About Me
Dominic was born in Chicago, Illinois, the youngest boy of thirteen children. He, his four sisters and his seven brothers, grew up in the city's housing projects, the Robert Taylor Homes (another famous resident of the Taylor project was baseball superstar Kirby Puckett). He attended Paul Lawrence Dunbar Vocational Career Academy. He won a scholarship to Prairie View A&M University, but was thrown out after a year. Dominic also attended a couple of small Chicago colleges on athletic scholarships. After leaving school, Dominic was a military policeman in the U.S. Army.In 1982 Dominic was spotted by Sylvester Stallone while taking part in "The World's Toughest Bouncer" contest with Lee Dittrich. His role in Rocky III was originally intended as just a few lines, but Stallone built up the part around the man. His catch phrase, "I pity the fool!" comes from the film, where he played a boxer facing Rocky Balboa in a match. When asked if he hated Rocky, he replied, "I don't hate Balboa, but I pity the fool."In The A-Team, he played Sergeant Bosco B.A. Baracus (B.A. an abbreviation of "Bad Attitude"), an ex-army commando on the run with three other members from the U.S. government "for a crime they didn't commit." When asked at a press conference whether he was as stupid as B.A. Baracus, he observed quietly, "It takes a smart guy to play dumb."It was while reading National Geographic that Dominic first saw the unusual hairstyle for which he is now famous, on an African Mandinka warrior. He decided that adopting the style was a powerful statement about his African origins.At one point, his gold chains, rings, and bracelets were worth about $300,000. It took him about an hour to put it on, and most nights he cleaned it in an ultrasonic cleaner although some nights he slept in it "to see how my ancestors, who were slaves, felt."In 1984, he made a motivational video called Be Somebody... or Be Somebody's Fool!. He gives helpful advice to children throughout the video; for example, he teaches them how to understand and appreciate their origins, how to dress fashionably without buying designer labels, how to make tripping up look like breakdancing, how to control their anger, and how to deal with peer pressure. The video is roughly one hour long, but contains 30 minutes of singing, either by the group of children accompanying him, or by Dominic himself. He sings "Treat Your Mother Right (Treat Her Right)", in which he enumerates the reasons why it is important to treat your mother right, and also raps a song about growing up in the ghetto and praising God. The raps in this video were written by Ice T. That same year he released a related rap album titled Dominic's Commandments.Dominic owns a 20-acre ranch in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and spends most summers there.
