well as other people preserve it. So, for me, this store is about preserving culture.”

“We don’t preserve our culture as well as other people preserve it. So, for me, this store is about preserving culture.”

When it came to the design of Legacy, Victorious had a clear aesthetic: ‘70s basement. “The ‘70s are very near and dear to my heart and to the heart of my community,” he says. “I think it was a time where we felt most free, most in love as a people, most daring and revolutionary.’”

To help channel this spirit, the record store’s co-owners enlisted Black interior designer Leyden Lewis. He nailed it, with thoughtful retro touches. A burnt orange and avocado green color palette. Shag rugs. Bold abstract impressionist art. Beaded curtains. Victorious’ prized Fender Rhodes piano. Framed album covers from both icons and under-sung artists. A glowing pink neon sign proclaiming “Forever.” And, always, a record playing something soulful.

However, Legacy deftly avoids kitsch, giving airy, refreshed and relaxing vibes — a departure from the often cramped and dusty feel of other record stores.

“The majority of record shops I dig at are very transactional,” Haile says. “You buy your records and you dip out. Here we wanted a comfortable space where people would come, listen, discover something new and want to stay a while. Even if you’re not buying a record, you can still come in and enjoy the experience.”

The expert staff at Legacy are always down to give recommendations from their massive collection that are fun, surprising and eclectic: Bad Brains, Linda Lewis, a live Portishead record, Wu Tang Clan, Nikki Giovanni or a recorded autobiography of W.E.B. DuBois (plus a dedicated section of new releases). In addition to selling their own records, Legacy also works on consignment selling other people’s LPs.

“We honor the legacy of where the records come from,” Victorious says of this arm of the business, recalling a new trove acquired from the sister of a Brownsville woman who recently passed at age 75. “Whether you're buying out someone’s storage space, or someone had to sell their records after a fire or eviction, or ‘Big Mama died; now what am I going to do with her records?’ – usually, for a store to acquire records, someone else has to have lost almost everything. We don't pretend that they came from a leprechaun. Because usually it came from the pain of Black people. We don’t take that lightly and just throw, like, a dollar on it. That is at the forefront of our mission.”

Another part of Legacy’s mission is to simply share the joy of music in analog form. “There's something magical about records,” says Barkim. “The whole ritual of taking it out, maybe cleaning it, putting the needle on the record, and then just listening to the world come *alive*. That’s something younger people are getting in tune with, and now there’s a whole new listener base coming to vinyl.”