THE TRAP RENAISSANCE

“I've been in this game for years, it made me an animal. There's rules to this shit, I wrote me a manual.” - B.I.G.

Rockstar growers and connoisseur curators building long tail cannabis brands that people around the world are lining up for. Drops, pops, and legit cut and sew apparel as a backdrop to connoisseur weed cultivated “by the culture” who live night and day for the plant. It was never about that quick buck, it was always about that first harvest where everything finally went right, you were absolutely hooked and nothing was more important than honing your craft. In LA that was weaving your way through a wild web of hydro stores, Weedtracker, 215 docs, 420 lawyers, Oaksterdam News up north, or JEMM Magazine down south and always Jorge Ceventes.

From the street to the boardroom, it's hard for everyone right now, but we are stoked to find some light in very dark times, and to see that people are still doing what they love and winning, based on experience, creativity and never ending grit. A nice “F’ You” to all the chads that literally said “thanks for the hard work, we will take it from here,” and spent hundreds of millions of dollars building brands that nobody cares about, while this scene is operating off of IG, Telegram, building world wide recognition and setting foundation coast to coast.

Shout out First Smoke of the Day for encapsulating the past, present and future cannabis culture and history. We appreciate writers like Jimi Devine, Jon Cappetta and meme lords POP and Sour Wavez for reeling us back in from our corporate slipping tendencies.

From our perspective, coast to coast trappers are the equivalent of Soundcloud rappers, a tipping point that mainstream cannabis is sleeping on. It gives us hope that the “independent label” model will emerge and the Sub Pop’s, Cash Money’s and 4AD’s of the music world will translate to cannabis, and authentic bands or in our case brands, or in other words, “talent,” have a lane, with potential to scale, and can imprint at and/or upstream to the major.

We are so pumped to watch the East Coast emerge. NYC is bringing so much flavor. Detroit Rock City lives up to its name, we cannot f’ing wait till ATL comes online, and the tighter Florida remains, the more interesting it will get. - BB

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We always love that Squintz from the Sandlot is a OG medical cannabis player and can write the book on street to boardroom strategy.

Yung LB/Runtz uses the hip-hop play book to build world wide brand awareness, with legit cut/sew, strong touring ground game and pairing rapper to strain. Will they hold on to it? TBD.

The smartest kid in the room from our perspective. Wisdom beyond years.

Prison. MMA. cannabis. Exploding.

Doja has been doing his thing for a bit, still very relevant, and we wonder what he will bring next.

Haters going to hate, but Ivan went hard, early, and gave away IP that created a generation of growers. There is power in numbers, and Ivan inspired thousands.

Shout out to OG Sherbinski for brining activism to the conversation. The only thing FSOTD is lacking from out POV.

Can Berner continue to grow his brand on Licensing/SOP framework and stay relevant?

SFV. The real OG.