It’s 12:30 a.m. in the South Bay, and barber Ronnie McCoy III is getting ready for bed when his phone lights up.
It’s Tyler Okonma, professionally known as Tyler, the Creator. He’s wondering if McCoy is free to cut his hair right now. Free? McCoy stares at the bright screen staring back at him, as if it’s waiting for his answer, too. He turns to show his wife, Maya McCoy, the text. “It’s so late,” he says. Maya responds: “But this is what you wanted, right?”
That was all McCoy needed to hear to get out of bed, gather his gear and head toward the studio in Hollywood where Okonma was recording.
As a fourth-generation barber from Lansing, Mich., with a roster of high-profile clients he’s had for over a decade, McCoy knows that making a career cutting and styling hair requires much more than just the technical aspects of the job. It’s been a few days since the shoot for this story, which shows McCoy with a few of his oldest and most loyal clients in the barber’s chair: musician Syd of the Internet, actor Travis “Taco” Bennett (Syd and Bennett are siblings) and “The Bear” actor Lionel Boyce. All friends, collaborators and Odd Future co-conspirators since the early 2000s. McCoy may not be a recording artist or one you see in front of the camera, but he’s been contributing to L.A.’s creative worlds for a long time, too.
In September, McCoy called me from a car headed to JFK Airport to fly back to L.A. after a three-day sprint. First to Atlanta to cut Okonma’s hair, then New York City, where he gave another regular client, Steve Lacy, a shaved version of a Chelsea cut.
Okonma recounts one of his favorite haircuts by McCoy. It came as new growth began to greet a blond dye job, around the release of his 2019 album, “Igor,” when he was wearing a high-top cut. As the color grew out, McCoy trimmed the shape so the dark roots faded into the blond tips, creating a gradient effect. “I think that moment I realized, ‘Oh, you understand shapes,’” Okonma says about McCoy. “He really has an understanding of the people’s hair that he’s cutting. It’s a magnetic energy with him and us.”
Rapper Big Sean, a fellow Michigan native, will bring McCoy with him on work trips out of the country. (Bennett introduced the two and will often joke: “Keep my barber in the States!”) Big Sean views him and McCoy as having the same job, just different mediums: “We’re here to be of service,” Big Sean says. “It’s not for the accolades, it’s not for the recognition. Those things that come along with it are the sprinkles on top.”
Most beauty workers functioning at the top of their game are artists at heart. “I was super into the graffiti scene when I was young, and I started painting shoes and doing art in different mediums,” McCoy says. “Finding hair was just another way to do art every day.” With the blade, clippers, shears, comb, brush, spray bottle and styling creams as his tools, he sets his eye on hair.
Some barbers are good at what they do, but have an attitude and can barely show up on time for an appointment. Other barbers can be inconsistent from cut to cut, but are punctual and personable. McCoy is the all-too-rare barber who balances professionalism and empathy, tradition and innovation. He doesn’t make the process feel sterile or emotionless, but gets the job done while treating the craft with care.
“Sometimes people’s energies come in and they shift the way the room feels,” Bennett explains. “And Ronnie always slides into the room with the perfect energy around people. He fits in any room.”
McCoy started cutting hair at 14 years old. For his family, working in barbershops and beauty salons was how they made a stamp on their communities. His grandfather was a barber; his cousin was a makeup artist in Hollywood. It wasn’t until he picked up clippers off of his own inclination that he learned how deep the practice of beauty caretaking ran on both his paternal and maternal sides. “I knew my grandfather was a barber; I didn’t think much of it at all,” McCoy says. “And then my mom told my grandpa that I was actually cutting hair and taking it a little serious at a young age. He was super excited.”
McCoy grew up with his grandma doing perms in the house for her friends, and his mom stepping in to do hair for weddings, quinceañeras and proms before she was actually doing it as a career. While his first rogue lineup might have been a mess, it was inspired by his own father and uncle who he watched stay fresh.
“I just saw how powerful of a position it was,” McCoy says. “I understood why I naturally adapted to it, or grew closer to the idea of what being a barber really was for me, especially being fourth-generation.” McCoy decided that this was a practice worth preserving.
McCoy recalls his first mentor, Ian Ortega, and the wad of cash that hung out of his back pocket. Nice cars. Women. This, coupled with his undeniable skill and design work, had every fly boy in town coming to see him.
McCoy understood this archetype — the flashy personality a barber can take on when they’re just that good. But McCoy, a relaxed, subtle guy who can move in and out of a room unnoticed, always looks under the hood. He saw something else that his mentor was delivering: a cut that could confidently carry those who sat in his chair wherever they were going next, physically or spiritually. A cut so crispy, it could preserve them until the next time.
Giving a cut like that, McCoy knew, could also take him anywhere.
”I’m a huge manifestor,” McCoy says. “I pay attention to the signs, and I make sure to share energy with people in the most genuine way that I can. It leads to the right things happening the right way.” He does not beg for opportunities, he tells me. But he does knock on doors.
Detroit, 2011. McCoy is at an Odd Future tour stop with his best friend, Chayne Armstrong, to see Armstrong’s good friend Tyler, the Creator perform. They grew up in Hawthorne together.
At the time, Odd Future was at the forefront of a movement connecting the streetwear, music and skateboard scenes across the country and eventually, internationally. The sneaker resale market had not yet become a total wash. And it was all exciting. It was at this Odd Future show where McCoy met Okonma, Boyce and Syd.
He had found himself in a kismet moment: on a tour bus with other creatives living out their dreams, all connected through a mutual friend. It felt effortless. He wanted to put himself around more creative people who would respect him for his work as a barber. After the concert, McCoy knew L.A. was that place for him. Meeting his wife on a short trip there pushed him to finally make the move. Today, they have two sons who’ve been the catalyst for McCoy building a career he’s proud to show them.
When McCoy arrived in L.A. in 2014, he crossed paths with Syd again, who already had that signature mohawk immortalized on the Internet’s “Ego Death” album cover. She remembered McCoy from the concert, but wasn’t aware that he cut hair. McCoy passed her a business card. “Mind you,” Syd explains in a green room tucked behind the set during our shoot. “I was a young woman who had just started getting their hair cut by a barber. I was still learning what I liked.”
Loyalty’s true definition can be found within the relationship a person has with their barber. Even when you know the cut could be crispier, you never seek out another option because you’ve been going to this person for years, and convenience can be reason enough to stay. But internal tension grows when you’re presented with a new option that illuminates what you haven’t cared to admit: You deserve better. When you take that chance and it supersedes your expectations, a new loyalty has been created. McCoy is the kind of barber you break up with your other barber for. With loyalty comes trust — and McCoy knew that if he wanted to be in rooms where a haircut could pivot to a culture-shifting moment, he’d need to gain it.
“Syd was the first to start getting a haircut from him, then Travis went to him,” Boyce says. “It’s a hard thing with barbers. You trust them with your life and you don’t really switch. But when I went to him I was like, ‘This is great. This is a person who cares about what they’re doing.’ He has a love for it, he wants to do it and it’s consistent. It’s consistent and it’s high-quality.”
Another important part of the dynamic, Boyce says, is that they were all on the come up together; moving on parallel paths, sharpening one another with every life update and piece of advice exchanged in the chair.
“I’m at a point in my life where I really appreciate the people around me who I can call my friends, who are also just immensely talented and gifted at what they do, and that we can work together on things and keep pushing each other forward,” Syd says. “[Barbering] is a service where you can find another barber who can maybe cut as well, [but] who you wouldn’t invite to your wedding. And Ronnie is going to be [at my wedding]. I’m grateful to have that.”
As a kid, McCoy wasn’t just observing pop culture for the plot, but for the haircuts. From inspecting Will Smith’s fade and high-top on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” to Method Man’s pristine chin strap beard worn throughout his career and Alfonso Ribeiro’s cut on “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” It was an early lesson on how the right haircut can be a professional level-up. He eventually connected all the dots — that it was the same person behind the scenes doing all of this work: Stacey Morris, more commonly known as Stacey Kutz.
“Martin Lawrence, Eddie Murphy … I could recognize that all these people had a great barber,” McCoy says. “That showed me how it could actually be as special as I thought it was for a lot of people. It could be something way bigger than just being a barber.”
Morris and McCoy share this mixture of professionalism, ability to read the room and adaptability, which is exactly what set work demands when things get unpredictable. “There’s a whole other component to this. That part of it, I really can’t explain,” Morris expresses over the phone. “I just call it the ‘It’ factor.”
McCoy cuts hair in homes and in glam rooms, which take on a different nature than a barber shop. They can hold a deeper intimacy. These spaces are personal and private to the client, where pressures can run high before the cameras are on. Being someone his clients could trust has granted McCoy admission into these places, alongside other barbers working at a high caliber.
“There’s never been a time that you’ve seen me without a Ronnie haircut in anything,” Bennett says. “Any film, anything. It’s always been Ronnie. It’s been Ronnie for 12 years. Everybody here, we all will hold out.”
The post The right barber can change your life. For the famous clients in his chair, it’s always going to be Ronnie McCoy III appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
