Jay-Z’s cannabis brand Monogram appears to be in trouble, with punters loathe to pay $50 for one of his luxury joints and the business losing half a billion dollars since it was launched to great fanfare in 2020.
The ‘Empire State of Mind’ rapper,’ also known as Shawn Carter, is celebrated as a savvy businessman, but his stylish weed company is floundering — like many others that braved California’s tough legal pot market.
Monogram’s website lists nine retailers across California and Arizona that it says stock its wares. But none of them currently lists any of Jay-Z-endorsed buds or joints on their online menus.
Meanwhile, the conglomerate behind it, The Parent Company (TPCO), has burned through most of its $575 million launch cash and merged into another firm, which also appears to be in financial trouble, according to SFGATE.
Experts on legal weed say it’s been much tougher to break into California’s tough market than many investors anticipated, and that Jay-Z’s Monogram products are over-priced and underwhelming.
The Golden State’s legal weed sector has been stymied by complex rules, high taxes, competition from black market traders, wildfires, and sliding prices — pushing many cultivators into financial problems and insolvency.
Monogram did not answer DailyMail.com’s request for comment.
Seth Yakatan, a cannabis investor and adviser to many California weed firms, told SFGATE that he was not surprised about TPCO’s troubles, as it spent ‘mind-boggling’ sums of money pushing products that get poor reviews.
Billionaire rapper Jay-Z’s luxury cannabis brand Monogram appears to be in trouble
Pot users have balked at the idea of paying $50 for one of Jay-Z’s pre-rolled Monogram joints
‘Like many other things we’ve seen in cannabis surrounding rappers, the hype hasn’t met the reality,’ Yakatan said.
‘Monogram was supposed to be an ultra-premium product, and I don’t know anyone who tried it and thought it was anything more than mid-tier.’
Monogram’s launch was one of the biggest cannabis business news stories of the decade.
TPCO was a merger of three existing cannabis corporations. It went public in 2020, in control of 20 separate retail brands, multiple grow houses and a network of retail outlets across California.
Jay-Z was named a C-suite executive — the chief visionary officer — at TPCO. The 54-year-old billionaire rapper’s Monogram brand was the company’s luxury offering.
It sells pre-rolled ‘loosies’ and cannabis buds in stylish black packaging. It’s ‘OG Handrolls’ cost an eye-popping $50 — much higher than the $5 that pot smokers are used to paying.
The launch involved a photo shoot at the celebrated Frank Sinatra house in Palm Springs, with models elegantly puffing joints in front of mid-century pool furniture.
This earned the upstart brand coverage in GQ, Vogue and Vanity Fair.
TPCO board member Michael Aurbach at the time bragged that they would ‘dominate and consolidate the market’ because it had such deep pockets.
‘It will be hard for any smaller player to compete with us,’ Aurbach said.
From the outset, the newcomer had difficulty convincing consumers to spend over the odds on products that did not live up to the hype.
A GQ review complained that Monogram joints failed to stay lit for ‘more than a few seconds.’
In its initial listing, TPCO said it expected to make $334 million in its first year — sky-high earnings that failed to become reality.
TPCO in 2022 reported a shocking $587 million net loss, apparently the result of buying overvalued brands, and its stock price tumbled.
Monogram offers cannabis buds and pre-rolled in stylish black packaging, but reviews have been middling
Pot startups have struggled to bloom in California’s highly taxed and regulated legal weed market
Jay-Z was once named as the chief visionary officer for The Parent Company
The next year, a struggling TPCO merged with another California weed company, Gold Flora. But it only had a 49 percent minority stake in the newly-formed corporation.
Jay-Z appears to have split with TPCO at about that time.
Stock market filings show that Monogram exited TPCO in December 2022, even though Gold Flora remains the exclusive seller of Monogram products within California.
Gold Flora appears to have stopped selling Jay-Z’s products, and is having its own financial challenges.
The company did not answer DailyMail.com’s request for comment.
It has posted some $56 million in losses this year, according to Green Market Report, and has more debts than assets.
Coastal Sun, a Santa Cruz cannabis farm, earlier this month sued Gold Flora for some $20,000 over unpaid bills.
Darren Story, Coastal Sun’s chief financial officer, says Gold Flora appears to be in a ‘debt death spiral.’
Green Market Report says Gold Flora could be the next firm to join the ‘conga line into receivership and bankruptcy.’
The struggles of Jay-Z’s weed enterprise are in stark contrast to the success he enjoyed as the CEO of Def Jam Recordings and the founder of Roc Nation in the 2000s.
Speaking in 2021, he said he was motivated to inter the weed market to get more black people into the industry.
People of color had been disproportionately punished for involvement in the drug where it is illegal, but comprised only a small number of those profiting from the multibillion-dollar legal pot market, he complained.
‘It’s really unbelievable how that can happen,’ he said.
‘We were the ones most negatively affected by the war on drugs, and America has turned around and created a business from it that’s worth billions.’
