Wiz Khalifa launches a grow-your-own mushroom brand. No, not that kind (exclusive)

Wiz Khalifa is probably known best for two things: his chart-topping songs like ‘See You Again,’ and rolling an endless fleet of submarine-sized blunts on social media. But Khalifa is also a father, gym rat, and mental health advocate. And now, Khalifa is after a new title: mushroom mogul.

Today, he’s launching his new direct-to-consumer mushroom growing brand called Mistercap’s. It sells $27.95 grow-your-own mushroom kits so you can have oyster, shitake, and lion’s mane mushrooms ready to eat in your home. The company hopes “to increase interest in the health benefits of mushrooms by creating more ways for people to incorporate them into their lives, nutrition and wellbeing,” according to the press release, and 2% of all purchases support the pro-mushroom educational nonprofit Fungi Foundation.

“Mushrooms are something that’s growing in the research space, consumption space, and it’s a big topic in mental space. There’s just a lot going on with them,” says Khalifa (whose real name is Cameron Jibril Thomaz). “And being ahead of the curve in things I really believe in has always been part of who I am and my brand.”

Mushrooms are booming for culinary use and wellness supplements alike, promising benefits ranging from brain health to lowering cholesterol. Specialty mushroom sales (basically, everything other than white button mushrooms) increased by 32% during the 2021–2022 growing season, according to the USDA. Meanwhile, psilocybin mushrooms—the hallucinogenic mushrooms—are finding traction as a legitimate method to treat mental illness, all while becoming more palatable to the law. Voters in California just decriminalized possession and personal use of psychedelic mushrooms this month, and the writing is on the wall when even GE is building mushroom-growing appliances.

While Mistercap’s kits are strictly for eating, not for hallucinating, the mushroom world often wears both caps. So, to produce its kits—which need nothing more than a mister bottle to grow—Mistercap’s teamed with Red Light Holland, a Netherland-based company that also produces microdosing “magic truffles.” Red Light Holland grows all of its products in Canada, where it will also produce the fungi kits for Mistercap’s that are distributed in the U.S.

The star of these kits is the wavy branding, which is a joyful ode to mushrooms. The charming name Mistercap’s is actually a riff on Khalifa’s first stage name that traces all the way back to his time in Pittsburgh’s Taylor Allderdice High School in the 2000s, where he met one of the company’s cofounders, Tim Hunkele. (“There’s no real big story to it, it all just unfolded, and here we are,” Khalifa says of Mr. Cap’s origins.)

Meanwhile, the brand’s visuals were designed by the Mistercap’s team in conjunction with This January, the brand system looks something like a cross between the 1970s flower power and the cartoon characters of the hip hop publication Lyrical Lemonade. In the universe of Mistercap’s, each mushroom becomes its own colorful cartoon mascot.

The lion’s mane sports white dreadlocks and a sparkling gold tooth, while the oyster mushroom sports sunglasses and pillowy white sneakers that appear to have been purchased off some animated version of StockX. As Mistercap’s product line grows, these characters will continue to make appearances, representing their varieties in products like supplements across social media.

“[We wanted to] make it more friendly and approachable than most other brands are in that natural space,” says Hunkele. “Maybe you’re unsure about mushrooms—and they’re even a bit scary when you’re younger. It’s an opportunity to make mushrooms look fun and be approachable for someone.” 

Reading between the lines a bit, Mistercap’s seems to be launching as a simple edible mushroom kit to lay the foundation to grow into psychedelics—at a time when regulations around psychedelic mushrooms seem to be going the way of cannabis legalization. Khalifa’s team already has some experience breaking into legally evolving markets: Many members of Mistercap’s also run the rapper’s cannabis brand, Khalifa Kush, which licenses his personal strain first developed in 2010.

Khalifa was arrested that year while on tour for possession and trafficking of marijuana but he made bail, continued his tour, and launched the company. He is now a rare Black business owner in cannabis, and has built Khalifa Kush into a label distributed across the country by partners including Trulieve, Curaleaf, and Cresco. Their path from strain to wide U.S. distribution took more than a decade.

While the company won’t say outright whether it has plans for trippier mushroom sales, the kits are “a nice, rooted place to start,” says Hunkele, who may or may not be aware of his pun. “To us, mushrooms are a work of art, they just look so cool. It’s a great opportunity to teach people about mushrooms and what they are.”