SF GATE
Jay-Z’s cannabis brand looked timeless as soon as it launched in 2020. The billionaire rapper, legal name Shawn Carter, rolled out his Monogram line of luxury joints and cannabis flower with a photo shoot at the famous Frank Sinatra house in Palm Springs. Models elegantly smoked joints in front of mid-century pool furniture, as if the brand had been around for decades. Glowing profiles in GQ, Vogue and Vanity Fair soon followed.
Four years later, it looks like this splashy celebrity cannabis brand has already disappeared.
Monogram’s website lists nine retailers where it says its products are for sale — eight in California and one in Arizona — but none include the brand’s products on their online menus. The parent company behind Monogram, confusingly called The Parent Company, hasn’t fared any better. The conglomerate originally hit California’s market with $575 million in cash and plans to take over the entire industry, but after burning through half a billion dollars, it has merged into another company, which itself appears to be in financial trouble.
This downfall did not surprise Seth Yakatan, a cannabis investor and adviser to many California pot companies. He told SFGATE that The Parent Company was spending “mind-boggling” amounts of money during its brief time and that Jay-Z’s pricey Monogram products failed to live up to the hype.
A representative for Monogram declined to comment for this story, but it appears the brand is the latest hyped-up celebrity pot brand to wither away in California’s punishing legal weed market.
‘We’re going to dominate’
Monogram’s launch was one of the biggest weed business news stories of 2020. Jay-Z was the marquee name behind The Parent Company, usually shortened to TPCO, a merger of three existing cannabis corporations. The firm went public in 2020 with a special-purpose acquisition company, a type of stock market fundraising scheme that allowed investors to quickly raise large sums of money. TPCO held 20 different retail brands, multiple grow houses and a network of retail stores in California.
The company’s executives said success was all but guaranteed. “We’re going to dominate and consolidate the market. … It will be hard for any smaller player to compete with us,” bragged TPCO board member Michael Aurbach to an industry outlet that November, saying the company had $575 million in cash. The sum was far more than any other company in the state, according to Aurbach.
Jay-Z was named a C-suite executive (the chief visionary officer) at TPCO, and his Monogram brand was the company’s luxury offering, selling pre-rolled joints and cannabis flower in sleek black packaging at extravagant prices. A single joint cost $50; joints from other companies often sell for $5 each.
Monogram justified these prices by saying its joints were hand-rolled with premium flower, but GQ said the joint failed to stay lit for “more than a few seconds,” a bad sign for even a $1 joint.
Yakatan, the longtime cannabis investor, said reviews for the so-called luxury cannabis were universally negative…
