An Interview with Mendo Dope
Mendo Dope started making music in 2007 and got introduced to the world with Reek Daddy on NOYB Records releasing their first nation wide album in 2009. They exploded onto the scene in 2013 with their double disc reggae hip-hop album "Planters Of The Trees" featuring reggae legends Pato Banton, Marlon Asher, President Brown and more. Soon after the release they were raided by local sheriff and COMMET for growing medical cannabis but that didn't stop them. They gained a huge following throughout the Cannabis Culture and continued to release albums dedicated to the ganja farmers and medical patients. In 2015 they took their music outside to record "Live In The Garden" growing a Marijuana plant into a vocal recording booth and did something no one had ever done. The following year they recorded Season 2 of Live In The Garden and collaborated with legendary artist Mykal Rose, the voice of Black Uhuru, Pato Banton, Winstrong and many more. As their popularity grew they began touring the states and performing with a full live band goin all the way across the country for the 2017 Boston Freedom Rally. With their popular "How To Grow" DVD and YouTube series on outdoor cultivating they have been featured in Magazines such as High Times, Weed World, Cannabis Now and Greenleaf with strain reviews and music articles. As they continue to tour and record music their fan base continues to grow around the world. Their latest album "Live in the garden" Season 4 was released earlier this year and they are hitting the road to begin touring and promoting this new project.
1 hr 9 min
Full Transcript:
Mendo Dope: Well, I mean, yeah, we can take it back to the beginning days of, you know, just messing around doing freestyles and hanging out rapping with some of the friends, like, in art, art Circle that we just play around. We have a tape recorder I used to go out on this old back road and smoke out and kick on random instrumental, find online and just wrap to the tape and this having fun playing, you know, over the time we listened to a lot of Bay Area Music like Vallejo artist, Mac Dre, Jay digs doobie and wreak Daddy was one of those that we listen to for a while. We had been listening to these guys and randomly one of our buddies, Jeff, was out and I think Sacramento and randomly ran into Reek out here. A gas station and he was like, oh shit. What's up? Freaked out and he is and he reeked was telling cool. He gave him like a, think a couple posters, maybe a couple CDs and and Jeff brought him home and he's like, oh man, I met I ran into reek daddy down there and he was a want to get some herb to because Jeff was like, yeah, I'm from up and men do and re cuz I'm trying to get some trees or whatever, however, it worked out like that. Yeah, the right away. Mr.
Levi Strom: Friends, we call it.
Mendo Dope: But also it's like do these. Dudes are So Hood tubes. We listen, right, these are No gangster, dudes. Really? Yeah. Really we're like okay well that's super Doper. Like this. Caillou crying. Is he trying? And right now the first couple times at the end that was lying about 2005. I think, yeah, probably to come around 2005 and I think it was like lazy and Jeff and I'm one of our other buddies. They were the ones who went up there first and actually met with Rican, brought a little bit of tree out there for him. And kind of started that ball rolling. Meanwhile me and some of our friends, we're doing some freestyles and, you know, just messing around. So when they are going There. I was like, man who'd be so dope to be able to make a track with Rick Daddy for fun. You know maybe we could go up and hang out and do a studio session so I hit him up one day and asked him and he's a hot and know you guys did music. Yeah, come on up. Let's see what you guys got and from there man we went up with a couple of our friends me. Please see our home. Eat wings Ella, Nick be. So we went out there and got up in the studio. We were blazing fat. Rick was on the Backwoods tough at the beginning. We are still smoking. Swisher's a little bit, huh?
Levi Strom: He set you guys straight. Set you on your path, your life path.
Mendo Dope: Maybe twice in the studio and he's like, all right, let's hear what you got. You know, kick sound like Freestyle or whatever. And I was just like, holy shit. This is a trip man sitting here in front of reek daddy. Someone we've been listening to a legend in the game Savage stuff, so just randomly spit a little something off, my head is trying to wrap something and he was like, okay, that's what's up, let's get it. And he kicked on the computer turned. B. And we recorded our first like actual real song with a real artist, right then? And like I think it was around 2005. 2006. Maybe
Levi Strom: how old are you guys have that time?
Mendo Dope: I was, let's see. I was born 88. So 98 has found it was only 18. I think
Levi Strom: you guys are in high school or just out of high school
Mendo Dope: basically. Daniel just graduated, I was graduated 2004. Uh-huh. Yeah, so yeah, pretty fresh right away. We're getting to jump right into it. And like, we Add that first song and wreak was all right, when you guys coming back down, we're like no shit for real. Like, that's what's up? Like, hell. Yeah. I'm loved and make some more music and come back down and that's where the whole ball started rolling. And next time we came up, he was like, you guys need to figure out a name for you guys. Like what you got? Like, what's your rap name is going to be and what is this going to be like, you guys are, he's out down to have you guys represent on and a YB records and riding with like but we got to figure out your guy's name and you guys got
Levi Strom: signed basically, but yeah.
Mendo Dope: Punch underground. And about yeah, yeah, love those.
Levi Strom: Probably a huge deal for you guys.
Mendo Dope: It was, was that the time? Yeah, it's like, holy shit. Yeah, it was the first real person we ever like did a song with in general. And he was already doing songs and he was, it was right after Mac, Dre dime to us. And we were big on Mac Dre. And he did this makes a huge impact and wreak pretty much like raised Mac. Dre, a lot of different years. I didn't know that Mac Dre. And, you
Levi Strom: know, I've seen Ghost Ride the Whip. Whip, but to be honest, that's about as much as I know about Mac Dre and I listen to them. It's great. It's fun music. I like the - culture, but yeah, I didn't, I didn't know there's a connection with Rick daddy. That's, that's legit.
Mendo Dope: I was a, she went over all the joking and the homies and all it was a really solid. Stuck in our head for days back in the day. Yeah. So yeah, from there like reek was, I all right, so say well, is that you guys I think I don't know exactly how it was worded, how it was said, but it's basically you guys got the dope man and you guys are from men. Do you guys should be men do? Dope
Levi Strom: named you guys.
Mendo Dope: Okay, we're like yeah that was fast, but yeah. We just started recording music would wreak we be going up there maybe like once a week or once every two weeks at least, we take a trip out there with the homies and we just go sit in the studio and session and record music. And I was like the beginning birth of us getting into the music and starting to learn the game. Really. And and from there, like our first album, our first real album dropped in 2009, was with Anna. Be records. It was called. Welcome to the Jungle man. It was so so cool to have our first album. They actually went out Nationwide. It was in the stores, like, we could go and see it at first. It was even like, when they had the CDs. Were you had the headphones or you could like, tell ya in the test spot where you can sample it. And there you go. And listen, like, so it was like motherfucker.
Levi Strom: And I was reek daddy, though, that was him Distributing it to
Mendo Dope: now, it's Through hallasan, he was just routed through City Hall, which was the same people that distributed Mac Dre and they did. I think they did a lot of burner stuff even with burning first started, kind
Levi Strom: of right? Okay.
Mendo Dope: Yeah, interesting. Like we didn't we didn't know nothing about promoting about marketing about distribution, any of that. It was like recap the connection, like we'll put the CD together and his boom, I'll get it to this and that what, you know, get out there to everywhere and we'll start it up, but we didn't know nothing about actually promoting the album. So it's like, The beginning. It actually did really well and it was like the first month it came out. It was like number 13 on the top 25 best-selling. Hip-hop CDs of the least time from walk from the label itself. They have from the waltz wax to watch. It was from the city hall Distributors so it was super dope but then it kind of gradually it didn't like take off and do a lot because we weren't promoting we're just we just went back
Levi Strom: and that's the thing where it doesn't matter how good the product is Bell promotion. It just won't sell.
Mendo Dope: It's like and more and more after The years of us doing this like, as much promotion as we do, it's, we always see, it's never enough, like it's so hard to get promotion to get to everyone around. Like It's A Hard Sell,
Levi Strom: especially the timing. Sometimes things are out of your control to just taste, you know, and what's popular and you might have recorded a song and not even thought anything of it and then it just hits at the right time, you know?
Mendo Dope: Yeah. There's this. It's very interesting. How. Yeah. How the random this shit works
Levi Strom: out. That's why you have to just keep doing it and keep creating Because you never know when someone's gonna
Mendo Dope: hit Ya. That's why we never went into, like, where we get signed to a big label and they push your single and on the radio and you do like no her had no radio play or no big push or no real like music video even or anything like that. So, we felt like we just keep working working till we get such a big catalog and we have eventually some of these badass things, as couple songs here and there
Levi Strom: that in your perfecting, your craft. I mean, you know, exactly that's that's the point is you got it? You have to whether you're a stand-up comedian and musicians are grower, didn't matter what it is. If you want to be at the top of the game, you have to do it every day. Yeah. All the time and there's this no shortcuts, you
Mendo Dope: know, so much time. And so yeah, we made a lot of songs are probably like thousand two thousand songs or something, or so many things that aren't released with for a while or making the song everyday. Yeah. I mean yeah suit pretty much right after that first album drops and like we built our little home studio in the back. Mom's house and like and I was like, you know, fresh out of high school and like there wasn't too much to do around here in men. Do, it's really kind of boring spot, you know, there's not like crazy, a lot of people, big old parties like there was some stuff back in the day, but got old. Yeah, I got kind of disappeared for same people. Yeah, I don't think seen all the time. He recorded the song after song. Like, randomly, wake up in the morning, it was just boom, go. Right to the studio and Come up with a random concept and just make a song and that was like, definitely trust trying to perfect our craft of just recording and recording and recording and just having fun doing it. And from there like we started we ended up getting our own distribution deal with with Orchard which is like gets it onto iTunes and everything. So at first, we had we went through another label and had some things start. But gradually, we built up and we're able to get our own distribution label where we could put out our own music online and get it spread everywhere. So we just continue to make music over the time of working with Rican. These guys know they did straight-up gangster music and I hardcore rap stuff, which we grew up on. We love that kind of stuff but as s like starting to get more into the music and figuring stuff out, we had to especially rekey pushed us to like find Our Own Lane of like you guys need to get out there and find new fans. You need to make a whole new thing. Like we have our people over here. Now you got to worked with all of us who've done this. Go like Out and do something new.
Levi Strom: Reed was like a master marketer and brander. It sounds
Mendo Dope: like a smart. Yeah he never got any of kind of big luck with his music but he his music was out there. Pretty tough at one point and I think out of anyone out there. Dr. Dre the game whoever's a gangster rapper Drake was the top like he was on a song with someone you would murder. He was verse with guaranteed. Be the person you like dancing with artists what, right? It should be the only one. To say they'll crazier because he's killing babies. Just everything that weird shit because right? Real serious but he's he killed someone every song. Someone we try to make we song and it's like spine and he was still crazy because that's just Rica. That's what he did like but you're so clever to his farce is he had a very standard way that he would write that he kind of like got all of them like figured out how to like write verses and put together. Other songs and hooks and stuff and wreak was his one-liners and his stuff. He was saying would be so funny and he was dying laughing and like the most raw stuff and he grew up with all the guys like talking shit to each other on the streets, just for fun, you know, just sitting on each other. So like in his if he was never like a freestyle battle rapper but he almost could have been like the Roz freestyle battle, right? Yeah. I'm off. The Dome was the most meanest craziest shit each other. And we would like to say I think everyone's all our want to wear like like they're so good. Yeah they're they're professional regardless of course
Levi Strom: yeah I can see that. I mean that's how you kind of develop those skills, right? I mean the rap battles are an important part of developing your skills as an MC. I will never do it because I'm not going to embarrass myself. But I am a songwriter you know, Lyricist and obviously there's a lot of parallels and but rap I love rap like Like the kind of music that I make. I make guitar music and full Keyshia. And when I tell people like what are you listening to right now? I'm always like I pretty much. I'm just listening to like wrap and reggae. Let's print is like all I listen to and everyone's like, really like, really listen to the full key stuff. My God play enough of that stuff. Like I hear my own shit enough like I just I'm open-minded musically, I love it all. Like I like jazz classical, but rap is probably my favorite genre and I think it's the most Innovative currently, you know, I haven't heard rock and We'll do a whole lot that Innovative and a long time I mean I don't even know since when Nirvana or something, you know,
Mendo Dope: really. I mean one guy like I guess pretty Rocky say it's Gary Clark, jr. Yeah, Gary Clark jr. Is good. Yeah, sounds are. I'm like damn this sounds sick like it's kind of newer different but very far and few in between. Yeah,
Levi Strom: yeah and the Beats right? I mean it's like it's the perfect medium because electronic music and EDM is so huge, you know. And it's you can't sing over it now you can actually but it's just like custom made for wrapping over, you know, and whatever. You sound as whether it's dubstep or, you know, whatever the new thing is trap. You know, like rap will always be ready because you can just wrap over anything. Yeah, like rap is here to stay. Like it's not going anywhere, but anyway, I didn't mean to interrupt you guys. Keep going. Please because an amazing
Mendo Dope: start. Yeah, me true. Yeah. So, like That music. We would we would be doing the gangster music to, you know, we'd have to fit in with like doing saying some real shit. We were fucking around doing this crazy stuff but over the time and re pushing us to getting our own lane. Like we wanted to start really we're like at the back in the day we weren't really. It was always like against the rules to talk about like your grow and like showing people your garden and oh, look at these huge plants. I'm grown and I got doing all this and this like it was supposed to be secret, okay? We didn't really talk about it much and I music like, oh, like that since the beginning. We talked about smoking all the time in our music. It was always Incorporated in our, in my writing and everything. So but gradually, we started getting into like okay, we're going to start talking about the real of like what we're doing out here. We're actually gone to Farmers. This is a culture out here that's happening that we're going to start putting down on tracks and shit and letting people know what's happening and that was that the turn that we went full mode into cannabis culture, music, and to speak in, like, what was really happening being true to ourselves as Artists like just let putting it out there and like speaking what we wanted to say and just doing something different, like there was so much. There's been so much weed smoking music over the time. All the people, we've listened to Cypress Hill and you know the Kottonmouth Kings and all these kind of people but we wanted to do something different of like from the ganja Farmers angle from the people up in the hills that are growing. The stuff for the people that are smoking that you know like there's a whole story to tell. There's a whole other side of the game that no one really talked about. So we just started getting full Into that and like going straight weed music and and it really started opening up more doors that I felt like people started really liking our music
Levi Strom: more as found your lane, that's when you found your
Mendo Dope: leg. Yeah. Yeah. Just like, you have certain people. There we had homies that like music. What there was it like a whole bunch of like like we drop a CV and we could tell it was like cool but it wasn't asked for whatever and slowly started doing more not as negative music. It was more pit started, get positive and then Climb got real weeded out positive right before it. Got super weeded out were down really start talking
Levi Strom: about growing and that's cool. That reeked those coming from that gangster Bay Area. Rap culture was so supportive of you guys in like saw that you need to do your own thing. Like I just think it's cool that he embraced you guys in that way and you could because I kind of feel like maybe sometimes like the gangster rappers would hate on the positive rappers. You know and like maybe there's like some divided but I think with the MC is there, probably isn't because you understand the art form, you know, and it's about who you are and expressing yourself. But I just think that's rad that it makes me, you know, really kind of, you know, I never, you know, and I reek is gone but, you know, makes me want to go back and listen to his stuff because you guys are really, making me want to understand more about who he was. He sounds like an amazing person.
Mendo Dope: Yeah, it's pretty crazy out here. It's so trippy to think about it what our career, our music would have been without Reid. Was it different? It would have been a whole nother. We've learned so much besides the music of just how to be in the community of music and like and then to do our own thing to see if we're we're all we hung out with a lot of different people and that would come and go to the studio and wreak would be like yeah, comment, he ain't coming back. This guy is not allowed here no more. He just shoot this dude out. He's on the phone saying something. Just like this guy he's like he's not one of us. He's like you guys know who we are or whatever. I'm like they're so trippy to be like he respect us. Much because we never tried to act black. We like the culture so much, but we never did though. We never went all the way in, like so many different people do. Yeah, there were so many different times where we saw it in the studio and around recall. He's like we always get the past because it is always stoked that we didn't act like that. Right?
Levi Strom: Yeah, I think it comes. I think it comes through in your guys's music to it's like, you know, being a white rapper, there's always going to be some baggage, right? And you know people there's you're always going to get some haters every time. You know, but honestly like all it takes is listen your guys's music or hearing you guys talk for 5 seconds and you're like, oh these guys are just being themselves in like music black and white. Musicians have always been mixing with each other. It's the media and all this other bullshit that tries to keep it separate. If anybody is the most open-minded, it's the musicians. Even gone back in the day, white and black white musicians, were crossing the tracks to play with the black musicians, you know? There's always been liner play
Mendo Dope: Super through beginning. Yeah, we we've always, yeah we've had no has never been different to us where people are always been people that we never our grandpa was a little racist back. When we were
Levi Strom: kids we all got over somebody a little racist. Yeah
Mendo Dope: ever felt like anything like that.
Levi Strom: It seems weird and foreign write like this. Thanks it doesn't make sense. It's like not this is not logical. Oh yeah, yeah it doesn't help anybody hurts. Everybody Hurts the racist just as much as the you know it's like it it's detrimental to people's life you know. It's like why would you want to put yourself into that negative headspace and just like be a hater?
Mendo Dope: Like yes is no.
Levi Strom: It's a bad Vibe for sure. When did like sub cool you know coming to the picture for you
Mendo Dope: guys. Well, I think like the like our buddy, our buddy, Nick be, who used to be the one who actually like introduced us. Like so cool. He like he found him online on the forums. Like he was quick on like going out and finding looking for these new strings and he was always on the hunt for stuff, he was quick on it. So yeah, Nick was real fast on being hip to the we culture and worse and like new things coming in and he was when he was on the forums. And, yeah, he had his own real. A five-acre property. So it and his dad was growing so he was already like been growing and we never really grew back. Like we start growing right out of high school. He was gonna go, see was like a baby almost, you know, right. It is kind of hip to the shit real quick and he was rapping with us. We and meet him in high school. And then he was the one in our group, rapping with us. So, right around the time when we're all making music, he was real deep into his strains and stuff and yeah, and the sub pools like forums free for use on YouTube.
Levi Strom: Yes, of course. All genetics. I mean, those were the first cannabis seeds. I remember grinding, I remember I grew, maybe not the first plants ever group. But like the first like seeds I ever bought that were branded. You know, not just like some stuff. I found in a bag, you
Mendo Dope: know,
Levi Strom: I think I agree with a Jesus OG raspberry Kush.
Mendo Dope: Nice.
Levi Strom: Couple of the ones that control of Chernobyl, a bunch of, I bought a bunch of and they were and, you know, I got a bunch of cool Finas. You know. Super ter P. Yeah. Looked looked like indoor, you know, I was like growing these like outdoor plants that were so Frosty. And, you know, we're just, we're blowing people's minds smelled so good. You know, jarring up little small batches and the half-gallon mason jar and carrying them and popping them open for people and people just beg. Oh my fucking god dude. He just grew this shit in your backyard, you know? And like thank you had that like he had like a haze that he really liked to breed with. I think that had just thought, amazing Haze, like kind of old-school sativa smell. That kind of became the backbone of Blue Dream and Tangi in that kind of whole Lion and you guys know more about the genetics than I do. And but, you know, sub cool is really important. I think to the California into the whole cannabis not just Callie, but the whole way cannabis Community globally, Like I think his genetics have made their Mark, you know, like, for all forever. Now there's always going to be some strains out there that have that sub cool lineage. And
Mendo Dope: yeah, it's really bad. Ask to see that. Yes, even after he passed know, there's a lot of it. He had a lot of controversial stuff, we before he died, stuff with us. Almost every big seed. Breeder had a post about how they soaked up game from and they were unaware. They are because learning For things from Seb. You know, how how he did the city-state was one of the first for sure, hey Bill, what people's minds, that it could be done. And some of these people are, you know, murdering it right now with seeds. Yeah. And I've had a lot to do with
Levi Strom: that. Yeah, yeah. From all from a seed, you know, you guys know I'm all about the song ground but I know you guys do. I know you guys? I think as fuck around spend or two and I Embrace all grind Styles but I think like you guys I I believe that full term outdoor is the best cannabis in the world. I think you can get more consistent quality from Endor but the best cannabis in the world is outdoor full term. Would you guys agree with that? But why is that for people that don't want for people that like, I'm down here in SoCal and, you know, people are snobby and they want endure and I kind of get it if you really care about how your weed. Looks, I guess, you know, but why is Sun grown better and your guy's opinion
Mendo Dope: Justice. I think it's because it's the most natural way. The plant could grow and the Sun is a huge, huge difference to what makes a plant do what it does, and then being in the ground, doesn't another extra something to. So there's like, being natural, not forcing anything, getting the Sun that will never be recreated and then the triple whammy that when they're in the ground and are tied into the Earth and the roots and everything's kind of They all know each other, they're all there, they're all working together, all the microbes, all the stuff, it just makes the plan come to a different. Just there's a different level to
Levi Strom: it. There isn't. And it's really like, I don't think I've done lab testing of like the exact same clown, grown indoor and outdoor and a terpene, the cannabinoid profile. But I'm sure somebody has, but when I Smokes on ground versus endure, I feel like there's a much broader spectrum of terpenes and probably cannabinoids from the Sun ground, which makes sense because the sun produces light spectrum that no lamp can recreate. And with with indoor you actually get kind of lower terpene profiles, like most, oh geez and stuff. You buy have pretty low terpene profiles. If you guys noticed that they're like using June 1 and 2%. Yeah, that's like not really what they're about, you know, it's a little
Mendo Dope: different,
Levi Strom: right? You can really like allow the plant to really express its full potential and start growing some like more exotic, you know, especially sativas, you know, and I kind of think that's where the market is kind of headed where it's like it just makes more sense to grow eight and a half week, kush's indoors, you know, and blow those up and warehouses, but like let's do the full term outdoor and really start dialing and really unique. Really rare cannabis strains and get the whole Organic certification Regional designation and make these You know, singular crop. So there's only one Harvest per year from these regions like the Emerald Triangle and that flower when it first hits the market needs to solve for a higher price point from the elite Farms that have you know like green shock and you know these Farms that have a proven track record and start to get away from just the overground GMO cookies and do-si-do and like all those all that shit's rad I fucking love all those Trends. I smoked them all the time. I smoked indoor-outdoor I buy it all. I'm not, you know, but I want to see the outdoor Market evolved into that like premium Craft Market. Do you guys think it's headed in that direction of? Where do you guys see the kind of cultivation going in, California?
Mendo Dope: It's hard to say. I mean, I'd like to hope it does get there and it really starts to get that, that respect that it deserves of the quality of cannabis that it should be, you know, the equaled out on the other side. I think like we talking with Mark the other day. Like, once actually things like Open up fully to where cannabis is able to go outside the state lines and expand. I think that's where it's going to really. That's where the big jump will be for like, actual Emerald, Triangle? We because it's in this, there's this one pocket that's growing this. The best of the best is the special place that you can only get it from right here. So our ability to people to get that from all over the place. I think that's where the outdoors finally going to get its proper shine.
Levi Strom: Yeah. And that could be, who knows? How long, you know? Yeah, I worry about the small girl, but one thing I know about Growers is they're very, you know, Innovative and adaptable and people people up in the Emerald Triangle figure it out. They always do, they'll figure out a way to survive, maybe some people will leave the industry and you know, maybe it'll thin it out a little bit. Maybe that's not so bad, I don't know, but I know the people that are really committed to it like you guys and the gray shocks and, you know, you guys aren't Goin anywhere, and the market will come around. I know I will because just objectively when you smoke the best son, ground versus the best indoor, like they're both cool but the outdoor just has more personality. It's more interesting and it's a more unique product, you know, you can't get it anywhere. You can grow the same end or with the same set up in Michigan, Florida. And like that's cool for the cookies style, homogenized brand, going Walmart style or whatever like there's going to be
Mendo Dope: that. McDonald's.
Levi Strom: Yeah. It mean you know of course there's going to be that part of the industry and like I embraced that to like let's fucking the more weed the better. Let's grow as much and fucking there's like like you guys finding your lane like we got all As cannabis people to I think find our lanes and like find new people to like reach out to and like I guarantee you there's people out there that are like wine people. That would love the like, full term outdoor from like the small family farm. If they were told the story, and if it was marketed Yeah and promoted correctly. You know like the customers are there. We just got to go out and get them
Mendo Dope: but it's just there's so many people that haven't got to experience. Great Outdoor. You've got to experience Hands-On. Pharmacist to lungs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some people have their had a lot of indoor snobs there. They don't even give out to our chance, because they've seen so much whack outdoor. There's so much whack and or two that people like, you just don't. Don't know, there's this not as much in door so you overall you'll see a lot Wacker outdoor in the masses compared to whacker and or maybe. Yeah. And people that have indoor most of the time we're taking a little more serious than
Levi Strom: I think, but I think that's what happened. There's a lot of Booth out there from outdoor Booth from the cartels and amateur Growers. You
Mendo Dope: know, yeah, all this stuff can never been in door tobacco pumped. So yeah, the time is for sure. It's just low. Its Very not even slow. It's happening faster and faster. The more that we see there's a lot more people talking about, Terps talking about there's like wine, like you're saying they're getting more serious because it's just like we did when we evolved in the beginning. We didn't care so much. We're getting high and after you smoke a nice amount, you want to take it more serious if you want to have a you can feel their experiences differently. So you know what you're kind of looking for. Yeah. You tried you know what brands are doing the right thing? Yep. You can long time for people to learn what I've learned over time too.
Levi Strom: Yeah, I'm still learning every day, you know,
Mendo Dope: like yeah, never stop. So when we first went legal here like we had a homey and when I was a senior, he was 17 and he met his mom, got him a card before you had to be 18 or a lot of things was 2004 2003. And when we were first going to the clubs, you know, took quite a few years to really go into the club like, like a like a real, like, you know, what you're doing, you know? I mean, not just going in and being amazed Raised right after this 2018, legalization. Everyone got caught me. Amazement and there's a lot more tricks and people are smarter with the big companies and their branding, but now after a couple years, all that consumers are getting smarter and smarter and they've tried things that have changed their mind to like at certain clubs we they say like, oh there's certain people want to buy the highest THC and after a while they say, it's not getting me as high anymore and they're like, try this green shock shit. Try this. One of those and they come back and they're like, holy Wrap up so, high off that stuff. What's going on? And it's just something new to you. It's like the outdoor the end or the terpene levels. It's so cool that people get to finally see that. And so hard to get it in the club for these people to experience it to know, they want to get it to the club. A lot of different Club people at home clubs, don't give it the chance, especially sun-grown, they don't give sun-grown Growers the chance to get it to people to people to
Levi Strom: try. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean
Mendo Dope: yeah they like it a lot, right? Right
Levi Strom: guys. Like ignorant slut education needs to be done and you're right. Most people haven't been on both sides of it. Like we have all grown indoor light Deb outdoor like enough to really see it and appreciate all of them for what they are. So I think they all have their place maybe, but there is something special about Callie son ground like that Elite Kali song, ground. You know that those top 20 finishers at the emerald cup. You pick any one of those? They're going to it's going to be fire and it's going to be this beautiful genetic that's been dialed into its growing environment. Not just you know some clones picked up and thrown into a hydro system you know there's a little bit more attention and care and and I think but the storytelling has to happen around and that's what you guys are doing is so important because you're representing the culture, you know, and you're not bad-mouthing any one side of it or anybody but you're representing, you know, the aunt really well in the and what the Emerald Triangle is all about because for me, a big part of a to sustainability, I hate the fact that endures such a such a drain on the energy consumption. You know, it's just not
Mendo Dope: efficient, like is ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense and it's like, there's no way over time that's going to be able to keep going like that. No, absolutely. Totally horse hair crazy to be going through that much power.
Levi Strom: It's like imagine if China legalizes we Starts blowing up warehouses with, you know, lamps like that. That's going to look like when it's over
Mendo Dope: so much common sense to have, like, much sun-grown that's
Levi Strom: possible. Do you think there's a way to endure that's actually sustainable like LED or, you know, I've seen like the the light tubes, you know, that actually it's sunlight that they like magnified down. Like, do you guys think that we could possibly do a sustainable? Or you know style
Mendo Dope: I think with like with solar and wind and stuff, you should you maybe could like solar some LED lights and his run off. Yeah, it probably probably do. Like these days are probably meant so much more efficient than they used to be in the next step from here is gonna be pretty crazy. Well, futuristic things can be for sure.
Levi Strom: Yeah, I think the whole light dep, I think the mixed light, The like what they're doing in Santa Barbara County, you know. It was some like, LED supplementation or Go Vita supplementation but you know, 70, 80, % sun-powered, you know, like like this local shit. I know you guys think about local women. I've been smoking this point break from local, which is Santa Santa Barbara. Fucking fire did 25 bucks in a the fire, you know, like smoke pot all day long. It's really good, you know, none of course I got my green shock and all my all my good son ground but But I like the green hog, the stuff that's coming out of the mix light light, that looks like indoor. I mean, it's got if you like that Frosty. So, you know, purpose, you know, color if, you know, if you're into the way your weed, looks like light Depp and like a mixed light, light Deb can mimic that endure look with some sustainability. So I think there's that could be a part of the solution, you know, like, if you just like, do a bunch of greenhouses in the Salinas Valley, you know, where the soil is really good, and just plug them straight into the ground. Yeah. And I missed The like that. Get some really cool. What else do you guys think? Makes like the Emerald Triangle? So special. Like I always think that yeah it's partly the climate and the environment, you know, the good soil and good water, but it's like it seems like it's more of the culture, you know? And like just all the brainpower that's up there. Like is that how you guys kind of see it? Like what, why did the Emerald Triangle become the mecca for
Mendo Dope: cannabis? Yeah I mean it's it's for sure so much with environment. This is like what we've always said, you know, but there is if you want to go deeper into it, there's a weed picks up so much energy and and vibes your arm, and it even like this year, with the emerald cup, with the green shock, with marketing, the places that he got, you know? Hello the descriptions for the weed that place, like first, and third and stuff. We're like the, we gets me a giggly makes me have a very good vibe. It's all the shit that we like, we are. Meanwhile, we're in the plants, none of us ever having these weird Vibes, whenever it's always good vibes, with all the plants up there. And it's like, all the descriptions were held a tribute to hear because it's, like exactly how we are. We're always having fun in the garden. Rose laughing, Rose doing stuff. And then somehow they get the same effect from the highest
Levi Strom: translates their lives in the plans
Mendo Dope: bird noises and all the noises in general. Actually help plants like Lat. Yeah. Way more than we know still
Levi Strom: no. Yeah, and I know I'm with you, but I know it's a lot of people that sounds like some crazy hippie, shh.
Mendo Dope: Like
Levi Strom: like, it does kind of, you know, like the bird noises and stuff but I think if you think about it evolutionarily, like the cannabis plant, that's what it's used to. Like it's been around for millions and millions of years on the planet in that way. So like of course it's going to like preferred that to like being grown in a prison you know in and Your garden, you know, just makes sense.
Mendo Dope: Yeah, there's a lot that's like what the what the bird noises in like animal noises and stuff and there's a we're starting to record a CD called sounds of the garden and it's going to be a one-hour long thing that's going to have, like 30 minutes from Sunrise, 30 minutes from early afternoon evening and midnight or something. And the more that we started putting this thing together, the more research we did, there's other people that have Poems and have like four big farms, they have speakers that they play all kinds of different insect noises and bird noises at different times of the year. And it's like, and in greenhouses and indoor rooms. They do this you know, to try to mimic outdoor and stuff and it does a lot. There's certain studies were like incredible. It's like it goes super deep and I never really got that deep into it until we started getting this. This soundscape thing going and it's crazy how much further you can still learn. Yeah. And go into it and see exactly. What's That all makes Outdoors so much different to its, they have to fake it at these build Gardens. You know, they are using these speakers and and Technology with
Levi Strom: and I think for me to like that the full term outdoor Growers and Emerald Triangle or like are People that of course, of course, money affects all this, it's a business but like I feel like there's a lot more people up there that are doing it for, you know, they really believe in the medicinal side and not to say the indoor Growers. Do I think everybody that's probably around cannabis believes, you know, I hope in the medicinal properties and there's maybe a couple bad apples of people are just like all about the money don't smoke weed. Don't give a shit pumping in pain, you know, but it's honestly a small margins. Like I've never So many people that are committed to like medicine and natural healing and trying to really help other people. Like when I broke my neck and 2011, surfing people, people were giving me pounds of weed, you know, like, just just to help me out, you know, like and that's how I started Awaken was like, I had so much fucking tram and small Bud from people like garbage bags, full of it. I was like, well, I had to do with all this. So like I start turning this into Nothing but people are just so generous and so cool. I've always felt like if you smoke weed, you're instantly. Like I have you have something in common with me in like this community of people that crosses all racial lines class lines like everything, like it breaks everything down instantly and I think I think that there's some like, yeah, like kind of like you're saying there's something in our own biology that connects with that, and it restores us Back To Nature, you know? Yeah. Was stuck in his fucking weird. Kind of Prisons that we've built around ourselves. Like we're supposed to be outside. We've literally boxed ourselves then you know but I think cannabis mushrooms and all these natural things like take us back to like who we really are you know like this is all new, you know, like we are like plant people and Earth people and stuff. So Ice water. Hash we talk about hash for a little bit because that's how I remember. First being introduced to you guys was Emerald cup 2015. I think 16 something like that and you guys just cleaned up for, I think for ice water, hash, in the solvent list category, I love solving this extract. Rosin ice water, hash key flipping and fusion like I do just direct infusion into oil. Anything that doesn't require hydrocarbons and Not that. That's necessarily bad. That school shit you can do with that too. But I just love the pure natural approach of solving this. How did you guys get into, like making salt on this extracts and, and all that good stuff
Mendo Dope: used to make it back in the day for fun. Every once in a while, like George, I don't know, maybe like a 2013 or something. We made a couple batches that were incredibly fire. And it was like, man, I can't believe what you could do. Every, once in awhile someone would show us something to Andrew. Like man, you made that with ice with the hash oil with the bags, whatever. And a lot of times it was pretty poofy though and we were just making it to sell it just to clean up our stuff. Yeah, was well, there are some winners and then then we started doing the concerts and we went out to Rhode Island for right. Or did he come here? Well, maybe we saw him. He came here first. He when we yeah came out to one of the Cannabis cups. Mr. Bond from Rhode Island came after one of the cups and we saw this house that he had and it was like, holy shit. One time we made stuff that was that our favorite stuff was kind of close to it and then he comes with some stuff that's like the purest of the pure. The most the essence of this of the plant. It was outrageous smells so good. It looks so good down to bury crazy and it was like oh my goodness the and even over there. I swear some in the water in Rhode Island or something. There's a certain flavor that you pick up from some of those stuff and it had like just like very I'll never forget it, it was very unique Rhode
Levi Strom: Island. I wouldn't guess. That's where the Firehouse would have been coming from
Mendo Dope: the master has ever know. Yeah. Like at the beginning like he was saying we just played around with a little bit of hash in ourselves here and there. But really we didn't get into making hash ourself a lot and like over as time was going like we didn't have a lot of time to do all these hash washes we're doing our farm. We started getting in a lot of music and everything. But like once we met, you know, Mr. Bond and other people around at the time, like Frenchy cannoli, when he came down to Meet with serve and everything like that. Definitely opened our mind to the solvent less game of Kyle extremely good. You can actually get stuff out of just ice water like doing this technique. It was crazy. So we I mean hats off to cats like Bond and Frenchie and these other guys doing this on the stuff because it opened up our mind to know. Like for sure, you can get the fist once again like growing, you know, doing it organic natural style. You can get the best that these flowers are capable of doing. You know, you can maximize Surmise their potential. Like, I can't get any better than this when it's done. Like that. Yeah. And then to see that on the hash side with just like straight ice water, like doing it natural and it's coming out this good. It was like there's it's it's a it's like there's no other way. This is like how could you, why would you do it any other
Levi Strom: way, if this works
Mendo Dope: so good. Like, yeah. And we were just keep all of our stuff strictly for four at once. We spent front, once we started getting teamed up with Frenchie, from meeting him with seven stuff. We started giving it all our stuff to Frenchy and we're like Frenchy. Let's do this dirty. Just beaming all kinds. Yep cannolis. And then he started doing the temple balls, and yeah, such a cool style. And so cool, like meeting him and talking cash with him and him working on our stuff and telling us about what he saw on it and how it did. So good compared to so many people stuff, and it was like, it's so cool to hear like stamped things like once. We got to the hash mode, it like really stamps, you're growing skills to of like, what's really going on? At a microscopic level of, right?
Levi Strom: Yeah, the kind of see the concentrated version of your
Mendo Dope: plant. Yeah. You did harvesting it and taking care of it after it was done growing to us. When she was always, like, very taught us a lot about that. Yeah, it's cool to see it got us more in in depth of the flower and like to a whole new dimension of like understanding what the flower was and the resin on it and the different types of resin that come off. All these trains likes are realizing it.
Levi Strom: I think that's an advantage to be a cult. Later and an extractor because they're oftentimes not the same people. Yeah, but when you're doing both, like you said you're seeing it's like, you know, you can only make hash as good as the flower. So you're going to be extra careful with your flour. If you know, you're making a hash budget for yourself and you wanted to just come in a bomb, you know. Yeah, protect the plant, you know, cut, you know, it's like you see people like You know unfortunately does happen to want outdoor, grows the rough at the plant, you know the thrown around a lot because there's so much of it you're just like fuck I'm just telling you start being but it does damage and bruised the plan and once you extracted the quality of your hash or whatever product you make from it is going to be slightly you know, less potent or slightly less quality because you didn't handle it with care, you know, and it's just amazing. The amount of finesse and carrot takes two to produce the highest quality product at the end. and resolved, you know, whatever you put in your lungs, the amount of love and attention and carry cannot be faked, you know, like sure, yeah, maybe it can be automated to some degree will see, you know, but I still think that just like Personal Touch and like, you know, small, you know, craft Farm, you know, is unbeatable, you know, just like the small craft extractor, you know, it's like once you scale it up, it's just the quality is gonna decrease a little bit, you know, at the best It's going to decrease a little bit and most likely a lot.
Mendo Dope: You can't give that love and attention as it wants to get so big. Yeah. I mean, when we did that, that when we got third place at the emerald, cut that year with the hash, with Bond, we had a it was a giant plant. This big old grease monkey plant and it was like eight to ten pound. Plant easy and we were in Boss started getting us to do a the nugs you know we're doing hash with mugs now. At that time, like the year, before we start Trying it out and beginning were very skeptical. Or we only did cash with our Sheikh. We're small, we're flowey like a flower do everything cops, do about the center and then we started seeing and then really the third place at the cut was when we saw like okay. Yeah. Flower buds are special in you. It's worth doing it. Yeah.
Levi Strom: Waste because working with fresh frozen at that time. Or was it cured
Mendo Dope: by best friend started at the same time? Getting us on the fresh produce. That was a big
Levi Strom: Revelation are. Remember for me and my world because I was growing at that time and once we figure it out, I wasn't making hash. But my buddy was, and once we started making fresh Rose, and I was like, oh shit. This is this is way better
Mendo Dope: crazy. The difference that yeah. Seal, that time ring. There's a special super that that first fresh smell of that flower to capture it, like, people can now it's
Levi Strom: so yeah. I'm a big fan of all the live, you know, all the Raw Extracts especially Justice souter p and and so delicious and non decarboxylated. I know French. He likes to D car but I think just because for his style works better to like break it down to its the THC from the THC, a friend. She's a real character. You guys are you guys still making hash or where do you? Where are you guys at with that right
Mendo Dope: now? Right now we're really we have we have one batch that we like what's with our personal stuff? We've been making a couple things we work with. Hasbro for a personal stuff. You have some recently, we did a couple of different things with our new strand, Spumoni Kush from the album that came out real nice. And it was so funny. His wife came in the washer and then he was washing it and she's like what is that smell? He's like what do you think it is? It smells like like a chocolate and nuts and some of us are like spumoni ice cream or something. No way not even know what money is. So we have to tell him what kind of like it. And she was like, it smells like Spumoni in here and it's funny. I took it it's a vanilla cross but it does turn into like this chocolate ice cream. I don't know. It does some weird little backwards thing to but it was fire rosin. We did a couple things with some indoor stuff, testing out some strains, mmm. And then with the permanent side, we did a collab with with pressure pressure Rosen, their kind of a new company that is starting off that trip Hogs and Skittles and them are working with So they brought us in to do a batch of stuff to bring to the market. It's just about to hit the shelves and that's what the Vanilla Kush from the outdoor from the green shock Point.
Levi Strom: Nice SEC. So that all W Min dodo branded like collaborative Brandon with purple
Mendo Dope: Frozen 2 and this is a special special strain. It does incredibly high yields on the on the hash wash and it's just got such a pure vanilla vanilla bean
Levi Strom: flavor. Hmm. I don't know if I've smoked beer has been in the kitchen. I remember when I was up there and we'll, it's with you guys. I remember smoking. Donkey butter. I smoke mended up. Took some of that home with me. Thank you guys. Dropped a branch on the ground. I was like I'll take
Mendo Dope: that.
Levi Strom: I think it was the mended up is super loud. Super gassy. You know, wreaked. You know, that was awesome. It wasn't like Jeanne hated it, we all loved it. You know, that's kind of bro. We'd, you know they're like super loud. Noxious gas. Like, I fucking love
Mendo Dope: that stuff more and you can tell like what brings all the girls, make the best reactions when they spoke.
Levi Strom: That's a nice blend of fruit and gas orange. Serpentines.
Mendo Dope: Yeah, yeah, sighs in
Levi Strom: such good flavors. It's cool. You guys are collaborating.
Mendo Dope: Never-ending the flavors and yeah there's never any and huh. There's some such cool new ones. We're looking forward to this year that we're since we've been working with Mark we brought in a couple of different exotic genetics gas stuff. So marks across last year. Some lemon trip was and some Grease Monkey males to some of his stuff. So yeah, very
Levi Strom: interesting. Yeah, it's cool. I think you guys kind of bring in some of that, for lack of a better word, like, Urban style weed. Yeah. Some of those louder, gasps here
Mendo Dope: streets and the streets are turning into the class like cookies does so good because they're so focused on the could like that the indoor super fire Hardball cook like street street style you know I mean that wraps like another and now that's payments of the mainstream so
Levi Strom: hard. You know the cakes, right? Like ice cream cake wedding cake and delicious. You know
Mendo Dope: runs now
Levi Strom: yeah runs his pretty good. I smoked some of that recently. Yeah I didn't like it at first and then the night I got like I think it was like farmer and fell on her something as like some Smalls But like after a couple of giants, I was like all right. Yeah. Actually this is an interesting strain. Like I get
Mendo Dope: it. We were the same way we're first month. The rent for like this. I can't believe people love this shit. There was like, okay, I see why you guys like it.
Levi Strom: Yeah. Yeah. The the cakes are cool. I like it. I'm a fan. I'm more of an in Indica guy than a sativa guy. I guess, you know, I love it all but like, I typically like smoking indicas or Indica hybrid leaning stuff and just because I like the chill relaxed feel of it and I do smoke for pain management. So I like that kind of narcotic effect. Yeah. But I love the sativas to you and like it's just I know there's so many flavors like I grew full term outdoor Guerrilla style for three years and Big Sur. When I first moved there is like two thousand and four five, six, seven ish. I was Grand, like Guerrilla style. Before we went up to Mendocino and started doing 99s and we would pop so many seeds out there in the wilderness. You know, male, you need up to go out and clean up the males and everything, but we would see so many different flavors because we would grow, Thousand fucking seeds, you know, and you would come, you don't have one plan of each, you know, and a lot of them are kind of similar but we'd have some outliers. I just remember smelling some of the craziest stuff like flavors that are just wild, you know. Like there's so much room to grow. Like I have so much faith in the Cannabis industry because of two things. One I know that the Growers and cultivators are going to continue to create new and amazing strains that are going to just blow people away. And then the medical science is To catch up to how powerful this is as medicine. So like those two things are going to converge and like, cannabis is as a lifestyle and a culture and like it's going to get so good. This is like, everybody's going to be smoking, great herb all over the country and then the medical data will come and be like, this is a really great for you to like it's curing, you know, it's going to prevent you from getting Alzheimer's and cancer. And like this is a part of a healthy lifestyle because if there's still that stigma against the plant right now, That it's a lot of people unfortunately still feel that way. You guys travel around and go to other states, you know, like you know, not everywhere is California, you know, like there's still some states that are grappling with it, for whatever reason, you know, religious reasons. Brent. It's just there's been so much negative propaganda against the cannabis plant for like a hundred years that some people have just been told the wrong story about the plant and we're all and you guys in the work you're doing. Then and your music is trying to I think correct some of that story and showed that no, hey, like we're good people in this industry. Like we care about the Earth, we care about each other, we're smart were productive, not it's not that like classic Stoner. Lazy Stoner stereotype you know, so I think it's awesome. When you guys are done you guys got into a little beef with cookies a while ago. Do you want to talk about that at all? Or is that all of the bridge? What
Mendo Dope: happened with that just I mean we ended up going to one of the club's just please. He picked it up as just to try. Yeah. Because then I would have never bought it. I don't ya
Levi Strom: the waste your money.
Mendo Dope: Yeah a lot of that cares. Are we do is they give us a great deal like the employee discount of there and they just got the cookies, we didn't there by we go, they're all pretty often and I'm like, oh, you got a cookie if we decide never really seen it out here for so I'm not going to go drive to go to Try to find it for sure. And and then when I am, like all the Georgia pie, it sounds like I like Cherry Peach. Georgia, Peaches. Well, I know, this sounds fire. So I got an eight to something else in the eighth of that I
Levi Strom: come. And how much was it? Like, fifty five and eight, or
Mendo Dope: something else. But Heating and Air Staff and that's those
Levi Strom: others connected alien Labs, cookies are in that price range
Mendo Dope: and I open a jar. I'm like, damn, you got ripped off seven dollars a day for small, but whack and or rent but not all. They got some fire to cookies. I've had some fire to but not this day. The super happy to try it too. Because we are like, you know, we never try it. The we are or where we're at. Did you like a critical test on it? Yeah let's see what they got
Levi Strom: visual inspection. Yeah yeah.
Mendo Dope: This goes to break them to smoke me out another Blanca season rolls, all the plants more than 90% of every so fast powder. I like, what are you talking about? I do this, how I see counter Melody right here on this Levi, then there's not another one. Look, let's look at some other. But here's another piece like no fucking shit, like, Georgia powder. Those little leaves that they can't get all the way, you know, where they cut it right at the door of the pot. Yeah, that's still got powder and that's real close to the bus. So, you know, that leaf out powder the big leaves and Aliens had fat amount of powder. Room was no silly powdery. When it got harvested, yep. I'm not, it's not like burner gross. All the weed and whatever the fuck's going on in millions of things you have going on. But so we put online, you know, call it out because it's just we've been waiting for this moment to smoke it and then also here so much shit about it and we don't we haven't been on the hype ever about it. So yes, like okay, let's put it out there and see what we're speak. The truth really want to educate the customers and let them know like so many. It's like, like for it, like, for a lot of things, you know, there's so much big marketing going behind these brands that people don't think twice to even examine the flower. They just like, oh yeah, it's gotta be
Levi Strom: a lot of people might have smoked that and been like, oh, this is fired. So
Mendo Dope: Frosty. Yeah, crystals, right? Yeah. Smoked powder, many
Levi Strom: times, sure. We all everybody is ground. Definitely
Mendo Dope: has. But it was just the fact that it's like, man, it's just because he's branded in the club expensive as
Levi Strom: hell. Most Excuse for that at that price.
Mendo Dope: Yeah. Yeah, so hard. So yeah. We wanted to put it on blast. Yeah. So put on blast is probably like Saturday or something, when we put it on blast and then I think we saw, maybe it was like getting a lot of different funny comments that were different. You know, it's so funny to see the controversy. Uh-huh. We stir up, shit. Once in a while and start with an
Levi Strom: idea.
Mendo Dope: And then who said it, Necklace or something. Let me hit us up and say, oh man, did you guys see burner put up a post about? You guys are said something like no shit. Really? We hadn't even been online all day. Like let's go check it out. Yeah, he's straight blasted us and hellish it. Like I didn't think I'd have to educate well-known Farmers. Like men do dope up there and then we'll try and or something about buying a what did he say was like by counterfeit? Yeah, we do. It's not the real cookies or whatever and so we didn't get to it for hours and then we go to our page and then his fans are talking shit to us. Yeah, burner has like a popcorn like he's waiting for us to respond.
Levi Strom: That's so perfect, though.
Mendo Dope: Yes to. So, he's like a damn. He's waiting for us to reply to about, you know, what's going on. And then when we saw his post blasting us like that or like, oh, okay. So now we have the comment back and say, no this is actually from a club. It's a real about the receipt of the same street. We the say that bag of a homemade who just whatever fake you guys like posted
Levi Strom: your receipt. I remember right. To Paris of.
Mendo Dope: Yeah. And then, then I burner was writing in the DM. So then we were writing in the DM for a while and saying what happened he was like he's been pretty chill, he's real on top of figuring out what was going on and then I was being real real and I told Daniel it's just going to go two ways either. It's going to be a real problem with Burner now and a lot of his fans enough or honks real is going to recognize real and realize that we're just calling out powder. That it's not like we're gonna start talking shit to you but we're gonna put it on blast still it's not like we're going to hold our mouths for you or why would we not say something, you know? Yeah. Wow. So then then we talked about it for a while for a while and then he realizes his from the actually did come from him and then see junkie was also writing us talking shit for a while and DM and then then they went and they pulled the weed off the club and they pulled it off the shelf because they came down in there, like, okay, well, you know, we did get to the bottom of it and we're figuring it out, but like, if we could, he said something I just wanted to kind of just drop it at that, and Not like make more pony head and said, I'll take my post down about you guys. If you could take your post down and we could just kind of finish, it is like, I wish you would have never really put it up in the first place and I'm kind of well, Doug. I just met the real smokers. We're trying to we're like a customer right now. Real disappointed.
Levi Strom: Yeah. Product review, you know.
Mendo Dope: So so yeah, it was super funny, how it kind of ended real chill, the way he hit us up and said and I said some things it was it wasn't it didn't make it like escalate, we're like, okay, we're going to blast more because we will definitely be happy to blast more but it was like, okay. We can just squash goodness. It was just whatever he said that he always said that the form is supposed to be doing it or he's kind of do that gone to a lot of research. Figure out what the hell's going on there. Blah, blah, blah. You know. So I said, I know, it's not you. I'm not like I said, I said someone in your cruise fucking up just so you know, someone fucking up. Hmm. It's funny, just how quick they're like, oh, that's it. You can tell it's a fake cookie bag. Yeah,
Levi Strom: they're so popular. Everyone's bootlegging their shit. You know?
Mendo Dope: Yeah, exactly. That was funny. Waited to flip it on us. See if you do have a amount of fans online or people that we could actually get a takeaway big people to respond or kind of at least think about it. You know, I mean, or not shut it down. Like it's a fake bag or like the customer was lying, internet powder in the first place. Yeah, it's funny how the internet works. Yeah. Different people are like if you don't have a following to, if you do and all this
Levi Strom: bullshit and really in that situation like Burner cookies, done, much to gain. You know, you guys have more to gain because you're in the right, you know? And but I remember when that post happened is because it did get Hella comments or remember. It kind of went viral. Yeah. And but it exposed kind of a rift in the Cannabis Community, I think between and there's a people are always going to hate on anybody to successful. There's you know it's called a winners tax you're just going to attract haters no matter what. Yeah so I don't hate on burner for being successful or buddy in the space for being successful but I do kind of feel like there's a little bit of a rift between the It's calming burners like mr. Indoor right? Yeah, nobody represents indoor growing probably more than that and you guys are like full outdoor. So it's kind of also kind of this like indoor/outdoor like use the real grower you know. Like and I think that's an interesting fucking conversation, you know. And
Mendo Dope: like yeah and there's been hella times where we've been mad about situations going on. Under different things, burners is not. There's a lot of things that we don't like about what he does. And there's a lot of things we
Levi Strom: respect. Thank you have to because he's Paving the way like him or not, he's showing how to brand and
Mendo Dope: scale. Yeah, he knows what he's doing, but there's a lot of different money things we don't like, in the way that he doesn't respect the plant that we feel like the same style the way that his message comes across sometimes what he talks about and it's like how big he is. Like he could say some things to you know, be positive but it's like there's a A lot of just so, you know, money after money, it's like I'm making a million off of vitamin water, or whatever. He said, nuns here, and then another million off extracts. And it's like, what about the plant in the people? And the medicine thing I was like,
Levi Strom: yeah. And I think that's, that's kind of it a little bit, right? You know, the green rushers and you know, even though burner has been a part of it and her you no longer than me longer than maybe even you guys don't know a long
Mendo Dope: time. He was working at the club. Supposedly I think, I don't know that much. No, but he was probably Groans. You don't know what he was doing by love job, right? When we were first starting to do our own growing things, just like you probably he's a little older I think to a couple years. Yeah I'm sure use it. It's a crazy, he's crazy, dude. He's doing a lot of shit. Yeah,
Levi Strom: I respect them into Santa Cruz shredder. Like he's a, he's got all kinds of fucking everything renewal shit going on. I mean, he's a busy dude, and he's an important guy in the space. I want to have them on the podcast. I can't, I can't talk too much shit on guy cuz and I need him to come on my chest. Someday when I've got a million followers, you know, and he'll actually do it.
Mendo Dope: What we realized after that one poses that he is. He's a real new to you know it's like it was cool to see that he wasn't like to a certain style that we thought it was going to be.
Levi Strom: Yeah. And I think you probably pretty quickly digested that you guys are not the enemy to you
Mendo Dope: know. Yeah. Yeah. And they weren't just some fakers. Just sternum that's noxious. I were real. That's how I very last thing that we wrote before was we never wrote since that time, that one day and at the end he was I was telling my said so funny how We're in the same space kind of and it's your commands are so much different than our fans because of what we do and whatever, even though we do, we do music your, We Do music stuff stops. IT of are we the music? And I was like it would be cool to do like a song where you guys dis each other, but then at the end it's chill. Like you figure out somehow, we flip it right where it's not like some gay shit
Levi Strom: but did an indoor versus outdoor rap. Battle where there's resolution at the end,
Mendo Dope: Maybe That would be a big song I think. And then oh what gasps him to be a cool song here.
Levi Strom: Let's throw it out there. Right now. Burner right now, Daniel will challenge you to rap. Battle
Mendo Dope: outdoor battle.
Levi Strom: You be the judge. We'll do it live, dude. We'll just see how many hearts and guts, you know, I don't know. I think that's good. I think the candidates. An issue that the Cannabis industry needs to resolve. I really do feel that way because The whole indoor-outdoor argument does is just stupid, like, it's all about the plant, it should be, you know, and I feel like there is more ego on the indoor thing though because it's all about, like, your Knutson like, you know, every it's all you, it's sealed room, it's all everything you're doing, rather than working in harmony with the natural environment. And there are kind of two different mindsets, you know, it is what it is. But anyway, I'm gonna let you guys go cause and As a busy and I really appreciate the time. You've both taken to be on my podcast Belizean, all demon do dope. New album out. Live in the gardens season 4. It's fucking awesome. Highly recommend it green do project which is you guys got a new season on YouTube as well. I haven't watched the new season but I can't wait to watch that and that's the collab with green chalk Farms where you guys are filming. The whole grind process,
Mendo Dope: all outdoor documentary, where we covering from the beginning of planting all the way to harvest. So we're on season for now. And the first episode is out now on YouTube and the next ones coming real soon.
Levi Strom: So awesome. How else can people find you guys, website, Instagram, social
Mendo Dope: media? You can find us on Instagram men, do dope boys, Facebook metal, dope. And then YouTube may do dope YouTube channel, and our website Mendel don't music.com and mental dope
Levi Strom: Farms.com. Thanks for joining me today on the head change. The podcast if it's you and never had space, I've been your host Levi, Strong full. Transcripts of today's episode are available on our blog awakened, every day.com you'd like to listen to more podcasts like this, you can join the conversation on anchor FM and YouTube. Until next time.