Photo Credit: Jørund Føreland Pedersen / CC by 3.0
Death Row Records enters the cannabis industry under Snoop Dogg’s leadership with Death Row Cannabis.
The legendary rap label, which Snoop acquired earlier this year, announced on December 29 the launch of its own marijuana brand, Death Row Cannabis. Death Row Records’ Instagram account shared a brief animated video showing the brand’s logo and offering fans an early glimpse at the product line. Death Row Cannabis is set to debut through Cookies, the cannabis company founded by Bay Area rapper and entrepreneur Berner, in select stores across California beginning in January.
Curating Death Row Cannabis’ product is AK, “West Coast legacy cultivator and industry insider best known for RS11, Studio 54, and Shirazi strains from exotic cannabis breeder DEO.” Death Row Cannabis’ first product will be cannabis flower with diamond-infused pre-rolls soon to follow.
Snoop Dogg is, of course, no stranger to the cannabis industry. In 2015, he launched Leafs By Snoop, one of the first celebrity-endorsed cannabis brands in the US. Initially catering to the Colorado cannabis scene, as it was the first state to legalize recreational cannabis, Leafs By Snoop expanded into Canada in 2018.
Snoop has also been a chief investor in many other cannabis brands. The market exploded into an estimated $20 billion industry thanks to an increasing number of states passing relaxed laws. His early support of Oregon-based cannabis company Dutchie helped to double its valuation to $3.75 billion last year.
Though his cannabis-smoking habit might be the stuff of legend, as he once told his Potluck Dinner Party co-host, Martha Stewart, that he regularly smokes as many as 25 joints a day, Snoop has admitted to being out-smoked on at least one occasion.
“Willie f*cking Nelson,” the 51-year-old rapper said on the Let’s Go! podcast with Tom Brady, Larry Fitzgerald, and Jim Gray. “We was in Amsterdam on 4/20, and he was doing a concert out there. He performed on the 19th, and I performed on the 20th. So we went back to his hotel room, and we was playing dominoes. Willie had a vape, a joint, I had a blunt, and he had a pipe.”
“So me and him were playing dominoes one-on-one. He whooping my ass, and I’m just getting higher and higher and higher. And he just keep passing it to me, and I’m like, ‘This old motherf*cker’s out-smoking me.’ And I’m trying to stop, but I can’t ’cause I don’t wanna show no signs of weakness.”