If you’re looking to spend a cold night smoking $50 Jay-Z-branded weed and spinning “Watch the Throne” on your turntable, you’re out of luck. After four years of surgery, it appears the hip-hop world has turned to marijuana. The brand went bankrupt.
Jay-Z launched his luxury cannabis line, Monogram, to much fanfare in 2020. The development included a model-filled photoshoot at Frank Sinatra’s Palm Springs mansion and a media frenzy in glossy magazines.
“Cannabis has been around for thousands of years, but it remains an industry whose legacy of skilled craftsmanship is often ignored,” Jay-Z said in a 2020 paper. statement. “I created Monogram to give cannabis the respect it deserves by showing the amount of effort, time and care that goes into creating a great smoke. Monogram products are second to none in terms of quality and consistency. level, and we are just getting started.”
But nearly five years later, it appears the rapper’s marijuana brand is all but over. Although Monogram’s official website lists nine retail stores (eight in California and one in Arizona), there are no pharmacies that actually carry the brand. SF gate Reported.
The West Coast cannabis market is notoriously saturated, but Jay-Z’s brand has been making its presence felt in ways that aren’t always positive. Joints typically sell for $5 in the Golden State, but the hip-hop mogul was trying to charge customers $50. Monogram’s former parent company (actually called The Parent Company) quickly burned through its initial $575 million in cash and was unable to recoup its investment.
By 2022, the parent company reported a net loss of $587 million and merged with commercial weed brand Gold Flora. A few months later, Monogram split off and formed an LLC, but Gold Flora appears to be taking its final steps, according to SF Gate.
Any business is subject to the whims of the market, but the fact that the joint was reportedly intentionally wrapped improperly did not help Monogram’s objectives.
When GQ writer Michelle Luke visited the manufacturing facility, she found that the $50 monogram joints could not stay lit for more than a few seconds, a far cry from standard burns lasting several minutes. When Lhooq asked about the defect, the employee told her that the rolling paper was wrinkled on purpose and that the weed was not ground into small pieces.
“It’s not the cigarettes. You have to get the vibe and let it go,” he told her. “You can put it back on the tube and go to the club.”
Cannabis investor Seth Yakatan had a completely different take on Monogram Joint’s overall quality.
“Like many other things we’ve seen with cannabis issues surrounding rappers, the hype doesn’t reflect reality,” he told SF Gate. “Monogram was supposed to be a super high-end product, but I don’t know anyone who tried it and thought it was anything more than mid-range.”
