That’s A Awful Lot Of Cough Syrup: what is it exactly?
That’s A Awful Lot Of Cough Syrup is a privately held Los Angeles streetwear brand set up by rapper Desto Dubb. ALOCS is the contraction it uses for itself, turning up both in the press material and in product names such as the A.L.O.C.S. T-Shirt. The range is conventional on paper, made up of tees, hoodies, sweatpants, shorts, denim and accessories, and unusual in practice, since the brand’s own name is the leading graphic on most of it. A dozen spelling variants bring shoppers in, including alocs awful lotta cough syrup clothing, cough syrup clothing and the shorthand awful lot of cough syrup. The legal entity is filed as THATS A AWFUL LOT OF… LLC, with no apostrophe and a trailing ellipsis. One detail is worth getting straight first: the brand writes “A Awful Lot”, not “An Awful Lot”, and the ungrammatical article is entirely deliberate. It is routine to type thats a awful lot of cough syrup without the apostrophe, yet only the version with “A” fits the registered mark.
Who makes it?
Desto Dubb, a rapper and entrepreneur from Watts in South Los Angeles, is the founder and chief executive. He had been releasing music for years before he sold a shirt, which accounts for much of how the company behaves. What you are looking at is not a design studio with a rapper attached as a face, but a rapper’s business, run from the same network as his records. He has put it that other labels are built around an aesthetic, and that his own is wrapped around himself instead. You see the result in graphics that read like song titles and in drops keyed to events rather than fashion seasons.
Joshua Kashif Taylor is the registrant on the United States trademark for the phrase, and posts on the brand’s own blog carry a matching byline. On his legal name the documentary record is thinner than the internet implies. Other names do the rounds on unsourced commercial sites and are best left alone, since for every practical purpose he is Desto Dubb.
Where does the name come from?
The phrase got to the public through a viral clip in which an officer’s line became the brand name, and Desto Dubb made that line into a business. The anecdote shows up in nearly every write-up, and it deserves care: material online claims the clip was staged, and no primary transcript settles it. What is documented is the commercial outcome rather than the encounter, and the trademark record records first use of the mark in November 2018.
The phrase refers to promethazine-codeine cough syrup, the prescription medicine known in rap slang as lean, and the company does not pretend otherwise. It stops short of treating that as a selling point, and its own site displays a standing banner reading “! PLEASE DO NOT SIP DRANK AND SHOOT FIREARMS !”. Medical and horror imagery threads through the product names, from Big Pharma and Promethazine Tour to Paralysis and Drankenstein, and it works as a graphic vocabulary rather than an instruction. The clothing is clothing, and the rest of this piece is about garments and prices.
When did the brand begin?
2018 is the year to use. First use of the mark is recorded in the trademark filing as November 2018, and an AllHipHop profile published in November 2023 describes the label marking its fifth anniversary. Most young streetwear brands cannot muster two independent pointers to one year. Some coverage dates the earliest selling during the pandemic, which conflicts with both markers, and the filing and the anniversary piece are the stronger pair.
The start was literally a van. Desto Dubb selling clothes out of a van in a parking lot in downtown Los Angeles is how the brand’s own about page puts it, which makes it an origin the company tells on itself rather than one assembled by a reporter. That detail continues to be a description of the method, namely small batches, direct contact with buyers, and drops announced through social accounts instead of wholesale calendars. By 2026 there is an online store and physical retail, and even so the rhythm still looks closer to a van than a department store, with fresh batches landing every week or two.
What does the brand actually sell?
At the core are heavyweight cut-and-sew basics wearing jumbo screen prints front and back. Tee names include King Of The Kill, Drankenstein, Juicebusters and Big Pharma, and the Classic Cough Syrup T-Shirt is published at 6.5 oz organic cotton. Hoodies are the heavy end, the Classic Cough Syrup Hoodie listed at 16 oz organic cotton and hand-dyed in Los Angeles, while sweatpants use a 14 oz cotton and recycled polyester fleece. The denim side is deliberately thin, since the Double Cup Cargo Shorts, a 14 oz garment-dyed cargo short with double-layer back pockets, is the only piece in that collection in 2026.
Two details identify the brand better than any graphic: the signature yellow woven label, named again and again in its own product copy, and the published fabric weight. Apparel runs XS to 3XL, denim and workwear sell by waist from 28 to 44, and neither a global size chart nor washing instructions is published. Set per garment, fit guidance is not uniform, because the classic pieces are called true to size while the lightweight jersey tees say plainly that they run small.
What do the clothes cost?
The core prices move very little, which makes them easy to hold in your head. Reading the brand’s own store as of September 2026, a tee is about $150, a hoodie about $200 and sweatpants about $200. Denim shorts settle near $150, puffer jackets between roughly $200 and $250, belts and Dickies trousers around $250, while the Dickies jacket tops the range near $350. At the cheaper end a bandana runs about $25, socks and boxers fall in the $50 to $70 band, and women’s pieces roughly $48 to $160.
Because streetwear prices and stock change constantly, read that ladder as a shape rather than a quote. The band places cough syrup clothing at the upper end of independent streetwear, well above mall-tier graphic brands and far below European luxury houses. It amounts to an authenticity signal: a $45 tee wearing this logo did not come from the company selling them at $150.
Where is it produced, and where can you buy it?
Los Angeles, and the brand declares it on the garments themselves. The product copy repeats “Made in Los Angeles”, with individual pieces described as hand-dyed and printed or screen-printed in the city rather than finished abroad. The same copy describes the company as a Black-owned business. The numbers make sense at these price levels once you account for local small-batch production, since a 16 oz cotton hoodie made here was never going to be a $60 garment.
Alongside a small number of physical locations the company operates its own online store. The flagship can be found at 7669 Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, with 312 West 5th Street in Los Angeles and 5410 Almeda Road in Houston also listed. No store-locator page and no published opening hours are offered, which makes those addresses worth confirming before travelling. Anything else that presents itself as an outlet is best judged on the garment, meaning the yellow woven label, the published fabric weight, the real price level, and whether the product name appears in the brand’s own catalogue.
Fact file for the brand
The details that survive checking are collected in the table below, and the ones that do not are left out. The prices were pulled from the brand’s own store in September 2026 and are hedged, since they move. Dates come from the trademark record and dated press coverage rather than brand mythology. Those addresses are the ones the company lists on its own social profiles, and no opening dates are published. Where a claim is contested, such as the origin clip, the row records what is documented. Use it as a starting point for your own checks rather than a final word.
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Brand name, as the brand spells it | That’s A Awful Lot Of Cough Syrup |
| Abbreviated form | ALOCS, sometimes written A.L.O.C.S. |
| Common searcher spellings | thats a awful lot of cough syrup, awful lot of cough syrup, alocs |
| The legal entity | THATS A AWFUL LOT OF… LLC |
| Founder and chief executive | Desto Dubb, rapper and businessman |
| Founder’s home | Watts, South Los Angeles |
| Trademark holder of record | Joshua Kashif Taylor, as recorded in the US trademark record |
| First recorded use of the mark | November 2018 |
| How the selling began | Trading out of a van in a downtown Los Angeles parking lot |
| Signature detail | Yellow woven label, plus jumbo front and back screen prints |
| Main prices, September 2026 | Tees about $150, hoodies about $200, sweatpants about $200 |
| Where it is made | Made in Los Angeles, described in product copy as a Black-owned business |
| Flagship location | 7669 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles |
| Additional listed locations | 312 West 5th Street, Los Angeles; 5410 Almeda Road, Houston |