'It's All About Quality': B-Real Of Cypress Hill And 'Bong Appétit' Talks About The Cannabis Entertainment Business

I recently had fun a chat with B-Real, cannabis entrepreneur and Cypress Hill frontman, ahead of the launch of “Bong Appétit: Cook Off.” B-Real hosts the marijuana-themed cooking show on VICELAND with judges Vanessa Lavorato and Miguel Trinidad.

The show is extremely relevant for the mainstream exposure and acceptance of marijuana because it's one of the only cannabis-themed cooking show running on national and international television. Having said this, Netflix, Inc. NFLX’s “Cooking on High” deserves an honorary mention here despite not having received great reviews.

I caught up with B-Real on another interesting topics, beyond the show being entertaining, educational and stigma-shattering at the same time.

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The Surge Of Cannabis Entertainment

The topic of cannabis wasn't a hugely prevalent form of entertainment in America until the past decade or so. While weed has been a part of the entertainment business and culture for decades, it was most often tied to the stoner types or to a particular sub-culture like hippies and reggae lovers.

This has changed in recent times, as evidenced for the abundance of cannabis-themed shows on TV and streaming services, from “The Marijuana Show” on Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN’s Prime Video, to Neflix’s “Disjointed," Showtime’s “Weeds” and HBO’s “High Maintenance.”

“It’s a trip that there’s a category now called 'cannabis entertainment,'" B-Real told Benzinga. “Before it was just about music. If you happened to mention cannabis within your music, it was still just music… But now you have cannabis celebrities coming out and creating cannabis-related content and art.”

B-Real warned there’s such a thing as “too much” cannabis entertainment. Quality must always be a priority.

“It’s like anything else: in music you have great songs and you have crappy songs… It’s the same here. It’s all about quality,” he said.

"Bong Appétit: Cook Off" airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on VICELAND.

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