There is some precedent for Valmond’s coverage. In the 2000s, street magazines such as FEDS and Don Diva emerged to document underworld figures, sometimes in their own words. Some YouTube channels exchange old war stories about life on the street. And in earlier phases of the Internet, message boards and blogs also addressed these topics.
Although Valmond begins with news and other published information, some facts are impossible to independently verify. Memories can be hazy, and reputations are sometimes based on bragging. His stories can sometimes be closer to the apocrypha than to the unquestionable truth. (There are a handful of other Twitter and Instagram accounts that highlight similar content, but Valmond’s has been the most in-depth and consistent.)
The Internet is infinite and short-sighted: stories can be archived forever and also forgotten forever. Many of these stories were known in their time, but were lost to history. Valmond is excited by resurrecting them and the connectivity that social media allows: he not only researches and transmits these stories, but sometimes uses them to connect with the people involved and discover even more information.
Luc (Spoon) Stephen, a film producer and former Fat Cat Nichols associate, noticed Valmond’s 2017 thread about the drug dealer. Like Valmond, Stephen is from Queens and of Haitian descent. He admired Valmond’s curiosity and dedication to the truth and began sharing stories with him and making presentations.
“A lot of the young people don’t listen, but he absorbs it and he has to evaluate it from there, he has to check it again,” Stephen said in an interview. “He could take a key and turn it in the lock, open it and then walk away, but now he has to open the door and explore.”
In 2018, when Callahan-Bever was working as executive vice president of brand and content strategy at Def Jam Records, he hired Valmond as an intern once he discovered how young he was: “I kind of assumed he was an older guy. based on the topics and depth of knowledge, but he was still in college.”
