TheCorporateCounsel.net

When I’m reduced to blogging about things like pending NY LLC transparency legislation, you know we’ve reached the end of a slow news week here at TheCorporateCounsel.net.  Since that’s the case, I thought it might be fun to might close things out today by checking in with America’s most entrepreneurial hip-hop artists, The Wu-Tang Clan, to see whether they’re up to anything interesting on the business front.

That’s a dumb question to ask when it comes to The Wu-Tang Clan, because they’ve always got some interesting business deals going on.  In recent years, the group’s entrepreneurial ventures have focused on digital assets, and I’ve blogged about things like Method Man’s NFT venture & Ghostface Killah’s ill-fated ICO deal. Now, however, it looks like the burgeoning legal cannabis market has caught the eye of at least a couple of Wu-Tang members.

According to this article, the Newark, NJ City Council has signed-off on Raekwon’s application to open a branch of his “Hashstoria” cannabis dispensary in the city, and Raekwon promises big things to potential customers:

When it’s complete, Hashstoria’s newest location in Newark will have “the finest greenery on the planet.” That’s the pledge from Raekwon, the Wu-Tang Clan rapper who is bringing a cannabis dispensary and smoking lounge to New Jersey’s largest city.

Raekwon previously posted a message on Instagram about the planning board’s approval of Hashstoria in Newark, saying that it will be a “culture-shifting endeavor” and it is “guaranteed to be the top tier consumption lounge / dispensary to hit the east coast period.”

Not to be outdone by his colleague, Method Man recently announced that his own cannabis-related venture would be expanding into New York State:

TICAL Official, the cannabis brand spearheaded by Wu-Tang Clan’s Method Man, has officially graced New York State’s adult-use cannabis shelves. Collaborating with Central Processors NY and Adirondack Hemp Company, the brand’s entrance into the market has been both highly anticipated and symbolically significant. Rapper, actor and entrepreneur, Method now hopes to bring a different kind of soothing relief with his TICAL Official cannabis brand to his home turf. The initial offering features Central Processors’s prerolls and edibles, with indications that the product line is set to expand over the subsequent months.

The potential upside of a vertical merger involving Method Man’s chronic brand and Raekwan’s smoke shops seem obvious enough to me that I expect that it won’t be too long before we add a conflict with FTC Chair Lina Khan & her antitrust enforcement team to the “Beefs” section of our “Wu-Tang Clan” Practice Area.

– John Jenkins