Curious, confused: cannabis

Photo: The Canadian Press

Classified performs at the 2018 East Coast Music Awards gala in Halifax.

Nova Scotia rapper Classified has vouched for smoking marijuana for years, but he says Canada's new legalization laws have left him confused over the ways he's allowed to promote the cannabis lifestyle.

He knows it's within his rights to express his love for weed. And he's allowed to talk publicly about buying shares of OrganiGram, an East Coast cannabis company he struck a loose business relationship with earlier this year.

After that it gets a bit hazy, since most celebrity endorsements of a brand are prohibited under the Cannabis Act.

"I was emailing OrganiGram going, 'you guys know I'm actually an investor so we can probably get away with advertising more.' I'm kind of curious to see what they're going to come back and say," he says, sporting a baseball cap emblazoned with a logo for the company's first recreational weed brand.

"They're so careful not to cross that line. Almost to the point where I'm barely doing anything. I'll bring them ideas and they're like, 'No we can't do that.'"

"I don't even know what they're paying me for. Like I'm wearing a hat, I'm trying," he adds.

Classified, whose real name is Luke Boyd, has been at the forefront of Canadian hip hop for over a decade, making him a valuable asset for young cannabis companies looking for prominent pot smokers. He's worked with Buck 65, produced singer Ria Mae and swapped rhymes on a track with weed aficionado Snoop Dogg.

The rapper also seems eager to test the boundaries of the new federal laws. His latest music video might even do that once Health Canada catches a whiff of it.

"Legal Marijuana," released Wednesday to coincide with legalization, features Classified standing with dozens of people in a public park as they rap along with his verses and every so often toke up and exhale a puff of smoke.

That part of the video should be fine under the law.

What might raise legal questions is a line he speaks that could be deemed an endorsement of a cannabis brand. The moment happens late in the video after Boyd adjusts his baseball cap and draws attention to the logo for Edison Cannabis Company, which is part of OrganiGram's recreational pot portfolio.

"Feelin' just right, rollin' up some of that Edison Reserve. Oh Canada, things have changed," he says.

The line doesn't appear in the version of the song featured on his album "Tomorrow Could Be the Day Things Change."

OrganiGram did not immediately return a request for comment.