Cannabis Directory

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David Downs January 14, 2021 

A close-up of Monogram No. 3 bud. (David Downs/Leafly)

I got 99 problems but JAY-Z’s weed ain’t one.

The 22-time Grammy-winning rapper debuts in California’s adult-use marijuana market this year with a premium-priced luxury weed brand—Monogram.

The actual herb quality varies and the price point attracts haters. But JAY-Z is a dime bags-to-riches American icon. He’s New York royalty and the owner of Roc Nation.

Beyonce’s husband commands legions of fans with cash and humble dreams to buy up not only the weed but the backstory, and even fresh stock in the company.

Shops cannabis deals near you on Leafly.

So fresh and so clean-clean: Monogram makes a serious first impression. (David Downs/Leafly)

This January, Leafly reviewed:

• 2 grams of the “No. 03” flower ($40+tax)
• 2 grams of the “No. 01” flower ($40+tax)
• a 1.5-gram “handroll” ($50+tax)
• And the No. 96 “loosies” pre-roll 4-pack ($40)

The loosies were mediocre, the handroll and No. 01 flower came out satisfactory, and the No. 03 flower took the throne. All of it was a serviceable first effort from a celebrity brand.

Grown indoors in San Jose, CA, Monogram eschews strain names and THC scores. Instead, strains become numbers and potency is either “light,” “medium,” or “heavy.”

As a consumer, this is not helpful.

The No. 01 seems like an OG Kush and the No. 03 resembles an exotic Cookiescross. But how do lovers of OGs and Gelatos find those on shelves?

RelatedThe Leafly Strain of the Year 2020 is—Runtz!

It’s just like wine: Cannabis strain parentage brings along an audience. Monogram jettisons that brand value.

Also, people like their THC scores. Yes—some lab fudge scores. Yes—THC does not tell the whole story, but it’s better than nothing. Maybe label it a “No. 01, medium,” but stick the details on social media, or something.

Monogram No. 1 close up shows quality. (David Downs/Leafly)

Anyhoo—the No. 01 medium smelled like an OG cross, and looked, tasted, and felt like one: a hybrid body-buzzing, chatty, sensory-enhancer. Not Watch the Throne-level, but solid, A-grade indoor. Respect.

Monogram No. 3 could be Kush Mints. (David Downs/Leafly) 

The “No. 03, heavy” does earn the throne.

It looked icy and an exotic white-green-purple, with a complex, sweet, cake, and fuel smell. The No. 03 nugs felt hyper-dense and powdery with trichomes. The ground aroma hit spicy, sweet, scrumptious, and cherry. It had a cherry ice cream taste and moderately heavy effects with crazy appetite stimulation.

The No. 03 earns the title of “luxury,” and you pay for it—$40 plus tax for two grams.

The Monogram handroll is a bat. (David Downs/Leafly)

You’ll feel Shawn Carter’s style in the black handroll carrying case and the hand-crafted fatty inside.

Big and black, the size impresses. It conjures the doinks that pot growers roll with pounds sitting around. “Oh, you fancy, huh?”

The downside: Half the terpenes—the aromatic molecules that give the bud its character—had left the building. This pre-roll still smelled better than the industry average, but that’s not saying much.

RelatedUS cannabis harvest price report 2020

Signs of high quality: Nugs, not dry shake, went into this joint, and the flower wasn’t machine-ground. The dry hit tasted mild, piney, and lemony. It burned fine and pulled fine—inoffensive and serviceable in every way.

Real weed heads don’t pay $50 for 1.5 grams, as stoners can roll their own. However, this’ll make a great gift for the college buddy you listened to The Black Album with. Sales data show a growing percentage of customers willing to pay $80 and up for an eighth-ounce of weed.

Monogram loosies No. 88 four-pack (Courtesy Monogram)

Here we’ve arrived at the weakest link, and it’s still not bad. The No. 96 loosies are four small joints each in a black case—great for a spaced beach meet-up. Folks can smoke their own, ‘cus don’t pass that shit right now.

Sadly, the terps here were industry-standard M.I.A.: missing in action. The joint tube didn’t harbor any great smells, the weed smoked neutral, like the usual house pre-rolls around the Bay. It wasn’t harsh or bad-tasting, just forgettable.

But here’s the thing: When you buy and smoke Monogram, you’re not just buying herb, you’re also buying a story. The brand garnered mentions on Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and Instagram features by Jadakiss.

Carter started working with major California licensee Caliva in July 2019. He’s Monogram’s Chief Visionary Officer, with a reported 50% stake in the brand.

Both Caliva, Monogram, and a dozen-plus brands now reside in shell company “The Parent Company.” They’re aiming for the crown of “Largest publicly traded cannabis company in California.”

Look beyond the trees—this is a paper play. The Federal Reserve’s interest rates make money nearly free, and amateur day traders feel frothy.

Not only can you buy JAY-Z’s weed, you can buy securities in The Parent Company’s parent company, Subversive Capital Acquisition Corp. Subversive is a so-called blank-check company (called a SPAC) and it explicitly aims to consolidate or roll up cannabis brands in California, and beyond:

• Subversive raised $75 million on the Canadian exchange NEO
• JAY-Z got 5 million shares of The Parent Company, while Roc Nation gets $25 million in stock and a $7.5 million annual fee
• The four-month-old “SBVCF” security also trades in the US
• Entertainers Rihanna, Meek Mill, Yo Gotti, and DJ Khaled are reported investors

According to the Wall Street Journal on Jan. 14., early SPAC investors like JAY-Z carry little risk and can take major profits.

Related7 Cannabis-Related Jay Z Lyrics We Can All Relate To

“It’s a free lunch—there’s no way around it,” New York University assistant law professor Michael Ohlrogge told the WSJ.

And late investors end up holding the bag. Instagram commenters talk up SBVCF, but buyer beware: this is an “over-the-counter,” four-month-old stock—untested and volatile.

All of which is to say: Your relationship to Monogram will color your enjoyment of it. 

In one corner, cash-strapped, legacy growers reflexively hate the new competition. In the other corner, amateur stock pickers get high on their own supply. 

(Disclosure: I own zero stock in or positions on SBVCF; I lost my own 401(k) password.)

Monogram isn’t for true players, but the true players are disappearing—melting icebergs in the warming sea of legal weed.

Mainstream Grammy-watchers get to feel fancy with Monogram this winter, and Jigga’s partner Caliva stands to deliver.

Caliva processed 1.5 million legal weed transactions in California in 2020 alone. Monogram is currently sold out. You can’t knock this hustle.

The news spread like wildfire: Basketball legend Shawn Kemp would break barriers by opening a Seattle cannabis retail store. 

The October news release proclaimed Kemp’s Cannabis would be the city’s first Black-owned retail cannabis store. 

But much like racial equity in the cannabis industry in general, the reality was much murkier. The company later walked back its claim of being the first Black-owned cannabis store and acknowledged that Kemp was not one of the shop’s five majority owners at the time it opened on Oct. 30. Last week, the city said Kemp owns just a 5% stake in the business. 

The confusion around Kemp’s Cannabis is just the latest example of the uphill battle to create racial equity in the cannabis industry.

Just like in every other aspect of the criminal legal system, African Americans have long borne the greatest brunt of the country’s racially biased drug enforcement policies. In a 2020 report, the American Civil Liberties Union said that even after legalization, Washington still saw Black people twice as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people, despite having roughly the same rate of use. In Whatcom County, that number jumps to Black people being over nine times more likely to be arrested.

But for many local Black cannabis entrepreneurs, the door to participation in the state’s green gold rush has been largely closed. According to the city of Seattle last week, the city is “not aware of any majority Black-owned cannabis retail stores operating in Seattle currently.”  Before there were licensed cannabis retail stores, there were unregulated medical marijuana dispensaries, some of which were owned by Black businesspeople. But when retail licenses were granted in 2014, the dispensaries were shut out. 

“The industry which we built was ripped from us,” said Aaron Barfield, of the group Black Excellence in Cannabis, who operated one of the dispensaries. “Our businesses were hijacked.”

Barfield said given the decades of racial disparity in marijuana arrests, the exclusion of Black operators from the lucrative retail business was shocking. He said once the retail system launched, medical dispensaries were forced to close and the number of stores overall dramatically shrank. To his point, the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB) issued just 222 new retail licenses to offset an estimated more than 1,500 medical marijuana dispensaries, according to The Stranger in 2016.

The financial stakes are high. Cannabis is a big business, with $1 billion in state retail sales in 2019. 

But help might be on the way. With the passage of state HB 2870 earlier this year, a new state social equity task force was created to begin to right some of these pervasive wrongs. 

State Rep. Melanie Morgan, D-Parkland, is one of two Black women who co-chair the social equity task force. She said systemic racism is at the root of African American exclusion from the cannabis industry. 

“[African Americans] have been cut out of the business,” Morgan said. “We were the very ones that were incarcerated for it, and some are still incarcerated for it, but yet now the white establishment is taking over the industry that has been legalized.” 

The task force — made up largely of community members — wants to see new, forfeited or revoked marijuana retail licenses in the hands of those most impacted by the war on drugs. 

But Barfield isn’t optimistic about the potential for the task force to enforce the changes needed to benefit Black businesses. He also has little faith in the LCB to champion the cause, either. He and Black Excellence in Cannabis wanted legislation with more enforcement power over the LCB versus making recommendations. 

Black Excellence in Cannabis and King County Equity Now are calling for the city of Seattle to request 30 new retail cannabis licenses from the LCB for Black businesses. In addition, they want to create a reparations fund for victims of past cannabis arrests and dedicated funds from cannabis taxes for race and social equity programs.

Despite the skepticism, Morgan said the task force will be taking the keys back from the gatekeepers who are keeping Black and other people of color out of the industry.

“It’s an exciting time that we are finally at the table to correct the harm and the injury that has been done to the Black African American community,” Morgan said. “I think it’s a start. We have a long way to go.”

But Barfield isn’t optimistic about the potential for the task force to enforce the changes needed to benefit Black businesses. He also has little faith in the LCB to champion the cause, either. He and Black Excellence in Cannabis wanted legislation with more enforcement power over the LCB versus making recommendations.

Naomi Ishisaka:  nishisaka@seattletimes.com;  on Twitter: @naomiishisaka.Naomi Ishisaka is The Seattle Times’ assistant managing editor for diversity, inclusion and staff development. Her column on race, culture, equity and social justice appears weekly on Mondays.