The JOURNEY IS EVERYTHING TOUR is the new moniker for RUSS’s world tour, which will be supported by collaborator KTYLN.
Russ has just released an extended version of his smash tune “Handsomer,” following the success of his recent “Handsomer” remix release. Two new verses will be included in the expanded version of “Handsomer.” Russ brags about his money and success in “Handsomer,” but is wary of ladies who are solely interested in his fortune. Russ announced his TikTok “Open Verse Challenge” last month, inviting musicians to submit a verse for his February track “Remember.” The “Open Verse Challenge’s” second single, “Handsomer,” saw San Diego native KTLYN win the competition. Russ was so taken with the verse that he requested KTLYN to join him on an official remix, and then went on to praise the freedom of being an independent artist by dropping the remix with KTLYN. The single debuted at #1 on the weekly Digital Song Sales Chart with an increase of 636 percent in sales, sat #1 on Billboard’s Week of March 19th hits, and is currently at #40 on the Billboard Hot 100, climbing 20 ranks in just a week. KTLYN is also the second artist to sign to DIEMON Records, which he founded.
BIA is set to join Russ on the show, fresh off her new hit “London,” and Bugus will also be a part. You can see the full run fo dates below and tap into the more about DIEMON Records here.
Russ and Bugus have teamed up for the new record label DIEMON. The two independent acts started DIEMON as a collective in Atlanta in 2010. Now that Russ is no longer signed to Columbia Records, he partnered with Bugus for the label, in which the name is an acronym for “Do It Everyday Music or Nothing,” Variety reports. Most recently, Russ released his Chomp 2 album as an independent artist.
“Everyone owns their masters; everyone owns their publishing. We don’t eat on your merch or your tours, and everything’s a profit split deal,” Russ said. “We’re not looking to invest in an artist just to change their music. If we like an artist enough to sign them, it’s because we like what they’re doing. It’s just a super artist-friendly situation, where we’re here to provide resources and mentorship to artists that we believe in.”
“We don’t want to have to chase you around and beg you to come to the studio. We want the kind of artist that we need to pull out of the studio and be like, ‘All right bro, you’ve done five songs tonight, take a break,’” Bugus added. “There’s a lot of rappers who have a label but it’s all rap, or R&B artists have a label and it’s all R&B. We want to be more like the big labels in that sense, where they have Garth Brooks and Lil Wayne and Wizkid from Africa.”
The first signee to DIEMON is LaRussell, a hip-hop star form Vallejo, California. “If you look at what he’s doing with his music, he’s putting out a bunch of content all the time — dropping albums here, dropping songs there. With him I was like, ‘Man, do whatever you wanna do. Whenever you need me, hit me,’” Russ says of LaRussell.
The label is expected to operate with laid-back deadlines and financial transparency. Signed artists will be able to sign into their distribution platform to track their earnins in real time. With the start of his new label, the two hope to spark change across the music industry.
“I hope that artists recognize that they’re the nucleus. They have more power than they realize and there’s alternative ways to win, you don’t have to go the major label way. You don’t have to give up your masters and do all of these really exploitative things,” Russ said.
Russ has often bragged about his ability to find success in the music industry without having to sign a horrible contract with a label. This was a result of his DIY mentality that saw him release 11 albums and 87 songs between December 2011 to August 2014. It eventually led to him signing with Columbia Records in 2016, and the following year, he released his debut album There’s Really A Wolf. Since then, Russ has released three additional full-length projects: 2018’s Zoo, 2020’s Shake The Snow Globe, and last year’s Chomp 2. Now, for his latest endeavor, Russ is aiming to assist aspiring artists.
With help from his best friend and rapper Bugus, Russ has launched his own label called Diemon. The imprint is named after the collective that both Russ and Bugus have been a part of for the last decade. “Everyone owns their masters; everyone owns their publishing,” Russ said to Variety about the label, which he calls “artist-friendly.” “We don’t eat on your merch or your tours, and everything’s a profit split deal. We’re not looking to invest in an artist just to change their music. If we like an artist enough to sign them, it’s because we like what they’re doing.” He added, “It’s just a super artist-friendly situation, where we’re here to provide resources and mentorship to artists that we believe in.”
Russ wants potential artists on the label to understand the inner workings of the music industry as well as that they’re “no suits with no rhythm.” In addition to launching the label, Russ also revealed that its first artist is a California native named LaRussell who he discovered on TikTok.
You can probably call Russ a lot of things — stubborn, outspoken, maybe even a little obnoxious — but you absolutely cannot call him wrong about most things, especially his philosophy about the benefits of remaining independent and retaining ownership. He once again touts both — and sends some jabs at his detractors — in his new video for “What Are Y’all,” which he boasted he shot the same day he finished the song in a marathon recording and editing session that he says proves his overall point.
“Made this song at 3 am Thursday,” he said in a note on the video. “Sent it off to Spotify and Apple at 4 pm. Shot the video at 9 pm and just finished editing it. Dreams only work if you do and freedom is priceless.”
Naturally, the video isn’t terribly complex, just featuring Russ posted up in his studio performing the song to the camera while the lyrics display at the bottom of the screen. But the impact is in the substance, not the style, as he challenges his critics using his own accomplishments. “It’s essential I shut up, it’s what ya’ll think right?” he quips. “But standing down never rеally sit right.”
Russ doesn’t often invite other artists to participate in his weekly single releases, but judging from his latest he really should. This week’s release is a remix of last week’s release, “Remember,” adding 22-year-old New York alt-R&B singer Hailey Knox for a crisp second verse that plays off the wistful themes of the original. According to Russ’ Twitter, the “Gucci Prada Balenciaga” singer responded to his open verse challenge and he liked her verse so much, he added it to the song, touting the freedom to do so as another of the benefits of remaining independent.
I heard @haileyknoxmusic duet to my open verse challenge yesterday
Knox, who got her start singing acoustic covers of pop hits on social media, grabbed fans’ attention at the end of 2021 with the release of “Gucci Prada Balenciaga,” which flaunted her expensive tastes and became something of a playlist favorite among young fans who scour the internet for up-and-coming talent. A placement on Lyrical Lemonade boosted her profile and with Russ lending her his support, it’s probably only a matter of time until her growing buzz leads to more concrete successes.
New York artist Hailey Knox is here to turn heads with a new single, “Gucci Prada Balenciaga”:https://t.co/Ag9ch8qfRV
While Russ doesn’t often collaborate on his weekly singles, he loves to bounce off other rappers — especially on his recently released album Chomp 2, which expanded the scope of the original EP with appearances by everyone from Big KRIT to Snoop Dogg to Westside Gunn. He also teased a possible duets album with Kehlani, which would be another great outcome for his 2022.
Listen to the “Remember (Remix)” featuring Hailey Knox above.
Russ is only a month removed from the release of his new album, Chomp 2, and he’s already back to releasing new singles weekly. However you feel about the guy’s personality, you absolutely cannot knock his hustle. His first new single of 2022, “Remember,” sees him getting back to the lilting lo-fi R&B that defines the other half of his catalog — after all, Chomp 2 is chock-full of brazen bars and punishing punchlines –, crooning to a former paramour with a few reminders of his commitment to their relationship and mourning its end.
In addition to his weekly single releases over the last year, Russ’ many, many hustles also included a strand of weed — fittingly named Chomp as well — he developed in conjunction with the LA cannabis brand Wonderbrett. By diversifying his portfolio, so to speak, he was able to have a lucrative year even though profits were mostly shaky across the industry as live entertainment returned with plenty of restrictions.
Of course, the key to his financial stability, as he’s so fond of pointing out, is passive income — much of which comes from the fact that he self-publishes most of his music and the major deal he did have licensed ownership of his masters rather than outright selling it. Russ continues to explain his business perspective in interviews, but it all starts with the music — and judging from how he’s kicking off the year, there will be plenty of it coming to help line his pockets.
The cannabis industry loves a good origin story. A story like Wonderbrett’s. The brand is named for Brett Feldman, a grower whose flavorful indoor-grown weed inspired a phrase heard around Los Angeles weed circles during the late ’90s and early 2000s — “You got that Brett?”
Equally important to the brand’s foundation is Feldman’s collaborator, Cameron Damwijk, also a master cultivator. The duo formally launched Wonderbrett in 2014, back during the Prop 215 (medical-only) days in California. Before that, Feldman and Damwijk were legends in Los Angeles music, street, and weed culture.
The quick story goes a little something like this: Back in 1997, Feldman was given a cut of OG Kush by Josh D, who along with another storied grower, Bubba, first brought the now-iconic strain to California from Florida in 1992. This may seem quaint now, but back then, this was before OG Kush was a thing outside of very select circles. Feldman went back and forth from the Bay Area, re-upping his supply of the newly in-demand strain for the Los Angeles market. Eventually, it became clear that this wasn’t the most efficient way of getting poundage in the hands of buyers, so Josh D bestowed upon Feldman a clone and basically said “have at it.”
The Brand:
Wonderbrett
Recognizing he had something special, Feldman took time to learn how to properly grow the strain in order to “not fuck it up,” he said while we toured his now 80,000-square-foot indoor grow facility in Long Beach. “When Kush was given to me, I had to figure out how to grow weed immediately,” he says. “I couldn’t kill the plants!”
And learn to grow he did. Due to the surging demand of OG Kush in Los Angeles during the late ’90s, Feldman soon found himself in the company of hip-hop’s biggest stars: Xzibit, Snoop, B-Real, and Dr. Dre among them. He was even invited to come chill in the studio during recording for Dr. Dre’s album, 2001. B-Real confirmed to me in a separate interview that it was Feldman who introduced him to Kush way back when.
Today, that legacy has turned into Wonderbrett, a full-fledged cannabis and lifestyle brand that maintains roots in the music community — Poo Bear, who is a recording artist and producer for Justin Bieber, Lupe Fiasco, Skrillex, and many others, is one of the brand’s major investors. In fact, Feldman, who is also a visual artist and the man behind the weed’s packaging design, recently released a new album of his own, “Wonderbrett: Volume 2,” which is a vibey, ethereal mix of beats perfect for — what else — smoking weed.
Wonderbrett’s Long Beach indoor cultivation site is massive. The brand grows with a 22,000-square-feet canopy footprint across 36 individual grow rooms. Altogether, it’s about 30,000 plants. Even at his highest capacity back in the pre-legal days, Feldman says he could never have imagined producing at such scale, and that while scaling has gone well for them, it remains the number one challenge.
“On a small grow, it’s easy to have control,” he says. “You’re always going to be able to be the guy who is there all the time, who sleeps at the grow, right? This is different.”
Nowadays, they have 14 proprietary cultivars in rotation, which are selected according to a number of characteristics that make Wonderbrett weed what it is. The brand’s slogan is “flavors on flavors,” and all it takes is one whiff of a jar to see why — to paraphrase Darth Vader, the terps “are strong with this one.” The focus on this aspect of weed makes a strong point often lost in today’s shopping landscape: THC percentage is merely one part of the equation, and not necessarily the most important one.
Wonderbrett/Uproxx
“If you buy weed on THC alone, you’re a dummy,” Feldman says.
It’s also about the terpenes and flavonoids, which is why it’s been so damaging to consumers to not be able to smell the weed they’re considering purchasing. Smelling it tells a massive part of the story. That’s not to say Wonderbrett’s weed isn’t strong — I am puffing on a 34.06% THC sample of the brand’s Pineapple OG as I type — but it’s true that THC potency is skewed as being the dominant marker of quality.
Walking into a Wonderbrett grow room with towering fat buds mere days away from completion makes an even finer point. I was smacked with smell every time I opened a door, whether that be an actual Peach smell in the Peach OZ room or the straight gas emanating from Black Orchid. The vividness matches the brand’s marketing strategy, which is to match dominant terpenes and flavonoids with the strain name as much as it makes sense — making an actionable connection in the customer’s mind. If someone is buying a strain with the word “peach” in the name, might it be a good idea to then pheno hunt for a variety that displays those very characteristics? Feldman says, “Yes. I’m glad you noticed that.” He offers an intentionally cartoonish laugh. “It means my strategy is working.”
The Weed
Wonderbrett/Uproxx
Feldman told me early in my tour — and I can confirm, after seeing it firsthand — that at Wonderbrett they dry trim only, which preserves trichomes, most importantly. Those are the little crystals that contain the fun cannabinoids, like THC, that make us high. He dries and cures for two weeks only. In general, from the day the weed is harvested, then tested, then dried and cured and finally packaged, Wonderbrett’s turnaround is about one month from harvest to package.
Wonderbrett’s jarred eighths aren’t cheap — they average for about $60 — and because they are constantly churning out new buds from their stratified and well-timed grow rooms, their customers are getting as fresh bud as one can possibly get on the legal market. The smell that lingers in the jars confirms this, though the bud is sometimes a bit dry. That’s more of the fault of legalization than any one individual grower.
I walked away from Wonderbrett’s facility with my head swimming in flavor, which is their intent. But does the bud stack up? I tried six: Black Orchid, Pineapple OG, Cherry Trop, Grapes of Wrath, and Chomp, which is the brand’s collaboration with rapper Russ.
Easily considered a signature cultivar of the brand, Feldman told me Pineapple OG’s roots go back to 2008, though 2014 is the first time anyone could buy it legally. These are the buds Wonderbrett led with once they could sell in the medical market. He also said it’s been one of the most consistent producers of high THC — the batch I tried, which clocked in at 34%, was no exception.
It’s gassy, redolent of its OG roots, and boasts flavors of sweet and sour fruits, like pineapples, guavas, and passionfruit. It’s easy to see why people love it, and it’s would be a solid go-to in any experienced smoker’s repertoire. Feldman also mentioned it’s a “hardy” cultivar, ideal for breeding, which he has done for other Wonderbrett strains, like Orange Banana.
Another favorite of mine is Black Orchid, which is a much more functional smoke than Wonderbrett’s other options, owing to its more balanced cannabinoid profile and dense flowers. THC is registered at 22%, which is a “Goldilocks” percentage for me — not too much, not too little, but just right. There are higher percentages of CBG and CBGA, as well, which is said to aid in relaxation. Limonene, Caryophyllene, Linalool, and Humulene are the dominant terpenes, which means this cultivar has a little bit of everything I like: citrus, earth, flowers, and a hint of gas, which one would expect from an OG Kush and Gelato cross.
The buzz that results from a Peach OZ smoke is definitely suited for daytime, but 30% THC suggests a daytime activity like taking a leisurely stroll in a beautiful location or sitting on the beach rather than anything that requires serious motor skill function. The smell and flavor match up on this one: peach, sweet citrus and a hint of vanilla round out this cultivar, which was made by Peach Rings and OZ Kush, a pheno gifted from Cannabis by Corey, which originally came from Dying Breed Seeds.
We already reviewed Chomp, which is a collaboration with the rapper Russ timed to release alongside his EP by the same name. It’s a heady strain, much more suited for cerebral activities – like, say, recording a rap album — which I attribute to Limonene as the dominant terpene.
Put simply, this is pool weed, a hybrid of Jet Fuel Gelato and Grape Pie. The high is heavy, befitting 27.65% THC, but uplifting, owing to the strong Limonene and Linalool content. It’s euphoric, something that would be greatly aided by listening to music, especially. This sounds weird, but it tastes like grape cake.
I’m not exactly sure what that means in reality, but a strong grape flavor accompanied by a yeasty, bready undertone makes sense to me here. The genetics are from Compound Genetics, purveyors of some of the hypest fire California’s breeders have to offer.
One of the grow rooms that displayed some of the most beautiful bud, in my opinion, was Cherry Trop, which popped with deep purples and even reds, depending on the light. It’s a hybrid mix of Cherry Cookies and Trop Cookies, which came from a seed pack by Relentless. The overall flavor is fruit: stone fruits and citrus, redolent of a sunny day spent eating sour candies. At 26% THC, it’s strong, but it won’t knock you on your ass. This is a stimulating daytime smoker for any activity that requires movement and focus but not too much intellectual brainpower.
Wonderbrett’s music connection is still strong
Wonderbrett
In addition to trying some of Wonderbretts current cultivar offerings and palling around with Feldman, I also got to talk to Poo Bear, who puts his money where his mouth is, as far as Wonderbrett is concerned. He said he was initially drawn to the brand through its highly stylized packaging — the brand’s signature color-blocked boxes – which struck Poo Bear as “very professional” in an era when weed was anything but. In the end, it’s really all about the weed and the man behind it, though.
“Brett always had the best product, you know, so when the opportunity came about to come in as an investor, I was like, ‘I would love to.’ I was investing in Wonderbrett because I just believe in him so much,” Poo Bear says of Feldman.
Poo Bear is also a major believer in Los Angeles weed culture, which he says isn’t just having a moment now – it’s always been quietly dominant. It’s just that people are finally starting to understand and recognize its greatness.
“I think LA took over awhile ago,” Poo Bear says of California’s mostly friendly competition between regional cannabis cultures. “You know, the Bay always had their purps, the things they were famous for. But L.A. has always been pushing it with these different flavors. It was probably like five or six years ago, scientists and growers just really started pushing the envelope in L.A. and I started to hear less and less about the Bay and L.A. just started filling that gap with consistency and variety. You see it with all the cannabis cups — L.A. wins all the cups. It’s definitely the cannabis capital.”
It goes without saying that Poo Bear thinks Wonderbrett was instrumental in making that happen and that the brand will be a staple of L.A. cannabis culture to come. After seeing their operation firsthand and smoking through the line, I’m ready to say I agree.
Russ, who is currently doing promotion for his newly released mixtape Chomp 2, stopped by The Breakfast Club and explained how he financed the new project by taking out a bank loan rather than signing with a label. Using Wale’s 2019 single “On Chill” as an example, he explained how he would go about opening a line of credit to support the track. “Let’s say it’s $250,000… Guess what you can go do. Go get a line of credit… I don’t wanna play with my own money. Even though an advance, they give you a million dollars and spend money at radio, that still ends up being your money. If I get a line of credit from the bank… it’s about time value of money.”
Russ speaks on how he funded his #CHOMP2 project & radio singles with a line of credit from bank. He says it’s much better than getting a “loan” from a major label pic.twitter.com/F34oOed64W
“So with Chomp 2,” he continued. “I have millions of dollars in the bank, I could fund it myself. Why? … Everything on Chomp 2, I’m using the line of credit. I could pay $1,000 for the rest of my life. If the issue is upfront cash… A bank will give y’all millions of dollars.”
Of course, some folks on Twitter pointed out that not everybody has this particular set of options, but Russ was adamant his point was in pursuing alternative funding and maintaining ownership of publishing rights and his music career. Check out some of the reactions to Russ’ advice and his responses below.
If you’re a new artist who’s getting label offers it’s BECAUSE you’re making money, meaning you can go to a bank and get the $ you need w/o givin up ownership and if you’re not making money and a label is offering you money, hang up!! You’re boutta get FUCKED https://t.co/x5nZUk1E5y
I’m genuinely tryna help artists get an “advance” without having to sell their masters to a label
I’m talkin to the artists consistently making streaming money to the point labels are offering them deals. Goin to bank is a better place to start if it’s money that you want. https://t.co/DTLuuCZN8K
Imma make a thread cuz I have several response that I hope help
1. This tweet feels outdated. You don’t NEED radio, features or a billboard to blow up. You need great consistent music and videos. https://t.co/bA5SpXRT5V
2. The money should be used to make more music and videos (imo) and with where the internet is now, digital ad spending (although things can blow up without any ad spend – tiktok)
3. I don’t think giving up ownership to your recordings and NEVER getting them back even AFTER recouping is worth it just because a label is gonna do shit for you that you actually NEED, you can do for yourself
Artists who are making money and in a position to sign to a label
I’m sayin either way you’re getting a loan. One you gotta give up ownership of your music forever to get, the other one you don’t https://t.co/79ljzEGzL0
