Jay-Z’s Moves to Become King of Cannabis Snared in Trump Pardon Controversy

Hip-hop mogul Jay-Z is continuing to expand his footprint into the $20 billion legal cannabis market.

With his creation of a venture capitalist fund specifically designed to invest in minority-owned cannabis start-ups—a venture born out of the merger that created his recently launched cannabis brand, Monogram—Jay-Z is slowly building a cannabis portfolio that makes him well positioned to reap the benefits of a growing legal U.S. cannabis market, which expected to reach $41 billion by 2025, according to analytics company, New Frontier Data.

Jay-Z, hip-hop’s first billionaire, made his fortune through music (Roc-A-Fella Records), fashion (Rocawear), spirits (D’Ussé, Armand de Brignac ), sports (Brooklyn Nets), startups, real estate, and art.

Now the 50-year old mogul hopes to bring his Midas touch to the growing legal cannabis industry. As with his other business ventures, which broke new ground for Black artists across several industries, Jay-Z’s cannabis initiatives also have a social component as well.

For example, his new fund aims to promote economic equality in the cannabis industry. That’s especially important to Jay-Z as minorities have been arrested and incarcerated for drugs a higher rate than whites.

“It’s really unbelievable how that can happen,” Jay-Z told The Wall Street Journal. “We were the ones most negatively affected by the war on drugs, and America has turned around and created a business from it that’s worth billions.”

Despite this imbalance, Blacks remain virtually shut out the legal marijuana industry. According to The Journal, in Massachusetts, for example, fewer than 6% of the almost 7,000 agents registered to sell or grow cannabis in the state are Black. And in the Denver, Black ownership of cannabis businesses is under 6%, while in Washington State the share is roughly 3%, according to state statistics.

Jay-Z, who has famously rapped about his past life selling drugs on the streets of Brooklyn, NY, first began his foray into the legal marijuana industry in 2019 when he joined Caliva as its Chief Brand Strategist.

Jay-Z would later go on to partner with Caliva on his own cannabis brand Monogram last October.

Shortly after Monogram was created, the company, along with Caliva, was bought by Vancouver-based Subversive Capital Acquisition Corp., which formed a new entity called “The Parent Co.,” which went public on a Canadian stock exchange last summer.

The fund, The Journal reported, will be run by Jay-Z and Desiree Perez, the CEO of Roc Nation, who recently received a pardon from Donald Trump on the last day of his presidency. The fund, according to The Journal, will invest as much as $1 million in each selected cannabis start up.

The goal of newly formed entity is to be the first 100-year company in cannabis, Michael Auerbach, the founder and chairman of Subversive Capital Acquisition Corp., told Forbes.

Pardon Controversy

Jay-Z’s emergence in the cannabis industry has sparked new criticism of the mogul, who has for years faced questions about whether his business ambitions eclipse his social justice initiatives.

Recently, several personalities with large media platforms have begun to attribute Jay-Z’s lack of public support for Joe Biden’s Presidential Campaign. As reported in Variety, a number of Roc Nation artists were absent from major campaigns messages in the 2020 Presidential Election and the Georgia runoffs.

To be sure, Jay-Z’s wife, Beyonce, endorsed the Biden-Harris ticket in an Instagram post two days before the election.

The article also questions if that’s the result of Jay-Z not trying to ruffle feathers within the Trump Administration, who were weighing a pardon for Perez, who was arrested in 1994 for conspiracy with intent to distribute narcotics. She ended up cooperating, receiving a sentence of five years probation. She was later charged with parole violation and served nine months in prison in 1999.

In California, a convicted felon could not run a cannabis business. And with Perez being Jay-Z’s Roc Nation right-hand woman, her standing conviction could impact the ability of the Jay-Z and Monogram to navigate the industry, sources told Variety.

New York deejay Funkmaster Flex, a long time Jay-Z rival, pounced on news of Perez’s pardon, taking to social media and the airwaves at Hot 97 to call out the mogul and his lack of a political voice.

“You stood down, didn’t draw attention to the nasty s*** Trump was doing,” Flex told his listeners. “Usually in a situation like that, there’s money involved. You speak to somebody. You promise something for a pardon. It was everywhere that Trump was selling those pardons.”

“…Jay-Z shouldn’t be aligning himself with people like that,” Flex continued. “Do not tell us you’re for the people. On this subject right here, you do not fool me sir.”

Perez has taken the high road in response to the pardon in interviews and statements, choosing to focus on the personal significance of the pardon.

“I’m grateful to have received a pardon and to have formally closed that chapter of my life in the eyes of the law,” Perez, now 52, said in a statement released to media. “I have taken full accountability for my mistakes from 25 years ago, but I also take tremendous pride in my personal growth, perseverance and accomplishments since then. This pardon reinforces my lifelong commitment to advocate for criminal justice reform and social justice initiatives.”