We were lucky to catch up with Tyler Rae Edwards recently and have shared our conversation below.
Tyler Rae, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?
Everything is in a name! When it came to BAD MUTHAPUFFA I had to truly embody what it meant to be a “Bad Muthapuffa” before I ever slapped the name on a product or song! There I was, sitting at my table trying to come up with a theme song to a show I was producing at the time called “The Puff Show” back in 2019 – the show was supposed to be a panel of black women who would not only take a puff while talking their stuff, but also wear their hair in their natural Afro state. My signature hairstyle being my 2 Afro Puffs.
I was already known for making parodies so I started to make a parody of The Lady of Rage’s “Afro Puffs” song as inspiration to honor our hair. As I began to rap and create the song I turned into a character that I never knew was inside of me and what was supposed to be a theme song turned into something much more raw and real that I felt the cannabis industry needed to hear. I felt like there was no true female voice that carried music you could truly puff to and puff with. And when I heard the song back with the lyrics and the beat to match, I could not help but think… Now that is one BAD MUTHAPUFFA! And that is how the name and the term STUCK!
It served as sort of a triple entendre! Not only did I come up with something that represented my love for cannabis, but it is a statement to always be proud to wear your natural Afro Puffs! Also, it is a term of endearment for Mothers who like to get their puff on too without feeling ashamed because believe it or not, mothers are stigmatized for partaking in cannabis consumption, especially black moms. Hence, “MUTHA-PUFFA”!
All in all we all love a good pun right? And you know if you are a Bad MF, then you might as well say you are a Bad Muthapuffa and get away with it! The term has definitely helped me set my own trends and even get others to take on my “PUFFISMS” and use it in their everyday vocabulary. Everything is “Puff This” and “Puff That” and “I Can’t Puff With That!” – so on and so forth.
So I slapped the name and some slogans on merchandise and music and even slid my “PUFFISMS” into a lot of my lyrics and the rest is history! Stay tuned for more BAD MUTHAPUFFA and always remember that you can be a BAD MUTHAPUFFA too!
Tyler Rae, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am Tyler Rae Edwards. I am an actress turned content creator/influencer because ultimately I just wanted control of my own content, my own stories, my own brand deals, my own creative lane and power. I had an extreme passion for cannabis straight out of high school back when laws were changing and I had single-handedly seen the benefits of cannabis with family members and friends. So I embarked on a journey to learn as much as I could about this magical healing plant and began to seek a professional job in the industry. I figured if I had to get a job then it would definitely be in cannabis. I began working as a bud tender in what was known as pre-ico shops at that time. I was doing this alongside going to auditions and doing PA work on movie sets. I dealt with the dispensary lifestyle for a fair amount of time before I realized it wasn’t for me. There were no signs of elevation and I, for one, most definitely had a mission to use my voice and advocate for women who looked like me in a growing industry. I then decided I no longer wanted to work for anyone and began my entrepreneurial journey in cannabis. I embarked on running my own delivery service while trying to navigate through social equity standards in hopes that I would have my own dispensary. When I noticed that wasn’t in my favor due to the laws changing yet again, I decided to just grow my own and begin farming. Fast-Forward a bit to where I became pregnant and fell in love with cannabis in other ways using only CBD and learning new meaningful rituals of consumption once my son was born. After such a life changing experiences, I finally decided that I had nothing to lose and everything to gain and I put myself online for everyone to experience my creative side and poured all of my talents in acting and music and infused them into the cannabis space where the mainstream ads and content of the time definitely needed a person like me to not only set trends and shake things up creatively, but to also keep everyone on their toes. I was very loud and proud about issues that I felt needed to be raised and I uplifted voices that needed to be amplified in the space. I opened a lot of people’s eyes to the obvious racism and sexism that lives til this very day in the space and I have brought to surface the obvious politics that come into play that creates obstacles for the little guys who want to enter this space but may have no clue what they are getting into. I have created tips and tools to help creators and overall I inspired others to show up and show out and I continue to do so. My twist on content landed me the opportunity to work with legends in my industry such as Tommy Chong at such an early start in my online career. I tend to set trends and I bring the community together with my events that I like to call seshes. These seshes always represents a time and celebration to be had and a memory to be made! I started performing my music at these events to bring a new element and something people could actually PUFF to! It was definitely my time to finally give myself the stage and platform to showcase my gifts since no one else would give me those opportunities. I had to create my own. And then I wanted to extend that same opportunity to the other uniquely talented members of this community, so that’s how our mini community showcases got started. With my family business, throwing these events, we have always wanted to evolve the community into elevated spaces of consumption which is why our business name is “Elevate Sesh Events” — all in all I hope to continue to be an inspirational figure in my industry and show anyone and everyone that they too, can do it ALL, and be a BAD MUTHAPUFFA! All you have to do is put your mind to it, and you have to want to do it!
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
If you couldn’t already tell from my story, I have definitely had ups and downs. So pivoting is actually something I have mastered. As an entrepreneur I have failed a plethora of times and I am no longer afraid to admit that. It honestly has made me stronger and smarter and just more well rounded. Some things you do unfortunately learn the hard way. When I lost my website to a Chinese Boob site because I couldn’t keep up with the payments, I was absolutely devastated! This was definitely unknowingly happening and as a result, I also lost access to my instagram page with all of my followers to @BadMuthaPuffa … luckily for me though, I always have so many backup pages and eventually I just realized I can always just, start over!
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
One thing I had to unlearn was that I did not always have to say something… out loud that is. Lol, whenever there was discourse happening online in my industry, I most definitely had something to say about it. Because I was immature and naive at the time, a lot of things I would say would, I didn’t know how to articulate my thoughts well so people would take things that I would say and use it against me when it came to them controlling certain opportunities. But then I always think back and wonder if those opportunities were really for me in the first place because what is meant to be will be.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @TylerTherapy
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@tylertherapy?si=noU0-Qo-QDKq5ANh
- Other: TikTok @badmuthapuffa https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7oOIhhA3lk3mFWtHhzLrYx?si=OpTyNjC1QPGtySxojMF0zA&pi=u-TP1gCq7GRRqA