Pepper’s drummer reflects on Point Break Festival, reggae-rock’s traveling family, growing up around Hawaiian cannabis, Sublime’s influence, and why the best shows feel more like backyard jams than festivals.

Pepper drummer Yesod Williams did not talk about Point Break Festival like it was another square on the summer tour calendar. To him, bringing Pepper, Sublime, Slightly Stoopid, Less Than Jake, and the wider reggae-rock orbit onto a beach felt closer to a family reunion. The location changes. The food changes. The local characters change. But the same tattooed, sunburned, weed-friendly caravan keeps following the music from coast to coast.

Pepper returned to Point Break Festival after playing its inaugural year in 2024. Williams remembered the first edition as unusually dialed-in for a new festival, especially considering how quickly an oceanfront party can turn into a logistical yard sale.

“There’s so many moving parts to a music festival,” Williams says. “First year is always working some kinks out, ironing some wrinkles, and it was amazing.”

Ahead of the band’s return to Virginia Beach, he expected fewer boundaries, more guest appearances, and the kind of Pepper set where the band members might spend as much time in the crowd as they do behind their instruments.

As Williams puts it, “If you really want to feel like a part of a show and not just at a show, just come check out the Pepper set.”

Point Break Brought the Whole Family to the Beach

Pepper’s return marked the band’s second Point Break appearance. Williams believed the festival worked because it understood that reggae rock operates as a community before it operates as a genre.

“Anytime you can get this reggae rock scene on the beach together with all the people that are what we call our fans, our whole world is an ohana,” he says. “It’s a family. It’s the Pepper ohana.”

That family stretches well beyond Pepper. Ahead of the weekend, Williams expected the bands to bleed into one another’s sets, with musicians from Slightly Stoopid, The Elovaters, and elsewhere moving across the stage without much ceremony. It is the opposite of a tightly sealed festival environment where artists arrive, play, and vanish into black SUVs.

“You’re going to see all the bands onstage with each other,” Williams says. “We have so much fun together.”

He calls the approach kanikapila style, a Hawaiian tradition of sitting around with friends and family and playing music. In Williams’ telling, the reggae-rock circuit has turned that backyard custom into a roaming festival culture.

“It’s just turned into one big kanikapila,” he says.

Point Break also got a jolt from Less Than Jake, whom Williams affectionately calls Pepper’s “old-school Warped Tour uncles.” Their presence widened the festival’s frame and reconnected the lineup to the punk and ska circuit that helped Pepper find its footing.

“Huge respect to Point Break Festival for going a little bit outside of the box too and bringing a little added spice into the festival,” Williams says.

A Pepper festival set runs shorter than the band’s headlining show, which means fewer detours and less room for deep cuts. Williams said the band may get 45 minutes to an hour at a festival, compared with roughly 90 minutes on its own stage.

Still, a compressed set can carry its own charge, especially when friends start appearing from the wings.

“It’s like going on a fishing trip,” Williams says. “It’s super epic and rad by yourself, but, man, if you got some buddies there, it just kind of hypes up the energy that much more.”

The Coast Changes, but the Crowd Travels

Williams had a fresh East Coast-West Coast comparison. Pepper had recently played Petco Park in San Diego with Sublime and Slightly Stoopid, two bands that also sit at the center of the Point Break universe. He notices regional differences, but they tend to show up in the margins rather than the spirit of the crowd.

“You’re going to get your different foods. You’re going to get kind of your different styles and just different little touches of culture,” Williams says. “But I think the attitude and just the overall personality of the people that are coming to these shows and spreading these vibes are pretty similar.”

The fans travel too. That mobility has helped turn reggae rock into a durable culture with its own routes, reunions, and generational handoffs. People follow the bands from California ballparks to Virginia beaches because the shows offer more than a sequence of songs. They offer recognition.

Pepper’s new single, “End of the World,” features The Movement, another band from that extended circle. Ahead of Point Break, Williams said attendees could expect new music, surprise guests, and perhaps a close encounter with Pepper guitarist and vocalist Kaleo Wassman or bassist Bret Bollinger in the crowd.

During the recent Petco Park show, Williams lost track of his bandmates for several minutes during the set.

“It was absolutely glorious,” he says.

That loose, participatory instinct goes back to the band’s origins. Pepper did not emerge from a strategy session about marketable genre fusion. The group grew out of Hawaii, surf culture, reggae, punk records, and parties where nobody bothered to draw a clean line between audience and performer. Point Break gave the band another chance to recreate that chaos at scale.

Sublime Showed Pepper the Door Was Open

Reggae surrounded Williams growing up in Hawaii. UB40 played everywhere, and Jawaiian music had already fused Jamaican influence with Hawaiian musicianship and island life.

What Williams needed was a way to connect that foundation to the punk and alternative music ripping through surf videos in the 1990s. The Police and The Clash offered early clues. Then Sublime made the combination feel completely natural.

Williams first heard Sublime’s cover of the Descendents’ “Hope” in Taylor Steele’s surf film Momentum 2. The song sat comfortably beside bands like Pennywise and NOFX. Williams did not yet know it was a cover, and he did not understand how far Sublime could stretch. Then a friend returned from the mainland with 40oz. to Freedom and played “Don’t Push.”

“I’m like, what? This is the same band that did that punk rock song?” Williams says.

That revelation cracked open Pepper’s future. Sublime treated punk, reggae, dub, ska, and hip-hop as parts of the same language. Williams realized Pepper could do the same without cutting itself into separate pieces.

“Oh, wait, we can play songs with punk rock in them and reggae in them, and we can do all these things,” he recalls thinking.

Sublime also brought Williams back to the drums. He had started playing at nine, quit around 12 or 13 after burning out, and turned his attention toward surfing. Then he heard the live album Stand by Your Van. The recordings sounded like small rooms on the edge of losing control.

“They sounded like parties,” Williams says. “I was like, I want to play music again, and I want to play parties around Kona.”

Soon after, he connected with Wassman at a beach party. Pepper followed. That history makes sharing festival bills with Sublime deeply personal. Williams recently thanked drummer Bud Gaugh for the inspiration and reflected on how Sublime’s surviving members lost the chance to tour behind the band’s 1996 self-titled album after Bradley Nowell died.

“They didn’t get to experience the glory from it,” Williams says. “Going out and flying the flag of that record and playing those songs for all these beautiful spirits that love it.”

Seeing that lost time reclaimed, he says, has become another “pinch-me moment.”

Cannabis Has Always Been in the Room

Cannabis entered Williams’ life long before dispensary shelves, celebrity brands, or festival smoke clouds. His parents moved to Hawaii in the late 1970s to grow weed. Some of his earliest memories involve the smell of cannabis drying around the house.

“It was never like a real taboo, like, ‘Don’t look at it. Don’t touch it,’” Williams says.

That openness helped him avoid the fearful relationship many people inherit from prohibition. He started smoking young, enjoyed cannabis before surfing, and later carried it into music. Over time, though, he also learned the value of taking breaks. After his son was born, Williams stopped consuming for about six months.

“Those times are really nice too,” he says. “The beautiful times of clarity and getting clearheaded for a little bit just adds to, I think, the human experience that is involved in cannabis.”

These days, he prefers live rosin. Pepper also has a cannabis line called Stoned Love, named after the band’s song “Stone Love.” The group partnered with Party Favors Dro on pre-rolls packaged in embossed tins featuring art tied to Pepper’s long visual history.

The artwork comes from a classmate who grew up with the band in Hawaii, which gives the packaging more personal weight than the average musician licensing deal. For Williams, cannabis still connects most strongly to surfing and music because each can pull him toward the present. He describes creativity as something received rather than forced.

Cannabis may clear a path toward that source, but Williams knows inspiration still needs discipline. He balances the mystical talk with a reminder from Pepper’s manager: Proper preparation prevents poor performance. Practice remains the bridge between the signal and the song.

Fatherhood Put Everything in Order

Williams now measures touring against a different center of gravity. At the time of the interview, he had a 2-year-old son and another child on the way. Fatherhood, he says, gave him a clearer reason for the work and a larger capacity for love.

“My heart is so much bigger now because I’m a father,” Williams says.

He became emotional while describing that shift. Before drummer, surfer, or touring musician, he now sees himself as a parent.

“That’s who I am first and foremost,” he says.

Pepper’s schedule has also changed. The band spent its 20s and 30s charging forward without much balance. Now, its members have children, families, and enough control over the operation to tour without letting the road swallow everything else. Williams still hates leaving for weeks at a time, but the arrangement allows him to be fully present when he returns.

“When I’m home, I’m home,” he says.

That idea loops back to Point Break. Presence sits at the center of nearly everything Williams values: catching a wave, locking into a song, smoking with intention, raising his children, or stepping onto a beach with friends he has known for decades. A good festival can become another way of entering that state.

For one weekend, the stage opened up. The crowd moved closer. The bands stopped behaving like separate businesses and started acting like the friends they are. Then Pepper turned Virginia Beach into a backyard.

<p>The post Yesod Williams Brought the Ohana to Point Break Festival first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Yesod Williams Brought the Ohana to Point Break Festival appeared first on Paradise Found.

Editor’s note: We originally published this interview with Oliver Tree in 2020, around the release of his debut album “Ugly Is Beautiful.” Oliver Tree Nickell passed away on June 14, 2026, at 32, one of six people killed when two helicopters collided over Rio de Janeiro. He was traveling on his World’s First World Tour. In the conversation below, which ran as he was breaking out, he talked about cannabis as the engine of his creative life, his years dealing and trimming flower in Santa Cruz and the persona he built to pull people toward his music. He called “Ugly Is Beautiful” his last album and said he was done as Oliver Tree. He wasn’t. He went on to release three more, including “Love You Madly Hate You Badly” this past April. We’re republishing the interview as we first ran it, in his own words, to remember him.

For Oliver Tree, having a hand in every aspect of his career is vital. He enjoys wearing the many hats required to maintain a successful career as a recording artist and budding filmmaker. When we connect by phone, he’s a week away from releasing his debut album, “Ugly is Beautiful,” a body of work that is introspective, reflective and intelligently fun. Behind the work is a creator who is not only extremely self-aware of his comedic persona and role as an entertainer, but a man who has built his career on entertaining himself first.

Before we dive in, I’d read that you made the music video for “Bury Me Alive” for six bucks. Is that true?

Oliver Tree: Truth is, I wasn’t even planning on shooting a video. I was actually shooting some promotional pieces for the album and had built prosthetics out of this play doh material. We’d spent a lot of time making them and thought they looked pretty crazy. We had the camera, the story cam gear, and were at a location that had incredible train tracks outside. I was like, “Fuck it, let’s just drop a camera on me and shoot a one-shot-take video,” and I just choreographed things as I went. It was purely spur of the moment and I just kept doing it until it became what you see in the final video.

The sirens at the end of the video – were those added or were they real?

Oliver Tree: There was no production, just me and my two friends filming illegally. It’s three in the morning and I’m just screaming the lyrics, trying to get what we needed as quickly as possible. Someone from the complex was yelling at me from inside the building and I’m pretty sure they called the cops because we ended up getting a pretty fat ticket. I guess the cost [of production] was a little more [than six dollars] if you consider the ticket, but that’s not really part of the budget because there was no budget.

Ultimately, you used what you had around you and crafted something pretty awesome.

Oliver Tree: That’s what quarantine teaches us to do. You have to get creative with what you have. [The experience] proved to me that with a good enough idea, you can execute a strong video. This video that cost me six dollars ended up being more successful than videos I’d spent one-hundred-grand on. And that’s the funny part. You can have all the money in the world, but that’s not going to make a better product sometimes.

I’m ultimately using [music videos] as opportunities as a director to make a scene from an action movie. I’m not really thinking about it like, “How do I make the best promotional piece for my album?” It’s more, “How do I make a crazy fucking scene from a movie that no one’s ever seen before?”

And it  just so happens there’s a music album behind the video.

Oliver Tree: Exactly. Truth is, I only signed a major label record deal so I could get the money to subsidize my vision as a filmmaker. I was signed to an indie label before and it didn’t end up working out. I wasn’t able to afford any of my visions. It was the kind of thing where signing with a major label was a necessity based on what I want to do as a visual artist. The beautiful thing is, I found a cheat code which allows me to use the key from one castle to open the door to another castle. Taking a piece of the music industry and using it to open doors in the film industry.

Is it accurate to say film has been your grand vision?

Oliver Tree: Neither [music nor film] are the main thing, but this is my last album. As Oliver Tree, I’m completely done. This project is over. It’s a fucking incredible album, I spent five years making it, and I don’t need to do anything else. It’s already the best it can be and I’m going to leave it at that. I’m planning to segue over to film now. I’ve been working on screenplays during this COVID period and I’ve been working on building out my own production company. I’m trying to do as much as I can to move myself out of the music industry and into film.

But how did you initially focus on music?

Oliver Tree: Let me first start by saying that my parents met in music class. They were both flute players, but the class got cancelled, so they would go up in the trees at school and play flute. That was the setup to me growing up in an incredibly musical household. 

Every type of instrument covered our walls. There was a piano to bang on. There were guitars. Everything. My parents forced me to play piano at the age of three and I fucking hated it. At the age of six, I was like, “I don’t want to do this anymore,” and stopped. They were like, “Okay, we’re glad you tried it, if you don’t like it, we respect that.” The next year, I’m seven and I go to this guitar shop – Starving Musician – in Santa Cruz where I grew up. I’m playing some of the guitars there and I find this mini Pignose guitar, which has a built-in amplifier that creates distortion within itself. It basically allowed me to play something that sounded like rock, which was my fucking dream. For some reason, distortion always spoke to me, and looking back now, I can see that’s the origin of me as a real rocker. I ended up saving every penny in my piggy bank and bought that fucking guitar, which was a pivotal turning point where I realized this was something I wanted. I wanted to play music for me.

Have you always been conscious to craft narratives within your work?

Oliver Tree: I’ve been filming stupid videos with my friends since I was a kid and I’ve been making music and songs the same way. The sole purpose was to entertain myself. Instead of playing video games, I was making videos and songs. It was just something I naturally gravitated toward, so I just continued to build my skill sets.

At a certain point, you start to have people reach out and offer job opportunities and things like that. In a lot of ways, you start to find that these paths choose you. I didn’t pick to be a musician. A record label reached out to me to sign me. Even though it didn’t go well, I couldn’t stop making music. Even if I wasn’t getting paid, I couldn’t stop making music. And that’s when you know that’s your role. You can’t help it. Eventually, I found the right support system to help me share my art and give positive messages to people to help them get through this fucked up world that we live in.

I am a storyteller first and foremost. I have stories to tell. Whatever means through which I tell those stories, whether it’s through music, film, performance art, through the way I present myself and conduct myself, through interviews and things like that – they’re all ways for me to tell my stories and ultimately set up a mirror in front of society to look at how ridiculous we are and how ridiculous things have become.

To that end, how did you end up crafting your look and persona?

Oliver Tree: It came out of necessity after failure. I’d spent ten-plus years making music and nobody gave a fuck. My first record career had failed and when I ran out of money, I started trimming weed to make a living. I was back to being a normal Joe, you know? Making as much art and crazy shit as I am now, just without any of the support or financing. My image was created to pull people to my music.

I started working with some of my other artist friends and ended up having this opportunity to shoot my first music video that would end up on MTV. It was my first chance of being seen by millions of people. I was like, “Okay. How am I going to separate myself on MTV? Am I going to try and look “hot” like everybody else and sell sex, or am I going to try and stick out like a sore thumb?” I basically pulled together all these parts of my life that were ridiculous, unique elements I thought were cool as a child and built an outfit around them. I went with the bowl cut, the jacket I took from my mom’s closet that my aunt gave her in the eighties, the pants that I always wanted, and sunglasses I would wear as a kid. It made me feel cool. All these things were authentic to myself and my life, but I turned it up a few notches.

Anyway, I showed up to the shoot as the feature on the song and everyone literally looked right through me. It was crazy. My friend from highschool couldn’t even recognize me. When he finally realized it was me he was like, “Bro, we gotta film some Vines.” This was my friend Getter, who was part of the “suh dude” movement with his roommate, Nick Colletti. He filmed these Vines of me in the outfit and they started getting millions of plays, so I started testing out all these different characters. Some of them were even more obnoxious and some were borderline offensive, so I had to learn what was appropriate and constantly reevaluate. I found that my current look specifically was the one that continuously would get millions of plays, even on my rinky-dink Vine account that only had twenty-thousand followers. I had found a look that had cut through the Internet. I had created a thumbnail that was clickbait. Even if he’s obnoxious and annoying, he’s still the most lovable of all these characters I’d made. The [current one] was the one that resonated the most on a cultural level.

So I said, “Fuck it. No one is listening to my music. This image can be a vehicle to pull people over to it and finally give them a chance to hear it.” It goes way beyond making art. Making art is the action of what you do as an artist, but promotion of art is probably eighty-percent of what you do. I just found a way to promote [my music] in a way that could make the promotion itself art. I was able to justify spending eighty-percent of my time promoting because the promotion was just as much art as the music itself. [The promotion] might not have had the same impact a song might have had, but it was a way to pull people to a song.

You discovered one hand could sort of feed the other in a way.

Oliver Tree: Ultimately, what I think I’m doing here is devising a blueprint that allows artists to do every single thing under the sun creatively as one project. The beauty of it is, I can wear one outfit, which allows me to be able be in a fucking random skit on a comedy video and be the same project and the same character in this world where I’m making super serious music that’s lightyears away from [the look]. Creatively speaking, I can do anything I want, and still have it fit under the banner of Oliver Tree.

What went into crafting your specific voice and style?

Oliver Tree: It’s taken almost twenty years to develop my vocal style. For people who think my voice sounds annoying right now, you should have heard it when I was recording at age seven. It’s one of the most awful sounds you can imagine. But that only proves that anyone can be a singer. Anyone with working vocal cords has the potential to be a voice for their generation. For the first five years I was making music, I couldn’t listen to myself. Five years. Can you imagine? I knew there was something unique and special about my voice, but [at the time] it sounded like shit. I kept refining it and refining it and learned how to find all of these different ranges. I was also able to discover these different characters that existed within myself, and I studied groups like Gorillaz – one of my biggest influences – who had all these different genres and voices. They’ve done a great job marrying different sounds together through genre fusion. Their early albums lay a blueprint for how you can mix all of these different styles and I just took that blueprint, expanded on it with modern techniques and applied it to my own stories.

If you look through my songs, sometimes it sounds like three different voices on there. When I was learning how to explore my voice and find other characters within myself, me and my piano player – Casey Mattson – would do these psychedelic sessions where we wouldn’t sleep for a week and would just stay up and make music nonstop. During this time, we’d drink pu erh tea and smoke an endless amount of joints. We’d put on different outfits and set up the lighting for different moods so that each time I went up on the mic, it would be a different experience. Sometimes I’d be channeling a forty-year-old emo man, or another time I’d be channeling a twelve-year-old girl. That was the way I learned to pull some of these voices out of myself and into the music. It’s about channeling. I don’t try to mimic based on things I hear, I channel a character and let them do the singing for me.

Ninety-percent of the music I write is improvised. It’s not actually written. I just go into the booth, improvise, and let the music write itself. I’m at a place now where I’ve found sixteen voices and characters within me. It’s a jazz approach that allows you to capture a moment instead of trying to create a moment. Every lyric, every single melody you hear from my voice is entirely by me. I don’t let anyone else get involved in that because I want it to be the one thing that’s pure about Oliver Tree. Otherwise, you start having all these other people’s stories being told. There’s only one feature on “Ugly is Beautiful,” and that’s Little Ricky ZR3. This guy is the fucking future and is my favorite artist. For some reason, his music really connects with me and I think he’s going to be the biggest artist on the planet in a few years.

Ultimately you have to tell a story that’s authentic and true. It helps to pull from your own experience, and after I’ve established enough of an idea that’s worth singing on, I go into the booth and just let it rip.

Does weed play a role in your creative process?

Oliver Tree: Weed is a huge part of my existence. It’s like my coffee. I don’t drink coffee but I smoke weed from when I start my day until when I go to sleep. I’m not advocating that lifestyle, but for me, because of my body chemistry, weed has the effect of a stimulant. It doesn’t make me sleepy, it actually makes it harder for my brain to shut off. But that’s a really nice advantage when you’re making art all day and need to have something to help you persevere. In some ways, weed has helped me reach my potential creatively. If I have these moments when I’m feeling low energy, smoking boosts me back up to keep creating. So for me, smoking weed is every step of the process. I’m smoking weed while I’m writing the music. I’m smoking weed while I’m recording the music. I smoke weed while I’m mixing the music and I smoke weed during the entire mastering process.

Weed helps me chill during chaos. When you’re traveling the world, never having stability, constantly staying up and functioning on only three hours of sleep, weed is something that can help you have those moments of down time during your day to breathe and just chill the fuck out so you can go back into the chaos with a level-headed mindset.

By the way, did you say earlier you used to trim weed?

Oliver Tree: Yeah, that was how I was able to stay alive financially. My good homie and bass player at the time let me trim for him. I ended up doing that to keep afloat while my recording career failed. But I’ve had huge connections to cannabis my entire life.

Growing up in Santa Cruz, I’d steal weed from my parents, and all through high school I was a really good weed dealer. My mom knew I sold, but I explained it to her this way: I said, “Mom, don’t think of me as a weed dealer, think of me as an entrepreneur.”

At a certain point, I was the only weed dealer at school. It was crazy. I would sell weed in the bathrooms, handing nugs beneath one stall to the other stall. One time, I slid the weed under a stall and the kid was just sitting on the toilet and didn’t take it. I was like, “Does it not look good to you? Is it not enough? What’s up?” Whoever it was, didn’t respond. I heard them leave the stall and then another person came in and they grabbed the weed. I realized I’d slid weed over to some random kid taking a shit.

[Dealing] was a big part of me learning how to run a business. Having a business background became extremely beneficial later on when it came to building companies, starting touring entities, starting recording and publishing companies, production companies – all which utilized skills I learned from my early days as a weed dealer in Santa Cruz.

It sounds like all of your experiences – both in art and business – happened  very organically.

Oliver Tree: It’s cool to be able to understand that the number one pitfall in both music and art is commerce. But the bigger pitfall is that artists are never really taught about business in art. I went to CalArts School for two years and they didn’t teach me a single business class. There wasn’t even one available. That’s fucking insane. People are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to a school that doesn’t even teach them the idea of business, when it’s business that allows you to survive as an artist. To not teach artists about commerce-in-art is extremely detrimental, not only to an artist’s survival, but to the execution of their creative endeavors. Making art on a commercial scale costs a lot of money, so earning how to find – and work with – investors and patrons plays a massive part in that process.

And it succeeds for you – in large part I imagine – because of the dichotomy between your more comical persona and the more serious subject matter of your content.

Oliver Tree: I never try to make the music funny. Paired with my character, it shows you the duality of people. It shows you to never judge a book by its cover. What you see on the outside isn’t usually the vulnerable person within. On a surface level, my album “Ugly is Beautiful” is about teaching people not to judge a book by its cover and to learn how to love themselves and the imperfections within themselves. By me presenting myself the way I do, I can show that message through my actions instead of by preaching to people. I can show people that you can be loved by being who you are and looking the way you look. But the album also goes much deeper, teaching how to accept who you are as a person and accepting where you’re at in life.

There’s so much hatred in this world because people hate themselves and hate their lives. They can’t look at themselves in the mirror, need to have something going on at all times, or constantly need other people around them. People are so sick with hatred that it manifests externally, which is why we’re living in such a fucked up society.

I’ve learned to love myself and how to accept who I am. I’ve learned my flaws are what made the DNA of the character of who I am today. “Ugly is Beautiful” is about coming to a place within yourself where you have finally arrived.

Follow @Olivertree and check out his debut album “Ugly is Beautiful” available everywhere

<p>The post Oliver Tree Deals Art: Remembering The Late Singer Through His 2020 High Times Interview first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Oliver Tree Deals Art: Remembering The Late Singer Through His 2020 High Times Interview appeared first on Paradise Found.

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>

The post The Baby From Sublime’s ‘What I Got’ Video Is Now the Band’s Frontman. He’s Bradley Nowell’s Son. appeared first on Paradise Found.

When most people think about major hip-hop festivals, Montana rarely enters the conversation. For decades, many national tours bypassed the state entirely, leaving local fans to travel hundreds of miles to catch major artists.

That reality helped inspire Rappin’ The Rivers, an independent festival founded in 2023 by Montana rap duo Filth and Foul, made up of Nickel Barney (NICKBUSY) and Shane Boylan (Contact). What started as an effort to bring large-scale hip-hop programming to their home state has grown into one of Montana’s most recognizable music gatherings.

Now entering its fourth year, the festival returns to Cardwell, Montana, on August 7–8, 2026.

A Montana Festival With Its Own Identity

Held at the same venue that has hosted events including Rockin’ The Rivers and Country Jam, Rappin’ The Rivers has built its reputation around a blend of live music, camping, nightlife, and Montana scenery.

Unlike many urban music festivals, the event takes place against a backdrop of mountains, open skies, and sprawling campgrounds. Every weekend pass includes camping access, helping create an experience that extends beyond the performances themselves.

Festival organizers say that combination has helped attract a growing audience from both inside and outside Montana. The event has also earned recognition in the Bozeman’s Choice Awards, where it has been named Best Festival for three consecutive years.

Hip-Hop, EDM, and More

This year’s lineup includes artists from across hip-hop, EDM, rock, and adjacent genres. Scheduled performers include DaBaby, That Mexican OT, Paul Wall, Dave East, Kid Ink, Rittz, X-Raided, Whitney Peyton, Unconventional Kingz, Champagne Drip, DirtySnatcha, Hairitage, LadyDice, and Doggface.

One of the festival’s signature attractions is Ravin’ The Rivers, an EDM-focused stage that operates alongside the event’s hip-hop programming. Organizers are also introducing a new Rockin’ The Rivers stage in 2026, expanding the festival’s musical footprint with additional rock and mixed-genre performances.

Another notable addition is Young Dirty Bastard, son of Wu-Tang Clan member Ol’ Dirty Bastard. He joins the festival as both a performer and special guest host through a new partnership involving the Dirty Jones brand.

Cannabis Culture Meets Independent Music

As the festival continues to grow, organizers have also added partnerships that reflect its connection to broader counterculture communities.

Among them is Evan Kajander, owner of Montana-based cannabis company Apogee Gardens, who has joined the event as a partner for 2026. While Rappin’ The Rivers remains primarily a music festival, the addition reflects the long-standing overlap between independent hip-hop, festival culture, and cannabis communities.

The festival grounds also feature vendors, merchandise, VIP experiences, food options, art installations, and after-hours activities that help create a weekend-long destination rather than a traditional concert experience.

Building Something Different

What makes Rappin’ The Rivers notable is not simply the lineup. It is the fact that an event built by independent Montana artists has managed to carve out its own place in a crowded festival landscape.

In a state often overlooked by major touring circuits, the festival has become a gathering point for fans of hip-hop, bass music, camping culture, and independent creative communities. As it enters its fourth year, Rappin’ The Rivers continues to grow while maintaining the Montana identity that helped set it apart in the first place.

Rappin’ The Rivers returns to Cardwell, Montana, on August 7–8, 2026. Get tickets here.

All images courtesy of Rappin The Rivers team.

<p>The post Rappin’ The Rivers Is Building Montana’s Hip-Hop Outpost first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Rappin’ The Rivers Is Building Montana’s Hip-Hop Outpost appeared first on Paradise Found.

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>

The post Meet Micro TDH, the Venezuelan Artist Putting Older Women Smoking Weed in His Music Videos appeared first on Paradise Found.

Harry Styles has openly linked the recording of his 2019 album Fine Line to mushrooms, sunshine and Rick Rubin’s Malibu lawn. A leading psychedelic neuroscientist explains what the science actually says about play, creativity and the artist brain on classic psychedelics.

Harry Styles isn’t exactly shy about provocative jokes, pop-star mischief or, lately, his appreciation for ecstasy. During his recent appearance on Saturday Night Live, he said as much while promoting his very energetic new pop album, Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. It’s solid pop, but Styles’ most interesting drug-adjacent mythology still belongs to Fine Line, the album he has openly linked to mushrooms, sunshine, Rick Rubin’s lawn and a little blood.

Mushrooms, to be exact, which he enjoyed in fine quantities at producer Rick Rubin‘s Malibu Shangri-La studios. “Did a lot of mushrooms in here,” Styles told Rolling Stone. “We’d do mushrooms, lie down on the grass, and listen to Paul McCartney’s Ram in the sunshine. We’d just turn the speakers into the yard.”

“We were doing mushrooms and I bit off the tip of my tongue. So I was trying to sing with all this blood gushing out of my mouth. So many fond memories, this place.”

Harry Styles, on recording Fine Line at Shangri-La Studios

Plenty of sweat and tears go into Styles’ work (so much heartbreak for one beloved young fella) but blood too went into the mix of his hits.

Sunshine, McCartney records and a little blood

Whether shrooms shaped the fun warmth of Fine Line is impossible to prove. What Styles has said is that they were part of the atmosphere at Shangri-La, along with sunlight, McCartney records and, apparently, a little blood. In Rubin’s notoriously tranquil recording space, Styles produced “Golden,” “Adore You,” “She” and a song once impossible to miss while baked and strolling 7-11, “Watermelon Sugar.” The sound, production and the vibes, man, make the mushroom stories easy to believe. Styles’ warmest, most fun-loving album is perfect listening for a breezy summer day, which is not the same thing as proof, but is definitely part of the fun.

What the science says about play

Of course, psychedelics and music have had a long relationship, perhaps originally and most famously with The Beach Boys and The Beatles. “Harry Styles and psychedelics, I wouldn’t have necessarily put that together,” said Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris. “He’s kind of gone up a few points in terms of cool points hearing about this.” Carhart-Harris is the Ralph Metzner Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and Founding Director of the Neuroscape Psychedelics Division. His debut book, How Psychedelics Work: Illuminating the Hidden Mind, is forthcoming from Scribner.

Carhart-Harris broke down to High Times a few of the doors psychedelics can open for artists generally. “Under the influence of psychedelics, the brain shows parallels with the brain earlier on in life,” he explained. “As we age, we engage more of our prefrontal cortex. In relation to that, we become more top-down in our thinking, whereas psychedelics are reversing that. It is a bit like an age regression. Where do you go back to? Well, one of the things you go back to is play, and play is spontaneous. It’s fun and inherently creative. That’s its nature, it’s tied to joy and strong and labile emotion.”

“The main thing is that psychedelics kick you out of ruts. The immersion as well, getting out of the cognitive, out of the thinking mind, analytical judging mind and into the stream of creativity, the creative flow. There’s something quite beautiful about that.”

Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, Ralph Metzner Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry, UCSF

Labile emotion is Fine Line in a nutshell. Full of emotional highs and lows, all presented with a tangible quality that’s, admittedly, slightly missing from Styles’ new album. Notes and lyrics have a crackle to them, not so much a digital sheen. It also wasn’t much of a surprise that reading author Haruki Murakami played an influence in the mushroom trips. His dramatic and poetic trippiness is catnip for sensitive artists.

Lyrics do glow in Fine Line. Songs of daydreaming, the power of flowers and the moon. These are songs of someone looking around and feeling everything at 200. “The main thing is that psychedelics kick you out of ruts,” Carhart-Harris added. “Ordinarily, you might go into the music studio and be that same old riff, that same old, same old, and lock straight back into it. But it’s a classic one where psychedelics open up more possibilities. The immersion as well, getting out of the cognitive, out of the thinking mind, analytical judging mind and into the stream of creativity, the creative flow. There’s something quite beautiful about that.”

In other words, flow state. In the case of Fine Line, Styles had the mushrooms, the Malibu sunlight, the Paul McCartney records and, yes, the benefit of an exorbitant recording studio. Whatever did the trick, the dapper pop man found something loose, bright and unusually alive. With Fine Line, Styles hit a high in more ways than one.

<p>The post Harry Styles Says He Did A Lot of Mushrooms Making ‘Fine Line.’ A Top Psychedelic Scientist Explains Why It Tracks. first appeared on High Times.</p>

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As Bright Eyes revisits its landmark albums with a Woodstock cannabis collaboration, Conor Oberst reflects on sobriety, survival, and staying human.

For a certain kind of person, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning was not just an album. It was survival literature.

It lived in burned CD binders, scratched iPods, shitty car stereos, headphones worn during long walks after bad nights, worse relationships, panic attacks, protests, hangovers, and moments where the future felt like a collapsing building you were somehow expected to live inside. Bright Eyes did not soundtrack the 2000s indie experience so much as emotionally document it in real time.

When Bright Eyes released I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn simultaneously in 2005, Conor Oberst became the reluctant voice of a generation that felt politically betrayed, emotionally overexposed, artistically restless, and permanently suspicious of American optimism. One album leaned folk, ragged, intimate, and politically furious. The other drifted through electronics, delay, experimentation, and alienation like a transmission from a nervous breakdown happening inside a laptop.

Twenty-one years later, Oberst is revisiting both records for a series of anniversary shows culminating June 6 at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens. Bright Eyes has also partnered with Woodstock on a limited-edition cannabis collaboration themed around the albums: a sativa tied to Wide Awake and an indica inspired by Digital Ash.

On paper, that combination could sound cynical. Legacy indie band meets weed branding in late capitalism. But talking to Oberst now, the collaboration lands differently because his relationship to cannabis — and to himself — has fundamentally changed.

This is not the same Conor Oberst who once romanticized collapse in public.

And honestly, that may be the most meaningful part of the story.

Revisiting the Albums That Changed Indie Music

Oberst sounds almost stunned by the passage of time when discussing the anniversary shows.

“It’s been a trip,” he says. “You don’t really think about it until you hit these little old milestones.”

The two albums were never meant to feel interchangeable. Even while writing them, Oberst realized they were pulling toward different emotional and sonic worlds. “I had been writing the songs kind of simultaneously, and then, as I was writing them, I realized they were diverging,” he says. “They weren’t going to all make sense together.”

I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning became the more publicly mythologized record: acoustic guitars, New York imagery, heartbreak, war anxiety, and Oberst’s cracked-open writing style colliding into one of the defining indie albums of the 2000s. But Digital Ash in a Digital Urn was equally important to understanding Bright Eyes, even if it confused listeners expecting another folk confessional.

“I think a lot of people that just know Wide Awake think we were more of a folk or alternative country band,” Oberst says. “But we’ve always fucked around with keyboards and effects.” He pushes back against the idea that Digital Ash was simply an “electronic” album. “When I think of electronic, I just think of blips and bleeps and stuff like that,” he says. “To me, it definitely has more of a dark rock-and-roll thing.”

The records were also made completely differently.

“Wide Awake, we recorded in like two weeks,” Oberst says. “And we spent probably nine months making Digital Ash.”

Releasing them simultaneously was partly artistic instinct and partly youthful bravado.

“I think part of it was a little braggadocious,” he says. “‘Look what we can do’ kind of thing.”

At the time, the move felt audacious. In hindsight, it feels almost impossible now. The modern music industry barely allows artists enough oxygen to release one fully realized album without feeding it into the content machine for a year straight. But Bright Eyes emerged from a different ecosystem — one built around scenes, labels like Saddle Creek, live rooms, physical media, and communities that existed long before algorithms started flattening culture into metrics.

That world shaped Oberst just as much as the records themselves.

Finding the Freaks

Before Bright Eyes became synonymous with emotionally devastating indie music, Oberst was a kid growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, searching for people who made him feel less alone. “I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, pretty conservative, like football-insurance-town,” he says. “But I found the freaks. I found the punk rockers. I found my people that were interested in art, and that’s how I survived.”

That sentence explains more about Bright Eyes than almost any genre label ever could. The band arrived during a period when young people were still physically searching for each other through basements, coffee shops, record stores, VFW halls, college radio stations, and tiny clubs. Long before TikTok niches and algorithmic identity curation, subculture required effort. You had to go find the weirdos in real life.

That communal energy still matters deeply to Oberst.

“There’s no replacing the IRL,” he says. “No clip from a fucking phone is going to give you the same feeling of seeing a sweet band play.”

Asked what advice he gives younger artists, he does not talk about branding strategy or social growth hacks.

“Get in the practice room,” he says. “Write a bunch of awesome songs. Learn how to play them tight and then just play wherever and whenever you can.” That perspective feels increasingly radical now. So much of modern music culture revolves around optimization, visibility, and performance metrics. Bright Eyes came from a world where the goal was simply to make something emotionally true enough to matter to another person.

And for a lot of fans, these records mattered immensely. Oberst still sounds humbled by the fact that people carried these songs with them into adulthood. “The music really is a part of people’s lives,” he says. “And that’s something I don’t take lightly at all.”

Cannabis, Sobriety, and Staying Present

Cannabis has always existed somewhere in Bright Eyes lore. Oberst laughs easily about how entwined weed once was with the creative process.

“I started smoking as a teenager,” he says. “Probably a good 10 years where it was very entwined with creativity. Smoke when we played, smoke when we recorded.”

But age changes chemistry. Somewhere in his late twenties and early thirties, cannabis stopped feeling comforting and started making him paranoid. Then his life changed again. About a year and a half ago, Oberst experienced health issues that pushed him to stop drinking and step away from harder substances entirely. Cannabis re-entered his life differently this time — not as romantic chaos fuel, but as maintenance, ritual, and recalibration.

“I lean a lot more on THC drinks and eating it and sometimes smoking it,” he says. “It’s just such a better, less destructive thing for my body.” He is careful not to turn his experience into universal advice. “It’s different for everybody,” he says. “I’m not here to say, ‘Do it my way.’ But for me, for what’s worked for me…”

What works now is moderation, functionality, and presence. Oberst speaks about THC drinks almost tenderly, not because of intoxication itself, but because of what they allow socially. “It’s just nice to have a drink in your hand when everyone’s partying,” he says. “And you’re still feeling good and having fun.”

Then comes the line that quietly reframes the entire conversation around cannabis culture and recovery. “I really hope someday there’s just weed drinks in all the bars,” he says. “I think it’d be a better situation for society.”

For artists of Oberst’s generation, that shift carries real emotional weight. Indie music in the 2000s often romanticized self-destruction so aggressively that surviving long enough to become stable almost felt culturally uncool. Oberst himself became partially mythologized through emotional volatility, booze-soaked performances, and the image of a young songwriter unraveling publicly in real time.

The older Oberst sounds less interested in destruction now. More interested in surviving it.

The Sweet Spot

One of the most revealing parts of the conversation comes when Oberst describes performing sober.

“When I first started playing again and not drinking and stuff,” he says, “I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ You’re paying attention to the guy in the front row doing something weird.”

Anyone who has ever seen Bright Eyes understands the strange intimacy of those shows. Oberst built an entire career on emotional exposure. The audience relationship was never casual. Fans did not simply listen to these records. They projected themselves into them. That level of connection can become psychologically overwhelming.

“You want to be there with them because it is a communal thing,” he says. “But it’s sort of nice to have some kind of fourth wall.”

Cannabis helps him maintain that balance now — connected without becoming consumed. “It’s all about finding the sweet spot,” he says. Enough space to keep singing the songs without disappearing into them.

Old Songs, New Wars

Revisiting these albums also means confronting how little some things have changed. One song hitting differently for Oberst now is “Old Soul Song (For the New World Order),” written after moving to New York during the buildup to the Iraq War.

“It’s kind of about going to a protest in New York City,” he says. More than two decades later, he hears the song against another backdrop of violence in the Middle East. “To think that 21 years later, we’re just enduring another war of choice in the Middle East — it’s sad to me,” he says.

The line lands because Bright Eyes was never purely personal music. Oberst’s writing always blurred the boundary between emotional collapse and political disillusionment. The records mattered because they captured what it felt like to come of age during an era where both private life and public life felt unstable at the same time.

That tension still exists. So does the exhaustion. But Oberst has not entirely lost faith in progress either. Cannabis legalization represents one of the few places where he sees the culture moving forward instead of backward.

“To see cannabis things moving in what I see as a more positive, progressive way,” he says, “I guess it’s a silver lining.”

Why the Woodstock Collaboration Works

That perspective is partly why the Woodstock collaboration makes sense. Not because it feels corporate. Because it feels generational. Woodstock, for all its mythology and commercialization over the decades, still symbolizes a certain strain of counterculture idealism: music, community, altered consciousness, political unrest, and collective escape colliding together.

Bright Eyes emerged from a later generation of counterculture — post-Nirvana, post-9/11, Iraq War-era indie alienation — but the connective tissue is still there.

Oberst admits he was surprised the partnership was even possible. “It was one of those things,” he says. “Like, it’s 2026, I didn’t even know that was really an option.” The collaboration itself mirrors the emotional duality of the albums: one sativa tied to Wide Awake, one indica tied to Digital Ash.

“That’s the perfect storm,” Oberst says. “Something we can get behind.”

More importantly, he sees cannabis culture evolving beyond caricature. “It’s nice to see the decriminalization of it,” he says, “and stopping demonizing it.”

He also acknowledges the contradictions inside legalization: big money, corporate influence, and smaller legacy operators getting squeezed out. But compared to criminalization and fear, he still sees legalization as progress.

“Maybe better to regulate the things people are going to do,” he says, “and try to present them in a safer situation.”

Still Wide Awake

Near the end of the conversation, Oberst shares what still drives him creatively after all these years.

His answer is deceptively simple. “It’s love,” he says. “Love for creativity, love for my friends and collaborators, love for the fans and people that support the art.”

Then he gets closer to the real answer. “As a songwriter, I’m kind of doing my best to document the human condition as I experience it,” he says. “And that’s a lifelong pursuit.”

That pursuit is what makes these anniversary shows feel bigger than nostalgia. Nobody needs Bright Eyes to recreate 2005. The world already has enough empty retro worship. What matters is seeing what survives after the chaos burns off: the songs, the community, the people who carried them forward, and the artist himself learning how to stay alive inside his own mythology.

Conor Oberst once became famous for sounding like a person unraveling in public. Now he sounds like someone trying to remain human long enough to keep creating. Maybe that’s the real full-circle moment. Bright Eyes are still wide awake. Just a little less interested in destroying themselves to prove it.

Images courtesy of Woodstock Cannabis.

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After getting fired from multiple legal-sector jobs, Fergie Baby started secretly filming music videos inside Empire’s offices. Instead of firing him, the label signed him.

Fergie Baby’s signing story sounds less like a polished industry tale and more like the kind of Harlem legend that gets better every time somebody tells it outside the studio at 2 a.m. He was working at Empire as a studio assistant after getting fired from three legal-sector jobs, sneaking music videos into office hours when nobody was around, and betting on himself because the 9-to-5 life felt like a cage.

Then the cameras caught up with him. Instead of getting fired, Fergie Baby says the label boss found out he worked there and had a different reaction: sign him.

That is the Fergie Baby formula in miniature. Break the rule, make it undeniable, and let Harlem do the talking. Now, with music featuring A$AP Ferg and Cam’ron and a debut album called God Is From Harlem on the way, Fergie Baby is trying to turn his own story into another chapter in Harlem’s long, loud, beautifully stubborn cultural history.

Fergie Baby’s Empire Story Starts With Breaking the Rules

Before Empire, before the co-signs, and before the Harlem torch talk, Fergie Baby was trying to make a degree make sense. He went to Penn State, earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, and came home thinking the legal field might be the path.

It was not.

“I kept getting fired from everything,” Fergie Baby said. “So I told myself, nah, I got to create and move as my own boss and have my things the way I want to run.”

The pivot came through his brother and exclusive producer, Kajun Waters, who was engineering at an Empire-owned studio. Fergie Baby got hired as his assistant. The plan was simple: handle the work, then use the empty hours to record.

“We going to use this as an opportunity,” Fergie Baby said.

They did more than record. When the office cleared out, Fergie Baby started shooting music videos inside the building. The video for “Drive The Boat,” from his Harlem River Drive mixtape and featuring his artist Aala, started moving online. Empire noticed, checked the cameras, and the situation went upstairs.

By his account, HR had a choice: write him up or fire him. Instead, Fergie Baby says Nima Etminan, Empire’s co-founder and COO, heard the story and asked why the company was punishing an artist who had been hiding in plain sight.

“He was like yeah nah we not writing him up we not fi sign him right now,” Fergie Baby said. “This whole time he’s been working for us and it’s been under our radar. Sign him.”

That is not a corporate development strategy. That is chaos with a hook.

“And just from me breaking the rules and just being good at what I do and just going with my gut instinct,” Fergie Baby said, “That was my rags to riches signing story.”

Harlem Is the Sound, the Muscle, and the Mission

Fergie Baby’s music is not just from Harlem. It is trying to bottle the neighborhood’s contradictions: swagger and grief, hustler confidence and spiritual armor, old ghosts and new pressure.

He points to Dipset as one of the obvious foundations. He grew up hearing 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Nas, and the Harlem acts that taught a generation how to talk with their shoulders. But the deeper influence is place.

“Being in Harlem just hearing that 50 and Nas I had different elements in my household, so I was always musically inclined,” he said. “What shaped my music and how I am today was obviously Dipset for the culture and the inspiration and just how you move as a Harlem dude.”

Harlem, in Fergie Baby’s telling, is not only a zip code. It is a posture. It is also a history that refuses to get washed out, even as gentrification presses in from every direction.

He talks about Harlem in eras: the Harlem Renaissance, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Rich Porter, Ma$e, Dipset, A$AP Mob, Teyana Taylor, Dave East. To him, each wave reintroduces Harlem to the world without letting the older version disappear.

“I just feel like we had different time zones to recreate this Harlem Renaissance,” Fergie Baby said. “We going to keep the torch lit.”

That line could have sounded heavy-handed from somebody else. From Fergie Baby, it lands as both responsibility and flex. He is not begging to be included in the lineage. He is naming the lane he plans to run in.

Fergie Baby on Weed, Studio Rituals, and the 4/20 Stage

This is High Times, so the weed question was not optional.

Fergie Baby is clear that cannabis has always been around New York music culture, even if he does not paint himself as the biggest smoker in the room.

“Weed has always been a thing, especially in New York in general,” he said. “Years ago we used to have the Dime purple bags and the green bags and the Winter Haze and Kush.”

He sees cannabis as part of the environment around artistry, not necessarily the engine for his own pen. Some artists need it to create. He does not put himself in that category.

“Personally, I’m not a big weed smoker but I’m always around it,” he said. “It’s a part of what I do as far as being an artist.”

His studio rituals are more about setting the room than forcing the magic. Beats first. Friends in the room. Hennessy nearby. Somebody rolling up. Old records playing back so the crew can catch the feeling before they chase the next one.

“We have to set a vibe,” Fergie Baby said. “The lighting got to be right. I got to get some Hennessy on deck.”

Live performance, though, is where Fergie Baby sounds most alive. For him, making records is the hard part. Performing them is the payoff.

“When you perform, it’s like a party,” he said. “It’s like the aftermath celebrating what you already put on wax.”

He is also blunt about the skill involved. Streaming flattens everything into devices and feeds. A stage gives the artist nowhere to hide.

“A lot of people cannot perform, let alone crowd control,” he said. “And I think that’s what’s important.”

The Catalog Is the Story

Fergie Baby’s advice to younger artists is not romantic. It is practical. Stay true to yourself. Build a real team. Work hard. Stay consistent. Make good music.

“The music got to sell itself,” he said. “Not just about one song, it’s about a catalog to show your story and your truth.”

That catalog is starting to stack. He points to “Bleaches” as the first video that set things off in 2018. He calls Don’t Tell Me one of his most truthful records because it explains the whole rebellion against becoming a robot for a paycheck.

He also has bigger Harlem stones in hand. “Good Day To Be In Harlem,” featuring A$AP Ferg, flipped the spirit of Ice Cube’s “It Was A Good Day” into an East Coast celebration. Then came “Harlem Drive,” featuring Cam’ron.

“Basically my man Kajun had this beat for two years,” Fergie Baby said of “Good Day To Be In Harlem.” “I always thought it was a hit but I didn’t know what to do with it.”

The answer eventually revealed itself: make Harlem’s version of a good day. No tragedy. No funeral. No bad news. Just the city giving somebody a clean one.

“It’s a good day to be in Harlem,” he said.

His debut album, God Is From Harlem, is being made in partnership with Empire. Fergie Baby says the project is expected to include Cam’ron, A$AP Ferg, Meek Bucks, R2R Moe, Dave East, and potentially Max B, with a deluxe edition planned after that.

He is also thinking bigger than releases. A headline show at Gramercy Theatre is on his radar, along with a potential tour.

Stay True

Fergie Baby’s story works because it does not arrive polished. It has the messy truth of a real come-up: failed jobs, late-night sessions, office cameras, Harlem pride, and the stubborn belief that the thing you are not supposed to do might be the thing that saves you.

He is building from a neighborhood that has never needed permission to matter. Harlem has survived reinvention, displacement, imitation, and every industry attempt to extract the flavor without respecting the source. Fergie Baby knows that history. More importantly, he wants to add to it.

“We manifested, we planned and we stayed true to ourselves,” he said.

That may be the whole playbook. Stay true. Break the right rules. Keep the torch lit.

Photography by Kaushik Kalidindi

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Burna Boy turned down $5 million to keep smoking. He launched his own cannabis brand while his country still criminalizes the plant. His biggest song has “I need igbo and shayo” as its hook. Now he’s singing the World Cup anthem with Shakira. Here’s who he actually is.

On May 15, 2026, Burna Boy and Shakira released “Dai Dai,” the official anthem of the FIFA World Cup 2026. He’ll co-headline the halftime show at the July 19 final alongside Madonna and BTS. For the first time in World Cup history, the final gets a halftime performance. And one of the three acts headlining it built his entire identity — musically, commercially, personally — around cannabis.

That’s not incidental. It’s the point.

The $5 million he left on the table

In 2023, during a live performance, Burna Boy improvised a verse about turning down a $5 million offer to perform in Dubai. The reason: cannabis is banned there, and he wasn’t willing to go anywhere where he couldn’t smoke.

“Me I no dey like to dey go where dem no go gree allow me smoke igbo,” he sang. Igbo is the Nigerian term for cannabis. The story circulated globally because it was exactly the kind of principled move that builds real loyalty: a man choosing the plant over the payday.

“It’s just kind of hypocritical out there. They try to make it seem like if you smoke weed you’ll just go mad in Nigeria. Everybody smokes it. It’s just a topic no one wants to talk about.”

Burna Boy, Home Grown Radio, Los Angeles, 2021

Nigeria remains one of the highest cannabis-consuming countries in Africa, and one of the few where it stays fully illegal. Burna Boy named that contradiction publicly and repeatedly, at a time when few Nigerian artists of his stature were willing to.

BRKFST: his cannabis brand

On October 7, 2022, Burna Boy launched his own cannabis brand — BRKFST — in South Beach, Miami, in partnership with Jokes Up/Ice Kream. The launch coincided with Miami Carnival and included a pop-up, a branded brunch and a festival headline set. The brand came in multiple formats: flower, tea, snacks and other consumables. The slogan: #BrkfstIsSmokers.

The name is a double reference. It comes from his 2022 smash “Last Last,” in which he sings “na everybody go chop breakfast” — Nigerian slang for heartbreak — and also “I need igbo and shayo.” The brand connects the cannabis to the emotional context: smoking as a way of processing pain, of starting the day, of staying grounded. Morning weed as breakfast. The metaphor writes itself.

The launch put him in company with Wiz Khalifa, Snoop Dogg and a small list of global artists who have moved from cannabis culture into cannabis commerce. The difference is that Burna Boy did it while his home country still criminalizes the plant — a deliberate act of friction, not just a business move.

Last Last: the song that said it out loud

“Last Last” spent eight weeks at number one on the US Afrobeats charts and 74 weeks on the chart total. Its hook — “I need igbo and shayo” — is now one of the most recognized lines in contemporary Afropop. It didn’t hide the cannabis reference. It put it at the center of the most commercially successful moment of his career.

That wasn’t an accident. Cannabis and Afropop have been inseparable since Fela Kuti, and Burna Boy — whose grandfather managed Fela — carries that lineage deliberately. He grew up in Port Harcourt with those roots already in his DNA. The plant isn’t a brand element for him. It’s a cultural inheritance.

Who he is beyond weed

Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu was born in 1991 in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. He debuted in 2012 with “Like to Party,” built his catalog album by album, and by 2021 had won the Grammy for Best Global Music Album for Twice As Tall — a landmark not just for him but for African music as a whole.

The stadium run that followed is hard to overstate. He headlined the London Stadium in front of 60,000 people — the first African artist to do so. The Stade de France with 80,000. Madison Square Garden sold out. Coachella. Glastonbury. Afro Nation. His sound — afrobeat, reggae, dancehall, hip-hop and soul fused into something that doesn’t need a genre label — traveled without losing anything.

In 2025 he dropped his eighth studio album, No Sign of Weakness, walked the Met Gala in a custom suit by British-Ghanaian designer Ozwald Boateng, and signed a multi-year global ambassador deal with Swiss sportswear brand ON. The man moves between worlds without code-switching. That’s the thing.

Now: the World Cup

“Dai Dai” with Shakira drops on the same day as this article. The song is the official anthem of FIFA World Cup 2026, benefiting the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund with a goal of raising $100 million. Shakira is donating royalties. Sony Music is matching the first $250,000. Burna Boy is headlining the halftime show at the July 19 final alongside Shakira, Madonna and BTS.

For anyone who’s been following his trajectory, the World Cup isn’t a surprise. It’s the logical endpoint of a decade of building an audience that didn’t need to be explained to anyone — it just kept growing. For anyone who hasn’t been following: welcome to Burna Boy.

He turned down $5 million before he’d do a show where he couldn’t smoke. He launched a cannabis brand while his government still locks people up for it. He put “I need igbo and shayo” at the center of one of the biggest Afropop songs ever recorded. And now he’s singing the anthem of the most-watched sporting event on the planet.

None of that required him to compromise anything.

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The Tempe festival put Atmosphere, De La Soul and Yelawolf on the same weekend as Stephen Marley, Steel Pulse and Rebelution. The crowd treated the crossover like the most natural thing in the world. Because, historically, it is.

The Reggae Rise Up Arizona festival took place April 17 to 19 in Tempe, with Rebelution, Stephen Marley, Dirty Heads, SOJA, Protoje, Slightly Stoopid and Steel Pulse among the many acts slugging it out in the blistering hot Sonoran Desert.

It didn’t start off as planned, at least not for me. Flying out of Denver, we were hit with a blizzard and forced to wait on a plane from Vail, so my flight was delayed four hours. I finally landed in Phoenix around 4 p.m. and was scheduled to interview Jamaican reggae star Protoje at 5:30 p.m., but they were en route to their hotel and asked me to meet them there. I obliged and drove to the address they provided. After observing the toothless front desk woman, lack of a bathroom in the lobby and various shopping carts filled with junk outside, I had an unsettling feeling.

My first thought was, “Did they really put Protoje up in this place?” That was followed by, “Wow, you truly don’t know what life is like as a touring musician.” After a pit stop in a random Burger King bathroom (an employee had to buzz you in), I went back and waited. Nobody came.

As suspected, they had sent me to the wrong hotel. We rescheduled the interview for Zoom a few weeks later. By the time I cleared media credentials at Tempe Beach Park and pushed through the wall of weed and cigarette smoke at the gate, it was already 6:30 p.m.

Then the music started, and everything else stopped mattering.

The bill that shouldn’t have worked

Atmosphere was scheduled at the Vibe Stage, one of three hip-hop acts on a bill otherwise built on reggae royalty. I stepped into their trailer (ahhh, air conditioning) and chopped it up with Ant and Slug. I’ve known them since 2008, when I was a runner for one of their shows in Santa Fe. We’ve done many interviews since, and reconnecting with the Minneapolis duo is always a good time.

Atmosphere, who regularly sells out the historic Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado, brought the boom bap to the reggae party. Slug was somewhat surprised to learn there were other hip-hop acts on the bill. “We used to get clowned for that,” he told me.

But as Saturday’s Vibe Stage headliner Yelawolf explained, a previous tour with Friday’s main stage headliner Dirty Heads gave him the confidence that hip-hop, specifically his brand of it, can fit in anywhere.

“When I went up with the Dirty Heads, I didn’t know what to expect. I was like, ‘Man, we have a rowdy show.’ But when we did our set, it went off really well. I started to realize that, ‘Oh, we’re kind of like hip-hop rock relief.’ I understand that festival style because it reminded me of seeing Rage Against the Machine and then seeing Method Man and Redman. There’s a certain universal rock ‘n roll style that we have that I think bleeds into all genres.”

Yelawolf

Though Wolf admitted “this was new,” he said for him it was about “tipping a hat to certain vibes.”

De La Soul was another anomaly on the bill, but their D.A.I.S.Y. Age aesthetic and songs like “Potholes In My Lawn” and “Me Myself & I” kept the reggae spirit alive. Slightly Stoopid shut down Saturday night with special guest Chali 2na of Jurassic 5, whose booming baritone voice could be heard all the way on the other side of the park.

That day, I rolled up with “Bust A Move” rapper Young MC, who lives in the area. The last time I was in Arizona was for his 2024 wedding. He and Maseo of De La Soul shared a moment from the stage that I’ll never forget. Maseo paid his respect to Young MC, and Young MC returned it with not much more than a few simple gestures.

Back on Yelawolf’s trailer, I introduced Wolf, his manager Edward Crowe and DJ Klever to Young MC. Hearing them banter about songwriting and lyrics was surreal. As a kid, I would have never imagined I’d be the one facilitating a moment like that. Yelawolf later got on stage and told the crowd about it.

“I was telling him what a phenomenal songwriter he was, which is a very hard thing to do in hip-hop because it’s easy to be slick with all the metaphors and the quick wordplay, but writing a great song is very hard to do, especially in hip-hop,” he told the audience. “It demands high lyricism and I think Young MC is a genius at what he does. Thank you, Young MC, wherever you are. Thank you, brother, for the inspiration. De La Soul, thank you for your inspiration. I told Young MC one of my favorite songs coming up is probably the reason I started writing.”

From there, he went into an a cappella verse of Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day,” a reminder that music is transcendent, a thread that ties us all together, no matter what genre.

From Kool Herc forward

On Sunday, the hottest day of the weekend, people still came out in droves to see Steel Pulse, Collie Buddz, Stephen Marley and Rebelution. Reggae Rise Up Senior Marketing Manager Abby Gerald picked me up in a golf cart and whisked me to the very cold media offices, then to the artist compound to interview Rebelution singer Eric Rachmany. We talked about modern reggae, Rebelution’s place in it and why a reggae festival booking hip-hop makes sense in the first place. After all, Jamaican DJ Kool Herc first brought “toasting,” Jamaica’s form of rapping, to the Bronx in the 1970s.

“I think hip-hop has influenced reggae and reggae has influenced hip-hop, and rock has influenced reggae and reggae has influenced rock. There’s just so many crossovers and that’s so true with the Rebelution sound. It’s not a surprise to me that bands like De La Soul or Atmosphere can be associated with the Reggae Rise Up festival.”

Eric Rachmany, Rebelution

Rebelution has toured with the West Coast hip-hop collective Living Legends as well as fellow Bay Area natives Hieroglyphics and Zion I. Rachmany also has a side project with Zion I producer Amp Live called Unified Highway, a rich amalgamation of rhythms and sounds. While hip-hop factors into his music, Rachmany’s deep respect for Jamaican music is at the forefront.

“For one, I’m just a big fan of it,” he said. “I really like the music from Jamaica. I like reggae music from all over the globe, but there’s definitely something about the reggae coming from Jamaica that I’ve really admired, whether that’s roots, ska or rocksteady. I also really love dancehall. I was a big fan of the reggae revival movement that happened about 15 years ago with Chronixx, Protoje and Kabaka Pyramid. It just keeps growing.”

Though it didn’t happen at the festival, I eventually did speak to Protoje via Zoom. His latest album, The Art of Acceptance, came out the day of his Reggae Rise Up Arizona performance. He’s another reggae artist who’s been weaving together a colorful tapestry of eclectic sounds throughout his career, though he described the new album as closer to traditional reggae than previous projects. Still, his foundation is built on both hip-hop and reggae.

“I grew up on hip-hop,” he told me. “That’s where I really learned how to write songs and vibe on that level. If you listen to my music, naturally, you can hear the influence of hip-hop as well. And then you have to remember the history of Jamaican culture and hip-hop culture is very intertwined, from Kool Herc to so many Jamaican influences. It’s a good bridge. I remember in the ’90s, there were always dancehall crossovers in hip-hop like Buju Banton. It’s an easy vibe. It’s just music coming from the same place. Obviously, the messages are different in reggae music, but there’s always a place for collaboration there.”

When the sun set on Stephen Marley

Stephen Marley took the stage as the sun went down on Sunday. Old concert footage of his father, Bob Marley, played on the screens behind him as he covered “Jamming,” “Three Little Birds,” and other Bob Marley staples. The crowd, baked from a long, hot day in the desert, found a second wind. Voices rose. Hands went up. People who had been sitting on blankets stood and stayed standing. By the time the band rolled into “Three Little Birds,” it was more sing-along than concert. Stephen Marley didn’t try to compete with his father’s image. He let the legacy do the work, and the crowd let him.

The Wailers frontman, who has inspired countless reggae acts to follow in his wake, routinely sang about racism and other social injustices while focusing on themes of peace, love, unity and Rastafarian spirituality. The messaging was just as important as the music, and it’s just as important now.

“When I look at the world today, it’s an absolute shit show,” Rachmany said. “It’s really important to bring some positivity. It makes me really happy to be around this festival, for instance, because I think most of the people here are talking about really positive things that you don’t see too often.”

<p>The post Atmosphere, De La Soul And Stephen Marley Walked Into A Reggae Festival. The Genre Lines Didn’t Survive. first appeared on High Times.</p>

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