Brian Campbell, co-founder and CCO of tökr. Former creative director of Beats Music and associate ... [+]
Brian Campbell spent years at the intersection of tech and music. First with Topspin Media, then as the creative director for Beats Music, before leveling all the way up to associate creative director for Apple Music. 3 years at Apple allowed for a dual-perspective: how people consume music and how artists create it. Armed with that knowledge, what do you think Campbell did next? Start a management company? A production house? Consult?
Maybe you guessed “Co-founded a modern tech solution to the cannabis space that’s redefining how people shop within the industry.” If that was your guess—good job, because his company, tökr, is a modern tech solution to the cannabis space that’s redefining how people shop within the industry.
But why make that jump?
Because it turns out the cannabis industry and the music industry have a lot in common, especially hip hop.
“We talk about music,” Campbell said, “and we have to talk about the evolution that cannabis went through from hippie culture through reggae culture to hip hop culture. They all laid the groundwork by creating this lifestyle brand around cannabis.
“I was not a young cannabis user. It wasn’t until I moved out to L.A. and got involved in the music scene that I started to see there’s this whole other community.”
What Brian—and his co-founders, Matthew Singer (CEO) and David Mukpo (COO)—discovered isn’t a secret. Look back through the last half-century of music, and cannabis has been prominent.
A brief look
You may remember Woodstock, the iconic 1969 festival that’s one of the defining public events of 20th century America. It wasn’t just the live performances by the Grateful Dead, Arlo Guthrie, Joni Mitchell, The Who, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix that made Woodstock so famous. The marijuana use is the stuff of legend. To the point that Woodstock’s original co-creator, Michael Lang, won a court battle that would allow Woodstock Ventures to have licensing deals for cannabis products.
A 2017 article on the cannabis news site The Fresh Toast included the line: “Woodstock branded weed is no a brainer—it is hard to imagine a brand with a more canna-friendly image...”
Then there’s Bob Marley. While the peak of his career lasted from 1973 until his death in 1981, Marley has maintained prominence in the U.S. as not only the enduring face of reggae music, but for his association with progressive activism and cannabis as a spiritual practice rooted in his Rastafarian beliefs. He served as an important conduit for the influence of Jamaican culture in the American music scene. Especially at a time when hip hop was finding its footing in the Bronx thanks to another Jamaican influencer: Clive Campbell, aka Kool Herc.
An article by Anthony Pappalardo, for Highsnobiety, details “How Weed Culture Evolved Through Hip-Hop”:
Marijuana usage was almost retro, and even though people still did it regularly, it wasn’t trendy, and wearing a pot leaf T-shirt was the easiest way to brand yourself a “stoner loser.” In the suburbs during the ‘80s, weed culture was again associated with a dying breed of hippies and denim clad heavy metal kids. The minor exception would be the crossover of reggae culture, primarily linked to the popularity of Bob Marley, but that pollination failed to fully integrate Caribbean culture into the mainstream. In hip-hop circles, reggae and its steady rhythms were foundational, and it was perhaps the most outspoken champion of marijuana in widely accessible non-rock music.
Despite the modern association between hip hop and drugs, during the 80s, there were many prominent rappers with songs against drugs. N.W.A., who was infamous at the time for their hate-it-or-love-it breakout, “Fuck the Police,” had the track “Express Yourself,” with the lines: Even if Yella makes it a cappella/I still express, yo, I don’t smoke weed or sess/Cause it’s known to give a brother brain damage/And brain damage on the mic don’t manage nothing/But making a sucker and you equal, don’t be another sequel.
As Pappalardo explains it was in 1991 when the tide turned for cannabis in hip hop. “Cypress Hill’s self-titled debut may not have sold as many copies as Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, which followed a year-plus later, but its unabashed references to smoking and crime cast against a pastiche of rock, funk, soul, Latin rhythms, and reggae samples brought the term ‘blunted’ to the masses.”
Brian Campbell said the same thing. “There were risk-takers willing to experiment with the properties to move their mind further to help evolve their art, help expand their minds. The Beatles and the hippie generation up through Cypress Hill and their debut album that had the skull and weed leaf. And then in 1992, The Chronic changed everything. Weed was always part of the culture. It was just underground. And then commercial rap made it cool again.”
The mainstream success of The Chronic introduced the world to Snoop Dogg, the man who would become synonymous with marijuana in a time when it was illegal in all 50 states. It seemed like everyone from kids in Texas to midwestern grandma’s knew one thing about Snoop Dogg: he loved weed.
“Drugs In Hip-Hop: A 30-Year Analysis” was an article published by Genius in 2016. Its author, Ben Carter, stated that, “By the mid-1990s, the percentage of rap songs with drug references increased from just four tracks in the early 1980s to 45 percent of all hip-hop tracks.” Cannabis was the most popular drug being referenced. For a brief period, about 1999-2007, cocaine had the lead. But in the decade since? Marijuana references reign supreme in rap.
Campbell: “The nineties hip hop terminology was essentially the foundation for the original strain names. Dank. Dro. And O.G.. Cannabis became synonymous with hip hop culture. That became the forefront of the emerging lifestyle brand for cannabis.”
Changing tides
In the same period hip hop has ascended to America’s most prominent and dominant musical genre, public opinion on the illegality of cannabis has relaxed. To the point where it’s “fully legal” in Washington D.C. and 11 states. Is that coincidence? Or influence?
Campbell: “When I look at Snoop, he has done such an incredible job normalizing cannabis. Look at his career, the longevity. He’s a family man. He has a TV show with Martha Stewart. I mean: get outta here! That’s the sort of crossover that starts making people like my mom go, “Oh?” She’s based in Tennessee and never smoked a thing in her life. Now I send her CBD topicals all the time to get her off of taking Advil at night for pain relief—stuff like that. So much of it is that you start to find somebody that is approachable that you can compare yourself to. Snoop has been a great crossover but not just being a hip hop guy, but being an amazing person.”
The idea of “not just being a hip hop guy” is maybe the defining zeitgeist of 21st century hip hop. From Jay-Z to Kanye to Cardi B: which hip hop artists are just hip hop artists? At this point, it’s almost like a successful hip hop album is a rite of passage into larger entrepreneurial ambitions.
Since 2011, streaming has been the great equalizer of the industry. It’s allowed for the democratization of music, as it’s no longer the tastes of an A&R or executive that determine what gets heard. A 16-year old can upload songs to Soundcloud and gain world-wide attention.
It was that very year Brian Campbell entered the music scene with Topspin, watching the chaos unfold in real time as the industry scrambled to figure out how people listened to music in this brave new world.
Hip hop, despite its popularity, had still been restrained by the limits of how many rap songs popular radio stations and shows would play in a row. Singers, rockers, and the next boy band or girl group continued to receive the bulk of the air time.
Streaming has unleashed hip hop’s full potential.
Poetically, one year after Spotify’s 2011 arrival in the United States, Colorado and Washington took a daring step by legalizing the recreational use of cannabis. So as hip hop underwent its streaming revolution, cannabis embarked on a similar journey of availability and discovery.
Entwined fate
Campbell: “At Topspin and Beats Music, we were working on how can we enhance the user’s journey of music discovery while still paying homage to the musicians and supporting their vision. Let’s say you’re interested in rap, but you don’t have access to all the knowledge of who else you would like other than Jay-Z. How do you get from Jay-Z to J Cole before J Cole was big? So much of that was technology and recommendation. Making things that were less accessible, more accessible.
“It all comes down to this new wave technology, where you have accessibility to everything at your fingertips. That’s why I took the jump from Apple music over to tökr. I saw this need for creating this personalization that we used in the music industry. You have this huge influx of new brands and new products on the market. You don’t know where to start. So much of what technology offers us is an ability to understand what our consumers interests are and then to create this personalized recommendation system.
“You could browse through Apple Music all day long and you might stumble onto some good things. But at a certain point you need a voice that you trust and somebody who is curating it and it really is becoming this lifestyle brand. You look at what hip hop artists are doing in creating their brands. They’re using their platform and their voice to transfer trust. ‘You like that album by Snoop, so you’re gonna trust Leafs by Snoop and the ethos that creates. You’re a fan of Cypress Hill? Check out B-Real’s Dr. Greenthumb’s Dispensary. Trees by Game.”
Brian Campbell’s story of co-founding tökr captures the seemingly entwined fates of cannabis and hip hop in American society. And the joint-inspiration the two share. As artists continue to find mental, physical, and financial benefits from cannabis, the cannabis industry is following in the footsteps of hip hops maturation in the digital age.
While the present for both industries is chaotic in the best of ways, there’s one thing certain about their future: the ceiling can go much higher.
Campbell: “I was doing brand development on all the Beats One radio shows. Working with Zane Lowe, Run the Jewels, and every single one was incredibly unique. We had launched something like 40 different shows and the whole goal was to take people through a guided experience. That’s what we’re doing with tökr. I look at myself as a technology professional. I can’t be the voice for women in cannabis. But there is an entire group of empowered women that are creating brands, creating products, have been involved in health and wellness lifestyle cannabis and women. To provide them a platform to use their knowledge to connect to a user base in an authentic way is an absolute no brainer for us. ”
“There’s going to be a big progression in the cannabis industry in terms of music. Music is at the top of the food chain. It’s the lifestyle brand. You’re going to see more and more of these musicians tap into their specific target demographic, creating their own products and brands. Our goal for tökr is to promote those products and brands to the core demographic of people that are really looking for it. One of the most beautiful things about this space is, really, the collaboration you see.”
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For more on tökr, visit their website.
More on the business of music and cannabis: here
More on hip hop and cannabis: here
