Zac Efron is building an ambitious off-grid home in Australia that will incorporate hemp across everything from walls and insulation to mattresses, textiles, and interior components. The project, designed by environmental innovator Joost Bakker, reflects a growing interest in sustainable construction and explores how industrial hemp could play a larger role in the future of architecture.

Interest in building with hempcrete—also known as hemp-lime or hemp concrete—is definitely growing. Such an idea is not necessarily new, but every time a project like this appears, people pay attention. And while there still aren’t many real-life examples, the benefits sound almost endless: eco-homes, community projects, sustainable architecture studios, materials that breathe better, help restore the past, shape the future, and take better care of the present.

And so, after making headlines in Australia last year, hemp has found its way into a home very much at the center of pop culture: Zac Efron is building his new house in Australia using this cannabis-derived material.

The High School Musical alum and host of Down to Earth (a Netflix series that followed him around the world exploring more sustainable ways to live, eat, and inhabit the planet) is now building his own home with industrial hemp. The project, named FutureCave, seems to fit into an ongoing personal search for a more sustainable way of living.

Hempcrete, or hemp-lime, is a biocomposite made from hemp hurd, lime and water. Hemp hurd is the woody inner core of the industrial hemp stalk. It is not the flower; it is neither the leaf nor the part of the plant associated with recreational use.

According to People and E! News, Efron is building the project on a 128-hectare property near the border between New South Wales and Queensland, in an area located about an hour from Byron Bay. The actor purchased the land in 2020 and chose environmental designer Joost Bakker to develop a sustainable home that would use hemp across multiple parts of the construction and interior.

What Will Zac Efron’s Hemp Home, FutureCave, Look Like?

FutureCave will be built in an area of significant natural beauty and value. The property sits on land with rainforest, waterfalls, creeks, walking trails, and ancient cedar trees. The home will feature six bedroom pods connected by outdoor walkways, each with its own bathroom and rooftop garden, as well as a large living area on the property.

The house will be an off-grid project, meaning a home designed to operate as independently as possible from traditional power, water, gas, and waste systems. In FutureCave, that low-impact logic will also extend to the materials: hemp will be present in the walls, insulation, interiors, and textiles. Hemp Building Directory reports that the project will also include a green roof holding 100 tons of soil, with a low-impact approach designed to integrate with the surrounding environment.

And here is the most striking part: hemp will not only be in the blocks or the walls. The material will reportedly be used in internal blocks, joinery, mattresses, curtains, and pillows. Bakker, the home’s designer, has also said he is working with an appliance manufacturer to explore the possibility of creating a washing machine with a hemp-based drum.

The home will also use sustainable boards from Plantbord in the kitchen and bathrooms. Bakker shared an update with the company, which describes its product as a particle board made from materials designed to restore soil health, as well as the health of the people working and living with it. According to the update, Efron’s home will use 200 of the boards for the kitchen and bathroom joinery. Separately, HempBuild Magazine reported that the joinery will use a plant-based circular resin from the Dutch company Plantics.

Hemp Building Directory adds more details: rugs, curtains, insulation, “breathable” interior walls, plant-based mattresses, and even early explorations into hemp-based battery technologies or appliance components.

In short, Efron is not just adding some hemp to his house. He is betting on a full package: using industrial hemp as one of the central materials in a home designed to breathe better, consume less energy, and have a lower impact on the environment where it is being built.

Who Is Joost Bakker, the Designer Zac Efron Chose?

To understand FutureCave, we have to understand Joost Bakker.

Bakker is a Dutch-Australian environmental designer known for low-waste projects, regenerative design, and experimentation with natural materials. He is also behind Future Food System, a project that explores how to build and live through more circular systems, where architecture, food, waste, and materials are all thought of together.

Efron did not come to Bakker simply because he wanted a different, futuristic, or viral house. And he did not land there by chance: the two met while filming Down to Earth in 2021, and the actor was struck by the way Bakker designs spaces. In interviews cited by Australian media, Efron explained that, after living in many places around the world, every time he visited one of Bakker’s spaces, he “had a sense of ‘this is actually what I want in life.’” 

On Instagram, Bakker wrote that it is not every day Zac Efron asks you to design his home, and that he was especially excited because it would be the first home the actor has ever owned. He also wrote that Efron had fallen in love with Future Food System and with Bakker’s family home in Monbulk, and now wanted a home of his own where the designer could push his ideas “as far as they can go.”

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Bakker also explained that over the past year, they had been experimenting with hemp blocks, exploring alternatives to concrete that, according to him, can help restore the environment. In that process, he mentioned two elements: hemp and oysters. Hemp, for its potential to repair soil health; oysters, for their role as natural ocean restorers.

According to Hemp Building Directory, the project could use a new type of lime-free hemp block, with oyster shells as the binder, in a form similar to a lightweight building block. The publication reports that the project could require around 2,200 blocks.

Bakker summed it up with a line that feels both beautiful and perfect for this story: he wants to use “the most cutting-edge technology,” invented by the Romans more than 2,000 years ago. In other words, the project looks forward by returning to mineral materials, ancient techniques, and building methods that are less dependent on synthetic systems.

Hempcrete and hemp-based building materials have real benefits, but they also have clear limits. They are not structural on their own. They can be more expensive upfront, require trained labor, and depend on suppliers, local regulations, industrial hemp availability, and technical knowledge. Hemp Building Directory also points to bottlenecks in Australia, including limited processing infrastructure and the need for more builder training.

Ultimately, even if this type of construction remains out of reach for most people today, Zac Efron’s house does something important: it brings industrial hemp into a global conversation with a kind of visibility few bioconstruction materials ever get. And it does so from a particularly symbolic place: showing how a historically stigmatized plant can also become an ally for creating homes that are more efficient, healthier, and more sustainable.

Gatitafresona, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons // Edited

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In the early ’90s, the SoCal trio of Bradley Nowell, Eric Wilson and Bud Gaugh pioneered a mashup of ska, punk, reggae and hip-hop that took the airwaves and stoner culture by storm, before tragedy struck. Now, 30 years later, Brad’s son Jakob Nowell adds closure and a compelling new chapter to the band’s storied legacy.

Everyone has a Sublime story.

Hearing their music for the first time might have accompanied the loss of your virginity, smoking your first joint or some combination of the two.

You might have been high in a friend’s car, drunk at a house party or, if you were lucky enough to catch one, experiencing their fervor at a live show. Whatever your introduction to Sublime, it came to define your relationship with the band and the story you would share.

For many, their Sublime inauguration came in 1996, hearing Bradley Nowell’s voice crescendo across the radio singing “What I Got,” the global smash hit Rolling Stone placed at number 83 on its 2008 list of “100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time.”

If future Sublime songs could have also made the cut, we’ll never know: the guitar-strumming fingers and rapturous vocals of Nowell were lost to the physical world a month prior to “What I Got” being released. It seemed Sublime was over before it had begun, catching fire only to be without its driving creative force.

Yet, somehow, the music not only endured. It thrived.

“What I Got” became the summer anthem of 1996, blasting through headphones and speakers across the globe. As the band posthumously grew in popularity, fans from all over the world began to both celebrate and mourn the music: appreciation for its existence, disappointment for never being able to see it performed live again.

Our minds became vehicles for connecting with Sublime. We could picture Nowell lighting up that morning cigarette, stepping into a new day’s sneakers, playing the guitar with calloused hands like a mother fucking riot, the energy of the song’s composition penetrating beyond our sound systems and into our souls, where the Long Beach rebel was still alive.

Now, 30 years later, with over 20 million records sold worldwide, Sublime has been revived with original members Eric Wilson and Bud Gaugh, joined by Bradley’s son, Jakob Nowell, in the role once held by his father.

It’s a synergistic, synchronous, full-circle moment: the baby featured in the “What I Got” music video now stationed as the band’s frontman, carrying the torch and resurrecting our connection to Sublime so we no longer need to imagine “what if.”

With a new tour and new music on the horizon, maybe, just maybe, the greatest Sublime story is the one that hasn’t yet been told.

Forged in the Garages of Long Beach

Visit any university in the United States, and at least one student possesses a poster, shirt or other memorabilia featuring Sublime’s iconic sun symbol, a visual representation of the band akin to The Rolling Stones’ tongue and the Grateful Dead’s skull. The imagery has withstood time in the same way Sublime’s music continues to inspire generations of fans old and new.

Forged in the garages and backyard parties of Long Beach, California, lead singer Bradley Nowell, bassist Eric Wilson and drummer Bud Gaugh emerged as SoCal’s preeminent leader in the Cali-reggae-dub movement, bringing with it a following of friends and fans who also happened to be cannabis enthusiasts.

Since the band’s inception, cannabis culture has played a pivotal role as both relatable subject matter within Sublime’s music and an aid to their creative process.

“I’d been smoking since I was 12 or 13 years old, and when Brad turned me onto reggae music, it was like, ‘Oh, these two things go together hand in hand,’” Gaugh said during a recent interview. “It opens you to your spirituality and puts your mind onto an astral plane where you can be more focused on the divinity you’re encountering. The beats, the rhythm, it all went together trancelike. The rhythm would push your buzz and your buzz would compliment the rhythm. It was all intertwined.”

So intertwined at times, the band would roll up to gigs and find the majority of their audience was already stoned.

“We were smoking outside, we were smoking inside, it was just what we did,” Gaugh said. “There was nothing shameful about it as far as we were concerned.”

Weed was a great unifier between Gaugh and Wilson, who had birthed their creative alchemy in different projects prior to Sublime, but never felt completely in flow until meeting Nowell.

“The writing and creative process in those other bands was slow and painful,” Gaugh said. “It was forced. We really had to struggle to write something we liked, but after meeting Brad and playing in his garage the first week, we had five or six songs. It was effortless. With Brad, we had melodies and rhythms you could dance to.”

Sublime’s first official lineup of Nowell, Wilson and Gaugh debuted at a Fourth of July party on the peninsula, a seemingly innocuous show that, according to Gaugh, turned into a riot.

“The party wasn’t just high school kids and friends, adults were present, citizens from our neighborhood, all bouncing their heads to our music,” Gaugh said. “We received instant approval that our unit had groove, and we knew right away we had something strong there.”

Three friends, each playing their part: Gaugh hammering on the kit, Wilson holding down the bass line, and Nowell commanding both the guitar and the microphone with such intensity the entire crowd was afoot, standing and moving to the rhythm, a byproduct of three musicians tapped into their inner divinities, outwardly transmuting a positive vibration birthed in chaos.

The show proved Nowell, Wilson and Gaugh could not only be an effective band together, but that their music resonated on a deeper level with the audience, something Gaugh and Wilson’s other outfits hadn’t accomplished. Sublime was music you could feel.

“Trying to gig with other friends’ bands, we were always welcomed because those bands knew they were better than us,” Gaugh said. “But when we started playing parties as Sublime, those other bands weren’t too happy to re-invite us.”

Five Bands, Five Kegs, Five Bucks

Building on their growing local momentum, Sublime ventured beyond Long Beach to gig at warehouse and college parties, eventually testing the waters of greater Los Angeles.

“There weren’t a lot of clubs letting punk rock bands play back then, so you would get these ‘five bands/five kegs/five bucks’ deals,” Gaugh said. “Promoters could easily put us with a rock band, hippie band or funk/punk band like Fishbone because we filled all those spaces, one of the driving factors behind people’s enthusiasm to see us. We were playing different types of music beyond just one style.”

Pulling from a multitude of creative influences afforded Sublime a diverse range of audience exposure, creating an influx of fandom from a variety of pockets that were traditionally more siloed.

“We made friends with No Doubt early on because we found their fans were also our fans,” Gaugh said. “They were in Orange County and we were in LA County. When we’d gig in Los Angeles, they would support us, and when they’d gig in Fullerton or Costa Mesa, we’d support them.”

The group then sought out bands who were similar in style to organically grow their reach in other locations.

“We’d be playing a fraternity party at the Colorado River and the other band would be like, ‘Oh, this guy over here from Alpha Beta Kappa G-String is their treasurer,’” Gaugh said. “We’d go talk to that guy and steal the information, which is how we learned to gig for ourselves.”

When not immersed in their hard-partying lifestyle, Gaugh and his bandmates flipped through Maximum Rocknroll’s “Book Your Own Fucking Life,” the popular fanzine of the times that listed promoters’ and club owners’ information for bands to book their own shows.

“Miguel [Michael Happoldt, Sublime’s OG mixing engineer and producer] would get on the phone: ‘Hey this is Miguel with Skunk Records, I’ve got Skunk recording artist Sublime coming through your town on these dates and wanted to see if we could hop on a gig there,’” Gaugh said. “We weren’t getting any love until we came up with the Skunk Records imprint. That was the defining factor. It became, ‘Oh Skunk Records? I’ve heard of you guys.’ They had no fucking idea who we were but they didn’t want to sound like assholes.”

The gigs started to roll in for Sublime, and they began to grow their fanbase up and down the West Coast. No longer was it a question if their music resonated with audiences. Now, the mission was to expand their reach and land coveted radio play.

The Sticker on Randy’s BMW

After self-releasing their debut album “40oz to Freedom” in 1992, Sublime embarked on a self-generated tour that began to birth interest from independent labels.

“We were talking with Brett Gurewitz from Bad Religion/Epitaph Records and he gave us some recording time at his studio,” Gaugh said. “We go to Hollywood, we record with Donnell Cameron, but Gurewitz isn’t there. We’re told he flew to New York to sign a contract for Bad Religion with Atlantic but would be back in a week and would call us. Donnell goes to pick up some food for us, and while he’s away, Miguel rewinds the two-inch tape, puts it in the box, and we split.”

Cameron returned to an empty studio with more than enough food for one person, and a small note from the band to have Gurewitz call them when he was back.

But Sublime didn’t see eye to eye creatively nor contractually with Epitaph, and declined to move forward. Having already recorded their material, the band figured they only owed for the studio time and parted ways.

“It was our intellectual property,” Gaugh said. “We were like, ‘This is our music and we’re gonna go,’ which is when we put out ‘Robbin’ the Hood.’ We had half an album finished with eight or nine songs that technically could have been a Hollywood album, but we liked to use all the space on the CD.”

Sublime finished recording “Robbin’ the Hood,” their second studio album, in various living rooms and flop houses across Orange County and Long Beach, but still needed distribution to help maximize its reach.

Fortunately, the band’s previous grassroots touring and independently released records generated enough exposure that they caught the attention of Jon Phillips, a young A&R at Gasoline Alley, an affiliate of Universal MCA.

“I was introduced to Sublime in 1993 through ‘Groovy’ Greg Abramson, an intern at Gasoline Alley,” said Jon Phillips, founder of Silverback Management and Sublime’s former manager. “I’d gotten an entry-level job there right out of school and Greg and I were the same age and had the same cultural identities.”

It was Abramson who handed Phillips the cassette tapes to “Jah Won’t Pay the Bills” and “40oz to Freedom,” instantly igniting his fascination with Sublime.

“Greg invited me to meet the guys and watch them play at Cal State Long Beach,” Phillips said. “I proceeded to identify Sublime as the only band I wanted to sign in the music business. In the two years since I’d received those cassettes, and subsequently ‘Robbin’ The Hood,’ I don’t think there was anything else I wanted to listen to. That’s how infectious Sublime’s songs were, music that fused all these different cultural hues, samples and references.”

In late 1993, Phillips brought the band to the Gasoline Alley offices for what was supposed to be an initial A&R meeting.

“The guys came in hammered with Brad’s dog Lou Dog and cases of beer,” Phillips said. “It scared people. I think Brad thought they were just going to roll in, sign the record deal, and get paid instantly. But the band never really got to meet the brass and sort of got blown off.”

Despite Phillips telling his uncle, Randy Phillips, a partner at Gasoline Alley, that Sublime was the band they needed to sign, he was met with resistance.

“We meet with Randy and he does not think we’re too cute,” Gaugh said. “But we’re Sublime, we’re Bud, Brad, and Eric, and we are who we are. We don’t care if you’re mister fucking Geffen himself, we’re gonna be ourselves. You get the real deal. So we show up stoned, and halfway through the meeting, we step out to smoke a ‘cigarette,’ which Randy did not find professional at all. He basically told us to kick rocks.”

But Phillips was determined to bag Sublime another meeting.

“I came down later that night after the band left and was walking by the executives’ cars with the placards at their parking spaces,” Phillips said. “The cars were all lined up and Randy was driving this new BMW 2-seat convertible European edition.”

“On the way out, we slapped a Sublime sticker on Randy’s brand new BMW that still had its Santa Monica dealer plates,” Gaugh said. “He didn’t think that was too cute either and raged at Jon, almost firing him over it.”

“The label told me they weren’t doing any business with these guys and told the band’s lawyer at the time they weren’t doing any business with these guys. Then the lawyer called me and said he wasn’t doing any business with these guys.”

Phillips called Nowell and broke the news directly, to which Nowell said they were going to write “fuck Gasoline Alley” in the album liner notes. But Phillips was 23 years old and convinced of Sublime’s potential, so he went on a crusade, armed with Sublime’s cassette tapes, CDs, and other underground DIY output.

“I started sending Sublime to every A&R I could contact,” Phillips said. “There was a deal looming at Atlantic Records from another young scout, but they also slept on Sublime. Sublime’s music wasn’t a sure thing for a 50 or 60 year old suit in Beverly Hills and neither were their habits. Years later I asked Brett Gurewitz, ‘You had Sublime in the studio, why didn’t you sign them?’ He was like, ‘They were making music Epitaph didn’t fully identify with, and they had this girl in there doing this ska thing.’”

The girl was Gwen Stefani.

Sublime proceeded to self-release “Robbin’ The Hood” on Skunk Records, but in June 1994, Phillips brokered a reconciliation with Gasoline Alley, netting Sublime their first major record deal.

“When Sublime returned to the office to sign, Brad actually removed a folded Atlantic Records contract from his pocket and joked he was about to sign with another label,” Phillips said. “I’d become close with the guys, dedicated to their mission, and definitely would have been totally defeated if they’d signed elsewhere.”

“We came back to Gasoline Alley with, ‘We thought you’d dig it, just joking, sorry Mr. Randy,’” Gaugh said. “And then we signed a shitty deal.”

According to Phillips, the “shitty deal,” an entry-level Universal Records agreement for which they received $120,000 and was later renegotiated after the band’s success, also included an actual coin flip for their publishing: $100,000 for heads, $75,000 for tails. Nowell flipped heads and planned on using the contract money to buy their own recording equipment and rent a house in North County, San Diego, to make the next Sublime album.

“There are a lot of different layers to that story, but sometimes in the music business, you learn lessons the hard way,” Phillips said. “If you have success, you get some leverage to renegotiate, and if you don’t, labels usually cut their losses and move on. In this case, given all the circumstances, Sublime received an entry-level, boilerplate deal. I actually gave them the advice to lawyer up because I saw what was going on as a young kid. It wasn’t inherent to Sublime, it was any young artist in the music business. They try to own you.”

“Date Rape,” Addiction, and the Edge of Stardom

But as the band laid plans for their future, Nowell spiraled deeper into addiction.

“Brad got slapped with a felony drug charge and wouldn’t be able to travel internationally,” Phillips said. “Gasoline Alley, before Sublime hit any popularity, I’ll give them credit for this, stepped up and threw down $40,000 to $50,000 for lawyers and drug treatment programs to get Brad a drug diversion that allowed him to tour.”

With Nowell on the mend, Phillips focused on maintaining Sublime’s ethos as independent artists, advising the label to allow Sublime to continue marketing the band’s preexisting albums (“40 Oz. To Freedom” and “Robbin’ The Hood”) on independent Skunk Records.

“I wanted the band to build organically and avoid the pitfalls of a major label association,” Phillips said. “By convincing the suits to give us permission to continue marketing the band through Skunk Records, Sublime sold close to a couple hundred-thousand hard copy CDs through independent distribution.”

The vision helped the discovery process, with the popular single from the “40oz” album, “Date Rape,” breaking on KROQ in 1995, roughly six months after Phillips signed Sublime in the summer of 1994.

“When the song ‘Date Rape’ came out, the subject matter was popular in the media,” Gaugh said. “It was national news. People were getting roofied at college parties so it was a common topic on campuses. Brad writes this funny song making light of the situation and how the guy gets it in the end and justice was served. It’s not a ‘pro-date rape’ song.”

In fact, “Date Rape” was first written by Nowell in 1992, three years before it ever received radio attention. According to Phillips, Nowell told him he was jacked on coffee one college morning at UC Santa Cruz and wrote the song without thinking too deeply about it.

But the thought of making a song titled “Date Rape” in 2026 seems unfathomable, regardless if the intent of the song was to shine light on a serious subject through humor. Yet that’s what made Sublime Sublime. Their music reflected the world and times around them, and the band was unafraid to confront the morally reprehensible aspects of society.

Nowell started refusing to play the song live, with Phillips having to sign papers that guaranteed the band would play “Date Rape” at the 3rd Annual KROQ Weenie Roast in June 1995, a now legendary set at Irvine Meadows Amphitheater that saw Stefani join Nowell for their hit “Saw Red” and 40 friends of the band join the stage with fake backstage passes they’d printed in advance.

“Sublime had a penchant, like everyone else, for freedom, and in their case, perhaps anarchy,” Phillips said. “All of that was so much a part of their DNA and the culture around them. It was authentic and they lived it.”

The band wore their association with counterculture on their sleeve, at times failing to show up to their own gigs, further perpetuating their notoriety as purveyors of drugs and mayhem.

But despite their reputation as wild cards, Sublime’s music continued to garner a cult following.

“There was something so unique but also universal about the music,” Phillips reminisced. “The cross section of all the touchpoints Sublime encompassed, hip-hop, reggae, punk rock, pop culture, sampling, even a small ode to the Grateful Dead, they fused together all these music subcultures to create something fresh and new.”

Music You Could Feel

Something fresh and new people could relate to because it was authentic, it was organic, and it resonated.

“We wrote about real things in our lives,” Gaugh said. “Brad had a very charismatic way about writing firsthand. Things that were in our songs like, ‘pissed in someone’s drink and threw a bike in the pool,’ that happened. With all this bullshit going on around us, there was still something lovable about life, and it was about trying to find the ‘good’ even when there were wicked things around.”

It’s why a teenager today can pick up any Sublime record and still have a connection to it, over 30 years later. But perhaps the group’s greatest resonance is the spiritual understanding that they were co-creating music with the universe: Bud, Brad and Eric, a clear channel on the astral plane, a trio communicating truths.

“With Sublime, it was the first time I experienced out-of-body realism,” Gaugh said. “When I was stoned and we were playing, I was floating around the room. A weird, ethereal, metaphysical kind of happening.”

Beyond the shared commonality between Sublime and its audiences around cannabis, weed also provided the basis for creative alchemy between Gaugh, Wilson and Nowell in such a way that their confluence of synergistic output was shared, felt and experienced by the crowd in the same way one might experience Mick and Keith or Flea and Frusciante communicating through their instruments.

“There’s a quote from Brad on one of the promotional CDs, ‘Good music is good music, and that should be enough for anybody,’” Phillips said. “Timeless music is timeless music and that’s the beauty and magic of it. That’s what makes it powerful. One Sublime song could traverse four different styles, not including the full repertoire, which might traverse 10 different forms. They’re so much more intellectual than people give them credit for and there was a lot of wisdom behind where a lot of these things came from that wasn’t by accident.”

The wisdom came from alignment, including Sublime’s connection to the legalization movement. The band’s last performance in Los Angeles was a 1996 benefit show at House of Blues on the Sunset Strip, cosponsored by NORML and High Times Magazine.

The Baby From the “What I Got” Video Takes the Mic

But now, over 30 years later, cannabis is legal and Sublime has returned to the stage under its original moniker, this time with Brad’s son Jakob Nowell installed as the new lead singer. It’s a role many never saw coming, but one the younger Nowell seemed destined for, with their new album “Until The Sun Explodes” due out June 12th, 2026.

Jakob Nowell only knew his father for 11 months, but as fate would have it, came of age and began carving his own path in the music industry, learning more about Bradley Nowell through the body of work he left behind.

Now, the younger Nowell holds the same guitar frets as his father, singing Bradley Nowell’s words, playing the same chords that became his birthright but delivering a sound and feeling uniquely his own.

If we all come from the same source, Bradley Nowell has certainly returned to that place, and now, while channeling from source, Jakob Nowell is undoubtedly bringing forth the essence and mysticism contained within his father’s energy. Jakob Nowell is not a carbon copy of his father, but if you look under the microscope, you’ll see within the double helixes of his DNA that love is also what he’s got.

“When Eric approached me to do a show for H.R. [Paul Hudson of Bad Brains] with Jakob, I was into it but skeptical,” Gaugh said. “I’d played a couple songs with Jakob maybe seven years prior and he was into a different style of music. I thought, ‘Is this going to work?’ But when we got into the studio together, it was like stepping back in time.”

The same “floating around the room feeling” Gaugh once felt with Wilson and Nowell’s father is the same feeling he’s now experiencing with Wilson and the younger Nowell.

“We’re playing in the studio and came out for a break,” Gaugh said. “Jake’s like, ‘Dude, that was so deep, I was floating around the room! Does that happen for you guys?’ Eric turns and looks at him like, ‘Yeah, man. If you do it right.’”

For a band largely without a lead singer for the past three decades, Sublime has encountered new life, a trippy, fortuitous, full-circle experience cracking open the door to the vista of what the original lineup could have looked like to this day. In many ways, the authenticity of Jakob Nowell as Sublime’s new frontman is emblematic of that panoramic landscape.

“Early on when I was working with Jakob, he was totally focused on wanting to create his own identity and vision and not really touch the Sublime legacy,” Phillips said. “But when you’re blood to that, it’s in your soul that you would one day want to embrace and be a part of it. The fact that he has the talent to do it and carry it the way he does is remarkable to me.”

A new generation of music and fans, built upon older pillars, cut from the same stone.

“30 years later, we’re still being played on the radio,” Gaugh said. “It’s an incredible feeling. Our fans are the greatest people in the world. Hats off to them because this is truly a testament to their love of the music and why it’s still here. Getting the opportunity to go out and perform this music with Brad’s son is incredibly humbling. I’m just so grateful to be able to do this. It’s a dream come true. We got short changed, we were never able to play some of these songs. ‘Ensenada’ has topped the charts for seven or eight weeks in a row in the US and it’s still on the charts in Canada.”

Sublime’s current airwave success is due in part to the creative input employed by Gaugh, Wilson and the younger Nowell, methodology eerily similar to the way the Sublime elders created songs with Nowell’s father over 30 years before.

“It’s like how we wrote Sublime back in the day,” Gaugh said. “Brad would come with a melody or an idea and he would sit there and play. Then Eric would start playing or I would come up with a rhythm. It was the three of us creating on the spot. Now, Jakob might have a chord progression already done and a hook, but he might not have all the lyrics, which is exactly how we used to do it.”

Gaugh even sees the younger Nowell employ the same formula his father used when crafting songs, writing about what’s happening around him and even writing about the things he’s experiencing while on tour with Sublime, a key component of his dad’s technique.

It’s part of the reason Sublime’s 1990s discography has remained relevant up until today, where the inputs to the songs transcended the moment in time and spoke to the underlying feelings of the times.

And feelings are timeless.

Perhaps there’s a feeling of comfort between Gaugh and Wilson with the younger Nowell in the fold, a trippy recreation of something alchemically familiar and an opportunity to musically expand a previous endpoint into a new beginning.

“The fact there could be a presentation rooted in the actual kin to Bradley, I just love the generational aspect of music,” Phillips said. “I work with Bob Marley’s son Stephen Marley and Aaron Neville’s son Ivan Neville. Whether it’s blood like the Neville Brothers or the Marleys or Sublime, Bradley to Jakob, it only gets the message of the music further out there to affect more people that need to hear it. We didn’t get to see the real Sublime with Brad Nowell enough, and for that reason, it’s a blessing it gets to continue.”

Continue and thrive with both a new generation of fans and those who have been with the band since its inception.

“For the OG fans, Jakob in the band is closure,” Gaugh said. “It’s some kind of relief for them. Everybody has wanted this for years from a fanbase standpoint, so being able to give them that is awesome. But also, for the longevity of the band. I’m a dad now, and the things my kids do and say, I’m an old man. Trying to stay hip is harder as you age, but Jake’s in it and he keeps us relevant.”

A new frontman from the same seed is able to give us something similar but different, weaving an unexpected, unknown tapestry right before our eyes, one we could never have imagined but now get to experience.

“I was talking with a family at Mission Bay Fest and they were like, ‘My dad played your music and I grew up loving Sublime. Now my kids are listening to Sublime,’” Gaugh said. “With our new music coming out, it almost sounds like we started where we left off.”

It’s as if time stood still and now, 30 years later, we’ve resumed a parallel reality where a Nowell is atop the microphone, a Wilson on bass, a Gaugh on drums and the “What I Got” summer anthem of 1996 is morphing into “Ensenada” as the 2026 anthem of the summer.

After a long hibernation, the sky finally opened and Bradley Nowell reached down, placing his guitar into the waiting hands of his son, Jakob, familiar fingers and a familiar voice that now strum fresh perspectives and breathe new life into the Sublime catalogue.

Now it’s Jakob, backed by Bud and Eric, who lights his morning cigarette, slips into his sneakers, and plays his guitar like a mother fucking riot, honoring the legacy of Sublime and inviting the next generation of fans to come along the journey on the road to something new, helping tell a story that hasn’t yet been told.

<p>The post The Baby From Sublime’s ‘What I Got’ Video Is Now the Band’s Frontman. He’s Bradley Nowell’s Son. first appeared on High Times.</p>

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The Mobb Deep co-founder and Queensbridge native opens The Bridge in Astoria this weekend, with The Alchemist, Funk Flex and Kid Capri on the bill. He calls it ownership, not an endorsement.

Havoc has repped Queens for more than three decades. This weekend, he plants a flag in it. The Mobb Deep co-founder and Queensbridge native opens The Bridge, a licensed adult-use cannabis dispensary at 25-15 Broadway in Astoria, with a grand opening weekend on June 6 and 7.

What separates it from the usual celebrity cannabis move is the structure. Plenty of artists lend a name to a strain or sign a licensing deal. Havoc is an owner, investing directly in one of the country’s fastest-growing legal markets, in the borough that raised him.

“Hip-hop gave me a platform, but ownership creates a legacy,” Havoc said in a statement. “The Bridge is about building something lasting in the community that raised me.”

The opening doubles as a New York hip-hop reunion. Producer The Alchemist and radio fixture Funk Flex headline Saturday’s reception, with The Alchemist scheduled from 4 to 5 p.m. and Funk Flex from 5 to 7. Kid Capri joins the public opening on Sunday, when doors open at 11 a.m.

The move lands where New York’s market keeps heading, with legacy culture and licensed business colliding in real time. For a borough that helped build East Coast rap, a Queensbridge legend behind the counter of a legal shop is about as full-circle as the new market gets.

Watch Our Conversation With Havoc

High Times sat down with Havoc earlier this year. Watch that conversation below.

<p>The post Mobb Deep’s Havoc Is Opening A Dispensary In Queens. The Alchemist, Funk Flex And Kid Capri Are Coming Through. first appeared on High Times.</p>

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In the music video for “Ram Pam Pam,” Venezuelan artist Micro TDH put older women smoking weed front and center. Asked about it, he doesn’t push a position. He describes one: “It’s part of my day-to-day. I’m just reflecting my lifestyle.”

Fernando Daniel Morillo Rivas, known as Micro TDH, is one of the more interesting artists to come out of Venezuela’s urban scene in the last decade. He’s from Mérida. He started doing freestyle in the street with no label, no investors and no plan beyond the next bar. He’s now collaborated with Yandel, Pablo Alborán, Piso 21, Lenny Tavárez, Myke Towers and Rels B. His 2020 single “Cafuné” passed a million streams without a real industry push behind it.

In October 2025 he dropped Segundo Acto, an album with eight interconnected music videos that play as a single story. He’s now touring it across Latin America, the U.S. and Spain.

And weed is part of the picture. Not as a brand. Not as a stunt. Just as it is.

‘Ram Pam Pam’ and what older women smoking means

The image is unusual for the genre. Cannabis in urban music videos usually skews young and party-coded. Here, the women smoking are older. They’re at home. The visual is calm.

Asked about that visual choice, Micro TDH doesn’t push a position. He describes one.

“I don’t want to push cannabis use on anyone. But it’s part of my day-to-day. So what I’m doing is reflecting my own lifestyle.”

Micro TDH

He has thoughts about the plant, he says. Some positive. Some negative. He’s not declaring it a virtue and he’s not condemning it. He’s showing it the way it shows up in his own life.

A second act, and the rules he learned without a label

The album is called Segundo Acto. Second Act. And he means it literally, in the screenwriting sense.

“The second act is where the hero has to remember who he is, reformulate his identity and let go of false beliefs to keep going.”

Micro TDH

That’s not the kind of answer most artists give when asked about a tour. He’s framing his life as a story he’s still inside. The conversation around the record is about identity, not the merch table.

The route here was unusual. “Cafuné” broke without a major behind it. The lesson he took from that is the same one he repeats now, years later.

“What connects with people the most is what’s real. The genuine. What comes from the heart. You can feel it when something is authentic.”

Micro TDH

He won’t put it in marketing terms. He puts it in craft terms: whatever you make, the substance of it has to be honest. Otherwise it doesn’t travel.

Rap, then everything else

Micro TDH’s catalog is hard to categorize. Rap. Trap. R&B. Reggae. Dembow. Ballads. Segundo Acto adds a first hardcore rock track, “Mi Primer Rock.” It also has the R&B introspection of “Ángeles,” the lightness of “Wendi” and “Duraznos,” and the deeper introspection of “Tu Reflexo.”

Asked where he feels most himself, he doesn’t dodge. “Probably rap. Because that’s where everything started.” But he likes being challenged. He likes leaving the comfort zone. And he leaves the door open: at some point, he says, he’d like to marry one musical line again.

Lost Soulz: the acting detour that wasn’t a detour

Micro TDH acted in Lost Soulz, an American independent film. He treats the experience as connected to the music, not separate from it.

“Music is one art. Acting is another. And acting is like music’s older brother.”

Micro TDH

He says acting forced him to embody a character, to feel what that character feels. It also taught him respect for performing arts in general. Which fits, given that he talks about his life like a screenwriter.

The cats

In the video for “Quizás” there’s a cat. Not random. He’s had cats his whole life.

“Pets aren’t just pets. They’re family. I think anyone with a pet at home has a happier and calmer heart.”

Micro TDH

Honest about the music, honest about the plant

The throughline in the interview isn’t cannabis. It’s honesty. “Cafuné” worked because the feeling was real. Segundo Acto works because the identity questions are real. The acting in Lost Soulz connects because it asked him to inhabit someone, not perform.

Cannabis fits the same pattern. He didn’t make it the campaign. He didn’t make it the controversy. He put it in the frame because it’s there, and he answered the question the same way: not selling, not condemning, describing.

Micro TDH is at the start of his second act. He’s choosing what to show. He’s choosing what to keep.

<p>The post Meet Micro TDH, the Venezuelan Artist Putting Older Women Smoking Weed in His Music Videos first appeared on High Times.</p>

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Conan O’Brien, a self-described straight edge who “keeps cutting things out” of his life, is being gently talked into edibles by his own assistant. Two weeks in, he has managed to nibble a quarter of one gummy. The High Times connection goes back 20 years, to a bong he accepted on live TV.

A few weeks ago, Conan O’Brien’s executive assistant, Sona Movsesian, brought several tins containing cannabis gummies to the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast.

“I don’t really do anything,” the redheaded host said about using marijuana, other substances or alcohol. “I used to enjoy some wine, but I don’t even do that anymore. I just keep cutting things out of my life.” Then, to Movsesian, he explained: “I’ve been a little intrigued lately because you’ve always preached the positive qualities of edibles. I never did it, never tried it. But you have said that more than anyone you know, you think I would benefit from these.”

She brought a bag full of her “favorite brand,” Camino gummies. “This one is for energy.”

“Do you think I need energy?” O’Brien asked.

“They taste good,” Movsesian said. “Some just make you feel good.”

“I’ve never felt good,” O’Brien joked. “What’s that like?”

“Things will be funny to you that have never been funny before.”

“Things are always funny to me that no one else thinks is funny.”

“You make comedy for potheads,” Movsesian maintained.

She passed him a “chill one that will mellow you out.” O’Brien did not sample them on air and took them home.

O’Brien Updates The Gummies Saga

In Conan Vs. Edibles, Part 2, O’Brien offered an update:

“I have turned taking gummies into a chore. I have nibbled on the corner of the sleep one. I want to say less than half. First of all, they’re delicious. They taste great and paired with the right wine, fantastic. What I’ve managed to do in two weeks is nibble a quarter of one. I’m a redhead, so I’m very tolerant, so of course I’ve felt nothing so far. But I haven’t gone whole hog. Chill is the one that interested me and I have not tried one yet.”

“You’re overthinking it,” Movsesian pointed out. “Are we peer-pressuring you?”

“That’s the dictionary definition of what you’re doing,” he retorted. “Yeah, I guess I’m feeling a little bit of pressure. But I’m going to do it.”

O’Brien Details His Lack Of Experience With Drugs

“My dad was a doctor, he was against us taking anything,” O’Brien said about his microbiologist father. “Aspirin was a big leap. My dad was an authority on antibiotic resistance. He was in favor of the right antibiotics. That’s the culture that I come from. We’ve got to go to Catholic Church, we have to stay on it and that has been my way. It’s forbidden fruit, so you don’t go there. Now, I think I made a big step by eating a quarter of a sleep gummy.”

Movsesian called him “straight-laced, straight edge,” noting: “It’s not a bad thing.”

When O’Brien suggested his size (6-foot-4) was partially why the gummy didn’t affect him, she replied: “That’s why I thought a half or maybe a full 5 milligram would work.”

“I’m not ready for that yet.”

“That’s OK. Baby steps.”

“I’m going to get to this,” O’Brien insisted, “I promise.” So, stay tuned for Part 3.

Conan O’Brien And High Times

O’Brien actually smoked a joint provided by Seth Rogen on Late Night with Conan O’Brien on TBS during the last week of the show in 2021.

Fifteen years earlier, when I worked at High Times and was producing the Stony Awards, we decided to give O’Brien the award for Best Late-Night Talk Show. Cast member and former Stonys host Brian McCann cleared the way for me to present the award in O’Brien’s 30 Rock office (he couldn’t attend the Stonys).

From my article at CelebStoner:

When I got there I met Conan, but it quickly became clear he wouldn’t be participating in the acceptance sketch on the set.

Brian dressed up as Preparation H Raymond and was joined by HempBot, Smokey the Bong, the Masturbating Bear and their “constantly wasted announcer Joel.”

“We have no idea why we were chosen, but we will treasure this fully functioning trophy for years to come,” Brian drawled. Then he instructed the bear to “go ahead, masturbate.”

Cute, but no Conan. The show took place at BB King’s in Times Square. Redman hosted. NORML’s Allen St. Pierre announced the Late Night award. All went well. But no Conan. Of course, we didn’t expect him to attend the show; that’s why they made the video.

A week went by and I was watching Late Night. During the first segment after the monologue, sitting at his desk, O’Brien deadpanned:

“Last Wednesday night, Late Night won a prestigious award. That’s right. There are a lot of awards out there that might be worth having, but this seemed rather special. The good people that publish High Times magazine [audience laughs] held their annual Stony Awards at BB King’s right here in New York. It was a big event. Apparently, we won for Best Comedy Program. High Times magazine thinks we’re the best comedy program. And they gave us this trophy.”

He took the glass Stony Awards bong from behind his desk and placed it on the desk to laughs and wild cheers. “We want to thank you, High Times,” he continued. “It’s nice of you to recognize us and we will put this award on display in our lobby.”

Then band drummer Max Weinberg broke in: “Hey Conan, the band and I were thinking maybe you shouldn’t leave that statue in the lobby. Maybe we should keep it in our dressing room.”

“Hey, if you want it, it’s yours,” Conan replied.

“Hey guys,” Max yelled, “we got a bong!”

Conan held it for a minute and stared at it. “So that’s a bong.”

More High Times Stonys

• Seth Rogen Confesses His First Award Wasn’t An Emmy, It Was ‘Stoner of the Year’
• Ethan Hawke’s First Acting Award Was a Bong From High Times. He Has Not Forgotten It.

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ScHoolboy Q says he’s done smoking weed and, according to him, the decision came after years of heavy use, a sense that the habit had stopped doing anything for him, and a desire to set an example for his children. Still, he recognized its health benefits —distinguishing it from habits like alcohol— and how it works for some people… just not him at the moment. 

The TDE rapper opened up about the decision during an appearance on the Par 3 Podcast with J.R. Smith and Stephen Malbon, where he explained that quitting was not just about health or discipline in the abstract. It was personal. More specifically, it was about his daughters and old habits leading nowhere. 

“Me, personally, I feel like I got everything I got out of it,” he said, according to KBXT. “I’ve been smoking so much, and smoking, like, 20 times a day. At some point, it ain’t really doing nothing. You just got this oral fixation. You’re just constantly doing it. … But it was mainly for my daughters, my kids. Just to let them know you can do anything.” 

Smoking 20 times a day sounds like a lot—at least to him. But the deeper point Q seemed to make was that weed had shifted from something he chose to do to something he was simply doing on autopilot. Not necessarily because he was getting more out of it, but because the motion itself had become part of the day.

For someone whose public image and personal story have long been tied to weed, this is a big U-turn. Q built part of his persona around smoking. But in this interview, he described a moment when the routine stopped feeling useful. 

His Kids Were the Main Reason

The clearest reason ScHoolboy Q gave for quitting was his children. In the clips, Q said he wanted to lead by example, especially for his oldest daughter, who is almost 17 and has been facing her own challenges. He described trying to teach her resilience, but realizing that advice lands differently when it is backed by action.

“It was just, like, me constantly telling her you can do anything. Like, don’t even trip,” he said… but felt that wasn’t enough. 

Q spoke about his daughter going through “ups and downs” and hitting adversity in her life, which made him think about the way he was showing up as a father. The message was not just “listen to me,” but more “watch me do something hard, too.”

The hard thing was not just any other life challenge; it was quitting weed. It was his way of showing her that he could also do those hard things, like stopping something she knew he had done all his life. “Watch this. I ain’t doing it no more.”

Q was trying to stop smoking for himself, yes, but he was also trying to make a point his daughter could actually witness: that discipline is possible, even when the habit is old, familiar, and deeply embedded in your identity.

“Now it’s like, ‘Now what you got? Give me something back,” he continued. “I’m doing it. We gon’ do this s*** together.”

From Survival Tool to Something That No Longer Worked

Part of what makes Q’s decision interesting is that he has spoken very differently about weed in the past. Back in 2016, he didn’t describe cannabis as a problem in his life, but as something that may have helped keep him alive.

“I’d probably be dead if I didn’t pick up weed,” he said at the time, explaining that before smoking, he was “a hyper person” who was always outside, always moving, and coming from “a life of gang bangin’.” For Q, staying out too much meant a greater chance of getting pulled into the wrong situation. Weed, in that chapter of his life, did the opposite: it kept him home, calm, and away from trouble.

“Because I’m a big weed head, I’m not even trying to go nowhere else outside my vicinity,” he said. “I’m high and feeling good, and I’m not even gonna get into any trouble.”

At one point, weed gave him something he needed: stillness, distance from the street, a reason not to be out every night. But years later, by his own account, smoking “20 times a day” was no longer serving that purpose. It had become constant, automatic, and less connected to any clear effect. It sounded more like a loop he wanted to break.

In other words, cannabis may have once helped him survive a dangerous environment. But eventually, Q seems to have reached a point where the same habit no longer matched the person he is now. He told the podcast he has not gone back since quitting, though the exact timeline remains unclear. 

He Still Acknowledges Cannabis Can Help Some People

Even after quitting, Q didn’t frame it as a blanket anti-weed message: “I got so much out of it, and I do,” he said. “I’m not gonna sit here and be like, ‘No, don’t smoke weed!’ ‘Cause it’s not alcohol, bro. It’s not. So I’m not gonna do that.”

He acknowledged that cannabis can help some people, while making clear that his own pattern had become the issue: “I will say that it does have health benefits for certain people, but the way I was using it? No.” 

His point, then, was more personal than universal. Medical cannabis and cannabinoid-based medicines do have recognized therapeutic uses in specific contexts, so Q was not saying weed is bad for every parent, artist, or person trying to get their life together. He was saying something narrower: for him, at that level, it had stopped working. And quitting became a way to show his daughters that even something deeply familiar can be left behind when it no longer fits the life you are trying to build.

Photo by Cal Laird, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

<p>The post ScHoolboy Q Quits Weed After Smoking 20 Times a Day. Here’s Why. first appeared on High Times.</p>

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Jimmy John’s Dream Rotation campaign doesn’t wink at cannabis culture. It hires Cheech Marin, lets him argue with a sandwich and makes Kal Penn’s ideal 4/20 a gym session and a book. The wall is down.

Cheech Marin is sitting, holding a sandwich. He looks at it the way a man looks at something he has decided to tolerate. “I try to like people,” he says, “but then they start talking.”

The sandwich grows a face and starts talking.

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This is a Jimmy John’s ad. It is also, somehow, the most accurate representation of where cannabis culture and mainstream America currently stand: fully in the same room, no longer pretending otherwise, and apparently ready to get weird about it.

The Dream Rotation campaign, which Jimmy John’s launched this week ahead of 4/20, is built around a simple and genuinely funny idea. The brand tapped a handful of celebrities known to partake, asked each of them for their ideal post-session meal, filmed the results and let the creative get strange. The lineup includes Cheech Marin, Kal Penn, Amanda Batula and Skylar Gisondo. Each has their own spot. Each brings their own energy. Together, they amount to something the cannabis world has not seen from a brand this size in quite this way before.

This is not a wink. This is not a green leaf emoji in a caption. This is Cheech Marin, one-half of the most iconic cannabis comedy duo in film history, having a full argument with a sentient sandwich on behalf of a national fast food chain.

The Cast Matters

The talent selection is doing real work here and it is worth slowing down on.

Cheech Marin is not a celebrity who happens to be adjacent to cannabis. He is, alongside Tommy Chong, the defining pop culture face of cannabis humor in America. Casting him is not a subtle nod. It is a statement.

Kal Penn is Harold of Harold & Kumar, the film franchise that brought stoner comedy into a new generation and a new demographic. He later served in the Obama White House, which gives him a cultural biography that almost no one else in the entertainment industry has. His presence in the campaign adds a layer the other talent cannot: the idea that cannabis and mainstream American institutions are not actually that far apart.

Skylar Gisondo, who appears in a series of memes Jimmy John’s has been posting alongside the campaign, brings the younger internet-native energy. His face sipping through a straw while captions read “me when my grandma asks me to garden with her” and “me when the sweet treat demon starts whispering in my ear” is the kind of content that travels. The “gardening” euphemism, deployed without explanation, assumes the audience is in on the joke. They are.

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The Orders Are the Bit

Part of what makes the campaign work is that the celebrity meal orders are genuinely specific in a way that feels real rather than manufactured.

Kal Penn ordered a toasted Beach Club, no cheese, horseradish sauce, salt and vinegar chips, and the new Cereal n’ Milk Crispy Treat. His described eating ritual involves alternating between chips and sandwich in a precise sequence, with the dessert distributed across both halves. This is not a man who casually threw out a sandwich order. This is a man with a system.

Cheech went with the Italian Night Club and salt and vinegar chips. He also picked Penn as his dream session partner, a choice that connects two of the most culturally significant cannabis films ever made in one meal order.

Amanda Batula took the J.J.B.L.T. with BBQ chips. Skylar Gisondo ordered the Spicy East Coast Italian, no mayo, with jalapeño chips.

The specificity is the joke and also the point. These are not sanitized celebrity endorsements. They are actual people with actual preferences, talking about getting stoned and eating sandwiches, on camera, for a brand with thousands of locations across the country.

What This Actually Means

For most of the last decade, mainstream brands approaching 4/20 fell into one of two categories. The first was the safe play: a vague post, a color palette that happened to include green, a caption that could plausibly mean anything. The second was the slightly bolder play: a joke that gestured toward cannabis without committing to it, often involving the number 420 placed somewhere in the content and nothing else.

Jimmy John’s did neither. The Dream Rotation campaign names what it is, casts people whose entire cultural identity is built around cannabis, films Cheech Marin being existentially annoyed by a talking sandwich and deploys Skylar Gisondo memes that use stoner slang as fluently as any dedicated cannabis brand would.

The reason this is possible now and was not in quite the same way five years ago is not complicated. Legal adult-use cannabis exists in the majority of American states. The cultural stigma has collapsed faster than the federal policy has moved. Brands that once worried about alienating customers by associating with cannabis now risk appearing out of touch by refusing to acknowledge what their customers already do.

Jimmy John’s read the room. The room, it turns out, is full of people who have opinions about chip-to-sandwich ratios and find it very funny when Cheech Marin loses an argument to his lunch.

<p>The post Cheech Marin Is Talking to Sandwiches in a Jimmy John’s Ad. Cannabis Culture Has Officially Gone Mainstream. first appeared on High Times.</p>

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Two West Coast rap legends are opening cannabis dispensaries in California within weeks of each other. Xzibit goes first. Snoop comes home.

West Coast hip-hop has always had a complicated, generative relationship with cannabis. Two of its most enduring figures are now making that relationship literal — and building businesses around it.

Xzibit opens the third location of his Xzibit’s West Coast Cannabis brand this Saturday, April 18, in Marina del Rey. Three weeks later, on May 9, Snoop Dogg opens S.W.E.D. Long Beach — his second California dispensary and his first business in his hometown.

Xzibit: XWCC Marina

XWCC Marina, located at 3452 W Washington Blvd in Marina del Rey, is Xzibit’s most ambitious retail location yet. The brand launched its first store in Bel Air in 2024, followed by a second in Chatsworth. The Marina del Rey flagship is designed around Xzibit’s creative vision — a lounge-style space blending cannabis, art and culture in what the brand describes as a one-stop destination.

“At all XWCC locations, we’re pushing cannabis culture forward,” Xzibit said. “Each store is uniquely built as a reflection of my life, creativity, and west coast culture.”

The grand opening takes place Saturday morning at 9 AM with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, brand activations and local vendor participation.

Snoop Dogg: S.W.E.D. Long Beach

S.W.E.D. — Smoke Weed Every Day — already has locations in Los Angeles and Amsterdam. The Long Beach store, at 2115 E. 10th Street, is a different kind of opening. Long Beach is where Snoop grew up, and the store’s design reflects that explicitly: street-inspired visuals, references to the Hood Rich Lowrider, retro arcade games, two live DJ booths, a personal lounge and a hologram of Snoop himself.

“Long Beach made me who I am,” Snoop said. “Opening S.W.E.D. in Long Beach is my way of showing love to the community that showed love to me. We’re creating jobs, opportunities, and a space that celebrates the culture.”

The grand opening on May 9 is a 21+ event, or 18+ with a valid medical recommendation. Snoop will be present for a ceremonial ribbon cutting.

Two artists, one industry

What both openings share is a deliberate rootedness — stores built to reflect the artists’ actual lives and communities rather than generic dispensary aesthetics. Xzibit has described XWCC as an extension of his creative DNA. Snoop is framing S.W.E.D. Long Beach explicitly around job creation and community investment, tying the opening to the city’s Grow Long Beach Economic Blueprint.

Neither is a first store. Xzibit is on his third location. Snoop’s Long Beach opening is his second California store. These are scaling businesses, not celebrity experiments — and both are landing in the same state, in the same month, as California’s legal cannabis market continues to find its footing against persistent pressure from the illicit market.

S.W.E.D. Long Beach opens May 9 at 2115 E. 10th Street, Long Beach. XWCC Marina opens April 18 at 3452 W Washington Blvd, Marina del Rey.

<p>The post Two Legends, Two Dispensaries: Snoop Dogg and Xzibit Expand Their Cannabis Brands in California first appeared on High Times.</p>

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From medical rumors to a possible upper-crust grow op, a new story is once again linking King Charles III to cannabis. This time, however, it has nothing to do with health speculation or the monarch’s well-known passion for botany. Instead, the connection comes by way of a police raid at a historic property tied to his royal past.

Police in North Wales discovered a large-scale illegal cannabis cultivation operation inside Plas Glynllifon, a 19th-century mansion that hosted the investiture ball for then-Prince of Wales Charles—now King Charles III—in 1969.

According to North Wales Police, officers executing a search warrant under the Misuse of Drugs Act uncovered what they described as a “significant grow operation” on the building’s top floor. Superintendent Arwel Hughes told the BBC: “We uncovered a grow, which was on the top floor of the building. We estimate around 12 rooms with grows in them and they were fairly mature plants.”

Authorities also confirmed that the operation relied on illegally tampered electrical systems and diverted water lines into the building—common hallmarks of sophisticated clandestine grow sites.

No arrests have been made so far, though police say forensic work and digital evidence analysis remain ongoing as the investigation continues.

A Royal-Era Mansion Turned Into an Indoor Grow

The story quickly drew attention across the UK not only because of the operation’s scale, but because of the property itself. We’re talking about Plas Glynllifon, a sprawling aristocratic mansion with a dramatic history, decaying interiors, and its own local folklore. Most notably, the estate hosted the official ball following King Charles III’s 1969 investiture as Prince of Wales, tying the now-crumbling property directly to modern royal history.

Alan Fryer / Plas Glynllifon

Built in the 1830s near Caernarfon in Gwynedd, the Grade I-listed neoclassical mansion once belonged to Lord Newborough and was long considered one of North Wales’ grandest private estates. In recent years, however, the largely vacant property has fallen into disrepair, its decaying halls becoming a magnet for urban explorers and paranormal enthusiasts.

The sprawling estate has reportedly earned a haunted reputation over the years, with visitors claiming eerie phenomena inside its deteriorating corridors. One of the mansion’s most enduring legends centers on Maria Stella Chiappini, an Italian-born aristocrat tied to the property whose dramatic life later inspired ghost stories surrounding the estate.

Those same historic halls, stone walls, and aristocratic interiors have now been overshadowed by a far less ceremonial scene: entire formerly ceremonial rooms transformed into clandestine grow spaces.

Another Odd Coincidence Linking King Charles III to Cannabis

there is no indication that the current British king is connected whatsoever to the operation or to the property’s current use, the story inevitably revives memories of another cannabis-related headline that circulated widely in 2025: rumors claiming that Charles had explored medical cannabis as part of his cancer treatment.

Those reports, never officially confirmed, claimed the monarch had considered cannabinoids as a therapeutic complement, consistent with his long-documented interest in integrative medicine, organic agriculture, and plant-based therapies.

Though the two stories are entirely unrelated, this latest development adds yet another chapter to the strange and recurring pattern of headlines linking the British Crown to cannabis.

It also highlights a uniquely British paradox: while medical cannabis has been legal since 2018 with a doctor’s prescription and regulated access continues to expand slowly, the illicit market continues to meet substantial parallel demand, often through increasingly sophisticated clandestine operations set up even in historic properties and heritage buildings.

In this case, the contrast could hardly be more British: a mansion once used for royal pageantry has, decades later, become the site of a massive clandestine cannabis grow.

<p>The post From Royal Balls to Weed Walls: Massive Grow Found in Mansion Linked to King Charles III first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post From Royal Balls to Weed Walls: Massive Grow Found in Mansion Linked to King Charles III appeared first on Paradise Found.

B-Real, Xzibit and Demrick have spent decades around rap and weed. On “This Thing of Ours,” the Serial Killers trio sound loose, sharp and fully in command. In this conversation with High Times, B-Real and Xzibit look back on first smokes, touring in the pre-legal era, building cannabis businesses and why age still means nothing if the hunger is there.

“We still can rap circles around half the motherfuckers that are doing this shit right now who are younger than us.” B-Real is filled with aplomb. The Cypress Hill frontman, now 55, has been pumping out albums and rocking stages for nearly 40 years, giving him the hard-won wisdom to school even the cockiest younger rappers. The same can be said about Xzibit, whose résumé includes multiple collaborations with Dr. Dre, most notably on 2001, an era-defining run on MTV with Pimp My Ride, and a spot on the legendary Up In Smoke Tour alongside Eminem, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Westside Connection, Ice Cube, Warren G, Kurupt, MC Ren and Nate Dogg.

Together with Demrick, B-Real and Xzibit are also part of Serial Killers, a side project they’ve been building since 2013 with albums like Day of the Dead and Summer of Sam. Their latest set, This Thing of Ours, is a master class in lyricism and, in many ways, a flex. As the title suggests, it’s fully theirs. They rap about what they want, pick the beats they want, this time courtesy of Scoop Deville, and make the music they want to make. There’s no pressure to chart, no label breathing down their necks and certainly no urgency to sell a million copies.

Both B-Real and Xzibit also have other ventures bringing in revenue, and some of them involve weed. B-Real has championed cannabis his entire career. In 1993, Cypress Hill made a stop at Omaha Music Hall, where a hilariously large fake joint dominated the stage and burned throughout the show. The group repeatedly pushed for legalization through activism and, today, B-Real owns Dr. Greenthumb’s dispensaries in California. Xzibit, meanwhile, has launched his own cannabis business, West Coast Cannabis, with locations in Bel-Air, Marina Del Rey and Chatsworth.

During the interview, Xzibit makes a stop at one of his facilities and walks through rows of marijuana plants waiting to be harvested. It’s a surreal sight. In the 1990s, when Cypress Hill and Xzibit were omnipresent, recreational and medicinal marijuana were still illegal. It wasn’t as easy as stopping by the nearest dispensary to stock up on your favorite strains. You had to rely on random fans in whatever city you were in, or have a plug. Here, B-Real and Xzibit look back on those early days, the current state of the cannabis business and ageism in hip-hop.

High Times: Cypress Hill’s relationship with weed goes way back. I want to ask you about a story that Sen Dog told me. He said one of the first times you smoked weed as a kid, you smoked a joint with him on his porch, then he had to go to work. When he came back eight hours later, you were still in the same spot and hadn’t moved. Can you corroborate that?

B-Real: That’s his exaggerated story. Of course he doesn’t tell people that he bullied me into smoking my first joint. But yeah, no, that happened. But it didn’t happen the way he said it. We smoked before he went to work, and we had a whole bunch of homies in the neighborhood, so I went and hung out with them. Then I came back to his crib when he was getting off work. That was the normal get-down. We’d link up with Sen before he went to work security at JC Penney, then we’d meet up with him to smoke him out after. So the story wasn’t exactly true. I’ll tell you that. I’ll smoke his ass under the table, hands down, today.

So it wasn’t like you were frozen there for eight hours and couldn’t move?

B-Real: [Laughs] No. Nothing has ever done that to me except maybe some mushrooms, but not no weed.

He said that his dad came home and was like, “I think there’s something wrong with your friend.”

B-Real: What was wrong with me was that I was friends with him [laughs].

What’s up, X? Welcome to the conversation.

Xzibit: What up! What’s going down?

Thanks for joining. We’re talking about weed origin stories. Do you remember the first time you smoked?

Xzibit: I was in high school. My friend Richard Harvey and I had a mutual friend called Wally, this short, white, redhead kid. We had some weed and I had never smoked weed. He had a green Buick Skylark that we went out and smoked in in the parking lot at lunch and, from what I know now about weed, it was some compressed, super-seedy, nasty motherfuckin’ brick weed, right? He broke it down and put it in the joint. He couldn’t roll very well and there were sticks coming out of the sides. I didn’t know what I was looking at, right? I smoked it and it was trash, but that was my first time.

High Times: Did you get high?

Xzibit: I don’t know. I was just like, “Damn, this is not a good experience.” But I didn’t know. I was just smoking weed. I was just happy to have the experience. But from what I know now, it was super trash. I didn’t really get high until I started smoking out of Philly blunts. Then we would just keep the whole thing. Instead of breaking it down, we would kind of squeeze the tobacco out, then pack it back and make it a full cigar again. I think that’s the first time I really got high. That’s how I started in the beginning. I didn’t know how to roll, so we would just dump out the tobacco.

But that first time, something about it made you want to try it again. Was it like, “Let’s see if this really works”?

Xzibit: You do things when you’re that young. Of course, I smoked it one time. Why not do it a second time? The second time was better. It was better weed.

Remember when bowls would pop because of the seeds?

Xzibit: Shit was popping everywhere. It was like, “What the hell?”

What about you, B? Do you remember your very first time?

B-Real: Absolutely. I was probably in the fifth grade.

Xzibit: Damn, you got me beat right there.

B-Real: I was a fast kid. I hung out with these four other kids and we all listened to metal, oldies and shit like that. We had one older homeboy who was a gangster to us. He was a young gangbanger at that point, but he was older than us. We looked up to him and, after school, we’d go to his crib and listen to either oldies or some metal. He’d break out this little acrylic bong, about eight inches tall, with big graphics. We’d smoke out of his fucking bong. I didn’t know what we were doing. I was just like, “Well, fuck, they’re doing it. Let’s go.” We’d all leave and go our individual ways. But when I got home, I didn’t realize I had the munchies. Every time I got home, I was asking my mother for food and she’s like, “Why are you so hungry when you come home from school all the time?” Because I had the fucking munchies and I didn’t realize that’s what it was. That was my first experience. I was hitting bongs before joints.

In the ’90s, we had to try really hard to get weed. I remember having to go to North Omaha to meet up with some shady individuals to get it, and now you can just go to a dispensary and get it yourself. When you were on tour back then, how did you get weed?

B-Real: It was a gamble because not everywhere had good weed. You had to know someone in that town or meet someone who knew somebody. It was hit and miss for the first six or seven years until we started cultivating our own shit and taking it on the road. It was stuff our friends grew because we didn’t trust what we’d be able to find. Once we ran out of whatever we brought with us, it got sketchy and you had to try to find people. Back then, there were none of these social media platforms to communicate with anyone. It’s so much easier now because there are so many cultivators out there in each state who are very talented, so even if it’s black market, it’s probably pretty good, whereas back in the day, black market was absolute shit.

[Editor’s Note: At this point, Xzibit pulls up to his dispensary and walks through rows of hanging marijuana plants.]

B-Real: Oh, wow. Damn, you got there fast. You were just in the car.

I take it you’re at West Coast Cannabis?

Xzibit: Yeah, I’m at my store in the Valley.

How many locations are there?

Xzibit: We have Bel-Air, Chatsworth and we just opened our store in Marina Del Rey.

I heard you just celebrated two years at Bel-Air, right?

Xzibit: Absolutely.

How did you go about getting weed on tour? Was it similar?

Xzibit: We always had it. We just illegally trafficked it.

When recreational and medicinal weed started becoming legal, were you surprised, or did you always think it would happen?

Xzibit: For me, it really didn’t change anything except now we’re just not getting in trouble for it.

B-Real: When we started going to places like Amsterdam in the early ’90s and seeing what they were doing, the structure of their cannabis culture and business, I knew it was possible for us. No one could call when, but as soon as people started getting into their activist and advocate bag and really wanted to make change, that’s when you saw the change happen. Like Xzibit said, it didn’t change much because we always had our own shit and we weren’t depending on anyone else, but it definitely made it easier to not have to sneak around or any of that shit. We could smoke freely and not have to fucking worry about it anymore, so it wasn’t necessarily a shock. It was more relief, like, finally these motherfuckers got it.

Is there any less allure because it is legal?

B-Real: Yeah, there is that, and for the thrill-seekers, the black market still exists. It’s out there for you if you want it. It ain’t going nowhere. And the work’s not done yet. There’s still a ways to go in terms of legalization. Until we’re federally legal across the board, there’s plenty of work to do. Because trying to be a multi-state operator with a licensing format is almost impossible to ensure that the licensees that, let’s just say, come under Dr. Greenthumb’s. Let’s just say I do licensing deals with Greenthumb’s, much like how Xzibit and the rest of us operate. We partner up with people through licensing unless we own a piece of that license. But in multi-state operations, you can’t necessarily supervise the shops everywhere and you can’t tell them what to do. You can only give them suggestions on how to operate. If they wanted to say, “Hey, fuck you, we got your name up here. We’re going to operate it the way we want. As long as we’re doing it according to the law, you can’t tell us how to operate.” When it’s federally legal and we’re allowed to franchise, then we could give them a playbook they absolutely have to follow. We can look through the books, we can do all the fucking things and make sure they’re operating the way all the others operate within the franchise. Right now, it’s too complicated.

The taxes in every state make it practically impossible for the margins to make sense, so there’s a lot of work to do. We need to get it federally legal so all of us who want to be in this business, whether it’s just in our home states or we want to operate as multi-state operators because we feel our brand has that sort of strength in the market, can do it with fewer complications and get a fair shake. A lot of these states turned over a lot of fucking money in tax revenue through the cannabis industry. We bailed out a lot of state economies through cannabis culture, legalization, decriminalization and all that we have in place. The fucking nation needs to say thank you to this business that brought money out of nowhere.

I’m pretty sure Colorado taxpayers got money back from the cannabis industry.

Xzibit: There’s definitely a lot of work to be done in that aspect. There needs to be a tax when it becomes federally legal. It should be 3%, the same as alcohol and tobacco.

What’s the tax now?

Xzibit: Right now, it’s at 38%.

Is federal legalization any closer?

B-Real: No, not yet. I think there’s too many other things going on for any one of those politicians to be focused on cannabis right now. It’s actually up to the cannabis advocates to keep pressing, instead of sitting on their hands and just being thankful for what we got. We got to keep pressing because politicians ain’t going to do it. This dickhead president ain’t going to do it. The people got to keep pressing.

What are your daily rituals when it comes to smoking these days? What do you prefer: blunts, joints, bongs?

B-Real: Xzibit smokes tree bark [laughs]. He wraps his shit with Backwoods, and I call it tree bark.

Xzibit: [Laughs] Look, man, you get samples of everything. So I just kind of like to roll joints and concentrates together, sometimes in the joint if I have to, but most of the time I roll it in the wood.

Are we smoking all day?

Xzibit: Yeah, it doesn’t really slow me down. It’s good. A cup of coffee and I’m good.

B-Real: For me, it’s joints on papers with a glass tip, and sometimes we’re smoking hash holes. And for those that don’t know what that is, some other folks call them donuts, but it’s a joint with hash lined right in the middle. High Times folks know what the fuck that is. We smoke through the day. It’s part of who we are, and it’s not because we have to, it’s because we want to.

Cypress Hill has always advocated for cannabis. It’s cool to see that you turned it into a business. You too, Xzibit.

Xzibit: But it takes the team. It takes a lot of good people around you, and good people are hard to find. So once you’ve got a good team, you take care of them, and it becomes like a family.

April 20 is coming up. I grew up on 420 North 41st Street. My dad didn’t understand why somebody stole our sign every single year. Now he knows [laughs]. How do you guys celebrate 4/20?

B-Real: Every day is 4/20. It’s still the same.

Xzibit: Yeah, what do you mean? What’s the difference?

B-Real: Everybody else parties on 4/20 because it’s like every stoner’s birthday and shit.

Are you doing anything special at your stores?

Xzibit: Yeah, our grand opening is on 4/20 at the West Coast Cannabis Marina Del Rey store, but I’ll be going to the other locations as well.

Anything happening at your store, B?

B-Real: There’s specials, there’s flavor drops, there’s meet-and-greets and stuff like that. Usually we’re out of town. This is probably the one 4/20 in the last couple years where we’re actually at home, not doing anything. But I might stop into one of the dispensaries, maybe San Diego or something like that. We’re dropping music that day as well.

One of my favorite songs you did was actually “Dr. Greenthumb’s.”

B-Real: Yeah, that’s the calling card. It gets lit.

Cypress Hill just released a new single, too. You’re busy.

B-Real: I’ve been blessed to be locked in with two amazing albums: the Serial Killers album, This Thing of Ours, and this Cypress Hill Spanish album. Two completely different things. I’m blessed to be working like this.

Who would have thought all these years later that you’d still be doing it at such a high level? No pun intended [laughs].

B-Real: We try to stay busy. I think our school, the gold school, we were very young at heart when we started this but advanced in our years because of the street life we led before this. It sort of gave us an advantage in the mentality, like only the strong survive shit, right? We were very young at it, and we’ve kept this young, competitive mentality throughout the years, even as we’re now in our 50s. We don’t look at ourselves like we’re in our 50s. We feel like we’re in our fucking 30s and 40s and still doing it at the highest level. It’s about the state of mind you’re in. If you feel you’re fucking too old for this shit, you will sound and feel like you’re too old for this shit, and it’ll be done for you. But those of us in this modern age of it, we don’t feel that way. We feel like we’re still competitive. We still can rap circles around half the motherfuckers that are doing this shit right now who are younger than us. Although we do recognize the youngsters that are right there with us, too, because there are plenty of youngsters that get down. But, you know, it’s the competitive spirit. And as long as we’re taking care of ourselves, we’re right in state of mind, we could do this as long as we fucking want.

Absolutely.

B-Real: Look at The Rolling Stones. They’re close to fucking 90 and still doing shows. All of you guys, we all have such a spirit of youth. Like, it’s still there. And I think that helps us age very well. If Madonna could be a pop star at 60-fucking-something or 70-something, whatever she is, why can’t we still be cutting it up? And it’s about how much you put into yourself and how much you put into the art. So fortunately, Xzibit still has that passion. He’s not as old as us yet, but he will be one day. He’ll still have it. He’s got it in him.

The work ethic is insane, too.

B-Real: You got to want to do this, and we still love to do it. I think it shows when you hear or see us do the music that we still love it. If we were just going through the motions, you would hear that and be like, “Ah, this shit is kind of OK,” and you’d flip forward to whatever the next shit is. But when someone still has passion about it, I think you can hear it, and we still definitely do.

<p>The post B-Real and Xzibit on Brick Weed, Backwoods and Why They Still ‘Rap Circles’ Around Younger Rappers first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post B-Real and Xzibit on Brick Weed, Backwoods and Why They Still ‘Rap Circles’ Around Younger Rappers appeared first on Paradise Found.