During a road trip in late 2020, I was driving through Redding, California on a 12-hour journey back to Seattle with a need for something fire and affordable. I made the decision to stop at Vibe by California to see what they might have for the boy, and man oh man did I find an absolute gem: Wonderbrett’s Pink Picasso.
Wonderbrett is a cannabis producer and lifestyle brand in California that was co-founded by expert cultivators Brett Feldman and Cameron Damwijk. The Wonderbrett brand has been around since 2014, but the duo were making a name for themselves in the Los Angeles street and music culture since the mid-90s, long before that pretty pink packaging hit dispensary shelves and Instagram slideshows.
Pink Picasso was one of the most perfect flowers I’d ever seen in my life — weed that undeniably combines flavor, potency, and experience in the type of way that reminds you of why you started smoking weed in the first place. Instantly, I knew I had something special on my hands.
Recently, I met up with Brett Feldman to tour Wonderbrett’s 180,000 square foot indoor grow facility in Long Beach, smoke some flavors, and discuss the legacy of Wonderbett and the strains that created its place in modern day cannabis culture.
1997: OG Kush
In 1997, Brett Feldman was given a cut of OG Kush. A strain so rare, so special, so potent, that Feldman himself felt like he was given a gift from God. See, back then, before Kush swept the streets, he told me that consumers were chasing high-grade cannabis and strains like Skunk, Northern Lights, Trainwreck, California Orange, Hazes, and Chocolate Thai. But when OG Kush hit? Game over. “OG Kush came on the scene and took over everything. No competition at all, it was like watching Jordan come onto the scene and play with children.”
With OG Kush being so rare, Feldman had spent his time going back and forth to the San Francisco Bay Area to get authentic batches of it from the original grower, Josh D, and his team, with Feldman cleaning out their harvest at each trip. Eventually, due to demand from others, Josh D’s people told Feldamn, “Yo, man, we can’t keep giving you all of our inventory.” Instead of shutting him out, Josh D gifted him clones of the Original Kush Plant and told him to go be great. That’s exactly what he did.
“97 was when [cannabis cultivation] started to get serious for me. When Kush was given to me. I had to figure out how to grow weed immediately and to not kill these plants. I had this huge responsibility to protect and share that Kush strain, because it was so special. I wasn’t much of a religious person, but it definitely felt like God was showing me the way. And I was like, ‘I hear you, I see what you want me to do.’”
OG Kush was so in-demand that it led to Feldman crossing paths with Xzibit, Dr. Dre, Snoop, Eminem and B-Real. His crop allowed him behind the scenes access to Los Angeles’ late 90s, early 2000s hip-hop arena, and namely the creation of Dr. Dre’s 2001 album. “That started with me taking a risk, and introducing myself to Xzibit at [Tower Records in Granada Hills]. It was basically like, ‘Hey man, call me, I’d love to hook you up with some really good weed. I have this fire Kush’ … He ended up calling me and inviting me down to the video shoot. I brought them some kush that I had just finished harvesting. They were all loving it. That was my introduction to that crowd, as being this legendary weed guy to them.”
“I was just lucky to be in the right place at the right time. I was always the guy at the studio with the good weed where it was like, ‘Who got that Brett?’” And just like that, the legend of Brett, or as Xzibit liked to call him: ‘Brett The Super White Man’ was born. Eventually, that was shortened to Brett, which then would evolve into Wonderbrett.
2000s: Pure Kush
From the 90s on, Felman said that customer demand was all about Kush. Pure Kush. “The actual cut of OG Kush was called Pure Kush as well. The reason that came about is before [OG Kush] showed up on the scene here, there was Kush Bubba. You had to have that differientator of the Original Kush, the Kush that made Kush Bubba. The Pure Kush, before it was crossed with anything.”
2014: Pineapple OG
In 2014, Wonderbrett released its first branded strain: Pineapple OG. The logo was a dripping pineapple. It came out at a time where smokers were becoming more interested in the different flavors and strains of weed. “At that time, there were a lot of guys growing OG Kush and calling it different names. Then you had the beginning of Cookies coming on the scene. The Sin Mint Cookies strain really opened a lot of the doors of people wanting to try new flavors finally. That’s when we put the Pineapple out, then we put the Strawberry out, the Clementine, Orange Banana.”
2018: Pink Picasso
Wonderbrett bred Candyland x OZK way back in 2013, but didn’t find the Pink Picasso phenotype until 2017.
“When we popped those seeds, we were really excited to see what we created. We popped the Lemon OZK, the Candyland crossed with OGK. At the time it wasn’t called Pink Picasso because we hadn’t found the phenotype that was like, ‘wow this strain is crazy.’ We knew it would be a hit immediately.”
After finding Pink Picasso, Wonderbrett shut down for a bit to transition from the medical to adult-use market in California. Then, on October 27, 2018, at the Cookies Melrose opening, Wonderbrett relaunched their brand and finally brought Pink Picasso to the people. “It was pretty historic for us to be relaunching our brand, in that store, on that day. It was a real strong co-sign for B-Real and Berner like, ‘Yo, we’re opening up our store, we want your product here.’”
2021: Chomp
These days, Wonderbrett’s reputation is all about its flagship strains and flavors like Orange Sunset, Pink Picasso, OZK, Grapes of Wrath — the list goes on. Additionally, they’ve moved into collaborations, like the Pineapple OZK with B-Real and their latest: Chomp with Russ.
Still, it’s about the plant, and just working with people that Feldman actually likes. It’s not some big, corny, marketing play for huge buckets of money.
“The first four months of [2021] we’ve put out Chomp [with Russ], Pineapple OZK with B-Real, and we’re going to put out a Peaches strain next month. We’re constantly striving to bring innovation and flavor to the menu with how we deliver the experience to people. We just keep expanding and trying to build the relationship with our customers with more flavors.”
Find Wonderbrett strains and products on Weedmaps
Featured image courtesy of Wonderbrett. Graphic by Britt Rivas/Weedmaps
