t was P Diddy, I believe - back when he was still Puff Daddy - who noted that, ultimately, it's all about the Benjamins. Damon Dash would concur. About the first thing the hip-hop impresario, fashion guru, film-maker and new musical mentor for Victoria Beckham says to me when he arrives at his hotel suite is indeed about the Benjamins - and the Washingtons, and all those other dead presidents and historical names that figure on American currency. He's just returned to his London base after a frantic morning to prepare for a frenetic afternoon by talking to me. You've been a busy man, I say, by way of ice-breaking conversation. ''Making money,'' he replies. ''Making money.''

Business as usual, then. Because if there is one thing Damon Dash knows about, it's turning a buck. Actually, lots of bucks. Ever since he teamed up with soon-to-retire rapper Jay-Z (Beyonce's beau) in his home town of New York some ten years ago, Dash has been racking up the dollars. They currently stretch into millions, thanks to his Roc-A-Fella record label, his Rocawear clothing line (a $300m business), and his film companies Dash and Roc-A-Fella Films. And I haven't mentioned his vodka brand, have I? His Scottish vodka brand.

Damon Dash, it is fair to say, is a success. And he's the first to tell you so. He is quick to inform me he has the number one record and the number one clothing line in the US. And now he has his sights set on the UK. The night before, he was out on the town with Victoria Beckham at the launch of Rocawear's American winter collection. The artist formerly known as Posh Spice is being used to boost Rocawear's brand recognition in Europe. In return, Dash is giving La Beckham a touch of street cred as she attempts to revive a pop career that has been heading south in recent years.

Ever the businessman, Dash isn't afraid to admit to the quid pro quo that's going on here. ''We gave her some credibility, she gave me my credibility in fashion on another level. So I say, and I never lie, I want her crowd and she wants mine. And we got it. Period. We got the intrigue of the world.''

And then some.

Rewind. It is early afternoon when I arrive in Knightsbridge, rushing through the pre-Christmas crowds only to find that I've beaten Mr Dash here. It will be the best part of an hour before he appears. No matter. It gives us time to look around his handsome suite at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, across the road from Harvey Nics and within posing distance of Harrods. Dash's bedroom is covered in clothes from his own label - hats, vests, baggy trousers - all decanted out of Louis Vuitton luggage. Along the bottom of his bed is a row of pristine Nike trainers - he wears a new pair every day - and the odd rogue pair of Adidas.

As you'd expect for the high side of three grand a night, it's a big suite - but actually it's pretty crowded at the moment. As well as myself, the photographer and his assistant, there are three PRs, a couple of rappers from London who go under the moniker SAS and whom Dash is hoping are going to ''terrorise'' the US, and various other assistants and hangers-on, including Dash's personal stills photographer and a cameraman who appears to go by the name of Choke. Not all of them will prove welcome when the main man arrives.

Unless you're a hip-hop aficionado you probably hadn't heard of Damon Dash before his association with Ms Beckham. I must admit I hadn't. Indeed, when he finally arrives I make the faux pas of introducing myself to his Roc-A-Fella partner Kareem Burke - ''Biggs'' to his friends - but no one pays it any attention since Dash, just into the room, is making his presence felt. Dame, as he likes to be called - a nickname that might require a rethink if, as he says, he is to spend more time in the UK - is a little put out to find people he doesn't know in his suite. Not us, you understand, but some of the guys in the next room whom he's never seen before. He takes Choke to task for inviting the strangers in question into his room. For all he knows they might have robbed him. Or worse. ''Man, I thought you were from the streets,'' he chides Choke. Get rid, is the message. Some time later the

luckless Choke is back in the bedroom, his assigned task still not carried out. ''Look at me, Choke, please,'' says Dash. ''I'm gonna ask you nicely. Please get them out of my room so I can conduct my business the way I should. Don't ever do that again.''

Choke starts to reply, but Dash is having none of it. ''Don't interrupt me. Please, man, I'm asking nicely.'' He turns to me, head on his hands. ''I've got a little anger-management problem,'' he says, before turning back to the cameraman. ''Yo, go do it, man.''

As Choke leaves, Dash's anger melts away. ''All I can do is laugh,'' he tells me and everybody else. ''I don't even know whether to be mad at him. He might be crazy. We got that on tape?'' I nod. ''Take it to a psychiatrist.''

He apologises, and is immediately back to business. What was he talking about? Oh yeah, Victoria Beckham. I wonder if he is bored being asked questions about her yet. ''No. I love talking about Victoria Beckham. She's a '' He turns to his assistants. ''What are we calling her? What's the name of the album? A guilty pleasure? She's a guilty pleasure.'' He thinks about what he's said for a second, then quickly adds: ''She's not my guilty pleasure.'' Just so I know.

You can understand his concern, though. After it was announced that Beckham was looking for that Roc-A-Fella touch, gossip in certain newspapers began to suggest that Dash's personal involvement was extending beyond the studio. Dash's ex-partner Linda Williams, the mother of his son Damon Jr, even accused Dash of being a ''violent druggie'' and warned David Beckham that her ex would try to steal Victoria from him.

The fallout from Dash's association with Beckham has been professional as well as personal. Telstar, Beckham's label, does not seem particularly enamoured of Dash's involvement with their talent. They are not convinced, it would seem, that she needs to be more ''street''. Dash, though, is unfazed by all this paper talk. ''You know why they can't piss me off?'' he asks, before telling me. ''I just got nominated for eight grammies. Eight. Three different artists. I've got the number one album in the country, black album, and I've got the number one album in this country, in R&B, blues, whatever that chart is.

''I've just got a movie [Death of a Dynasty, a satire about the world of hip-hop] accepted into the Sundance Film Festival. I've got the number one clothing line in America. I've got Victoria Beckham spearheading my campaign. What the f- can I be mad about? How could they ever challenge me or question how good I am? I've been good and great at it for the last ten years and am still doing it and I'm getting bigger and better.''

Frankly, he says, the reason for all the flak is that Telstar is a failing company and, as far as he is concerned, all the smoke is trying to conceal the fact. Reports saying the tracks he cut with Beckham were costing a million are ''bullshit''. ''I'm doing it as a favour,'' he says. ''Like minimal, something like 15 grand. Dollars, not even pounds. Something like just nothing because Victoria's a friend of mine.'' No, he says, all he has done is make his friend ''hot'' again. And hotness is something he could claim to be an expert in.

The thing is, you don't really interview Damon Dash. That would suggest some kind of dialogue. Really it's more of an audience with the man. I pitch the odd question at him but once he's warmed up he's bouncing words around, talking up his businesses, talking up his friends, talking up himself. He might not be a rapper but make no mistake, this is a performance. You wonder what a business meeting with him would be like. Would he let anyone else get a word in?

I sit on the bed and he stands, while everyone else mooches oblivious between bedroom and sitting room, having conversations, sticking CDs on the music system, partaking of the impressive spread of food laid on. At one point even Dash starts to find this a little intrusive. ''I'm not doing an interview, am I?'' he says to his crew when their conversation threatens to drown out his at one point. But for much of our time together he is as interested in what's going on around him as he is in what I'm asking. He'll break off to talk about what he's going to wear in the photoshoot, or introduce me to SAS, even though we've already met. ''Let me give you a proper introduction.''

It goes on like this for much of the afternoon. As an interview it's messy, but you can't beat it as a spectacle. At one point he slips the SAS demo into the music system and starts dancing to it, popping his arm to the beat, a bit of the amateur boxer in him on show.

Victoria Beckham might be the latest woman in his life, but you can't say she is the most important. Dash comes from Harlem, the son of estranged parents. His father he describes as an ''every-other-weekend'' dad. ''That's how it is. There's no pain there, none of that shit. We have a relationship. I see him at holidays. He plays with my kids. I love him. It's just that I never spent that much time with him. He never, like, beat me.''

But neither did he inspire his son. That was his mother's job. His mother, Dash says, was the biggest influence on his life. Like her son, she juggled a number of roles. She was a secretary and a travel agent; she also sold clothes, and it was she who pushed him towards further education. Dash was still a teenager when she died following an asthma attack, but the memory of her lives on. ''My ma died when I was 15, but everything I am she taught me,'' he says. ''I remember all her lessons. She actually instilled the attitude that I have.'' What that attitude is, you could say, is all-conquering. ''I just wanna win,'' he says. ''I like to do a lot of things, but I want to be the best at everything. I really do.''

Hence all the balls he juggles - the record label, the clothes label, the film companies and whatever else takes his fancy. ''I can do anything,'' he tells me. With all those balls up in the air, though, doesn't he ever drop any? ''No, 'cos they're all the same ball. Right now I'm advertising Roc-A-Fella, Dash Film, Armadale vodka and Rocawear all in one sentence. I can advertise everything at the one time.''

This, many would argue, has been the secret of Dash's success. Once he established himself as a hip-hop entrepreneur he moved into other fields, using each new opportunity to cross-promote his other ventures. And so Roc-A-Fella artists are all decked out in Rocawear clothes and rap about Armadale or drink it in their videos. Jay-Z turns up in Dash's movies, It's a virtuous circle of self-promotion.

''It all revolves around a culture,'' says Dash, ''and that's just a culture of cool. I'm a cool dude. I'm selling cool. And that's easy, 'cos I'm innately cool. I don't have to study it. It just happens and everybody else is gonna recognise that. And that's when more cool people are gonna have power. I'm gonna make the whole world cool. The cool people are gonna be in power - so the squares had better run, I'm telling you.''

He's enjoying himself now. ''That's what's happening. I'm a CEO, I'm not an artist. I'm a businessman. I'm famous for being cool. I do business. I'm a social dude. I like to party. I like to have fun. But I can also get down when it comes to business. I feel like I'm the Michael Jordan of business. I'm the David Beckham of business, I'm the Jay-Z of business.''

He pauses for a second and I try to ask a question but he hasn't finished yet. ''I'm, like, superhuman when it comes to business. I'm the Tiger Woods.'' Fair to say, then, that he's not lacking in self-confidence. But he never has been. It's a Harlem thing, he says. ''I'm a Harlem dude - and in Harlem, you know what? Everything has to be right. You have to dress right, you have to smell right, you have to look right, your money gotta be right, your style gotta be right, the way you talk gotta be right, everything gotta be perfect. If you walk in Harlem you could be famous, but somebody in Harlem's not gonna pay you no mind. Because in their head they're famous. I was always famous, you know what I mean? To me, I was famous ten years ago. If somebody walks up to me I'm thinking, I'm a bigger man than you because it's not a material thing. It's the man inside, so I don't feel no one's better

than me.''

Success may not just be a ''material thing'', as Dash suggests, but that's not to say he doesn't enjoy the benefits of his business acumen. He works hard, but he also parties hard. And spends money. He's got a place in LA and a place in the Tribeca area of NY, and now that he's set his sights on the UK he's just found a place to rent in Chelsea. He travels by private jet. He has his own chauffeur and chef. The prospect of a new British record label is an excuse to get himself another gold chain. ''You got a Roc film one?'' a member of SAS asks him at one point. ''Yeah. Nah. I got it but I don't like it much. The diamonds aren't that good.''

Damon Dash says he always knew he was going to be a success. He started by managing his friend Jay-Z, hawking his discovery's demo around all the record labels. They all turned him down. So Dash decided to do it himself. ''That's the reason we did Roc-A-Fella. It was like, f- these dudes, they must be retarded, you know? And then look what happened. Seven number one albums. He got six grammy nominations. He's going to retire number one on the billboard. It's a beautiful thing. In hip-hop, traditionally people retired dead or in jail. There's no real happy endings. This is the first happy ending that ever happened and I was part of that. The man got a sneaker line. He's way, way rich. He tried to buy a basketball team, come on. That's my man. I'm proud of that shit, because we beat the odds and we did it in a positive way, so how the f- can Telstar tell me anything?''

For all his material success you could say that Dash's own happy ending was deferred tragically when his girlfriend Aaliyah, the R&B singer, was killed in a plane crash in August 2001. When I ask him about it, for the first time I feel I'm speaking to Damon rather than Dame. ''Any time somebody close to you dies you're not the same person, ever. I'm definitely not the same person I was and I'm about 50 times stronger 'cos that was the most painful shit I've ever experienced. I was in love. I lost my best friend and I had to get myself together and I had to lead by example.

''You don't know what's right or wrong with death. But I don't walk around mad about it. I just miss her. But it definitely made me stronger, got me focused on my business.''

It always comes back to business. But somewhere in there you can hear a different Damon Dash to the in-your-face, work-hard, play-hard money-maker. It's a hint of vulnerability and compassion; something that also surfaces when he is talking about his mom or his two children - Eva, who stays with her mother, with whom Dash is still friendly, and Damon Jr, his son with Linda Williams, who stays with him. ''Yeah, he's my little man,'' he says. Dash is keen to tell me that he is never away from him more than one week in a month, and he is home at seven every evening to be with him. And now that Dash is going to be spending more time in the UK, Damon Jr will accompany him.

''Y'know, it's bad, man, with the things his mother does,'' he then tells me, raising the tabloid claims made by Williams. ''What you've got to realise is she had a son taken from her and that's probably the worst pain anyone could go through, so to a degree I don't even be mad at her for the way she's reacting. For a guy like me to win custody of my son there obviously must have been some serious things wrong. And for a mother to go to the papers and say those things like just to get at me, you can see why they gave me my kid. He gets teased at school behind shit like that. That right there, when she does that, it's more reassuring that I should have him. I just feel bad for him.''

And on that note, time is up. Damon the dad is put away, and Damon Dash the king of cool returns. Photographs need to be taken. As Britney might say, he is back in the zone. Later today he's got appointments at MTV and Top of the Pops. Before we go he weighs us down with Roca-A-Fella calendars and bottles of Armadale. We can help spread the word. Truth is, though, it's not something he needs any help with. n

Victoria Beckham's new single, Let Your Head Go/This Groove, is out now on Telstar.