"Where Africa Comes to Stay Informed."
US Edition
"Where Africa Comes to Stay Informed."
A word that has followed Pusha T and Pharrell Williams since 2002 now sits on a bag of beans. The two have introduced Grindin Coffee, a specialty label built with the Italian roaster Lavazza, according to the brand itself — taking the title of Clipse’s landmark single and reframing it around work, creativity and ambition.
The venture has a running start. Pitchfork noted in November 2024 that Pusha was already handing out Grindin as a heavily caffeinated blend at Camp Flog Gnaw in Los Angeles and at Café Tropical, with broader distribution in mind. What launched in 2026 is a far bigger operation: Pharrell has come aboard, Lavazza supplies the roasting know-how, and the label now sells directly to consumers across several products plus merchandise. Pusha told GQ recently that coffee fits into the pre-dawn studio and gym routine he picked up working alongside Pharrell.
Buyers pick between a medium and a dark roast, each available whole bean or ground, the company says. The medium is all-Arabica from South America, carrying bittersweet chocolate, caramel and roasted hazelnut. The dark mixes Arabica with Robusta drawn from Central and South America and Southeast Asia, leaning toward cocoa, caramel, warm spice and wood. Either works through a filter, an espresso machine or as cold brew.
“Our customer is someone who builds things,” Pusha said in the launch announcement — a pitch that frames the coffee as fuel rather than a lifestyle indulgence.
The launch lands in a category that keeps growing richer. In September 2026 the National Coffee Association put daily coffee consumption at 66 percent of American adults, with specialty coffee hitting a record 48 percent. That appetite explains why performers who already know how to package identity and community keep gravitating to the category.
The LOX rapper was in the business well before Grindin scaled up. Kiss Café says Jadakiss runs the company with his father, Bob Phillips, and his son, Jaewon — three generations under one roof. A 2022 announcement from the company noted that Phillips has worked in coffee since 1977, meaning the brand rests on trade experience rather than a borrowed celebrity face. Its current offering is the Beijo medium dark roast, sold whole bean or ground.
Abel Tesfaye built his coffee project around ancestry. Blue Bottle teamed with the singer and his XO label in 2023 on Samra Origins, named for his mother and rooted in Ethiopian coffee custom. The line outgrew that partnership: Nespresso now carries a Samra Origins range that spans the Togetherness Blend, machines and accessories while keeping the Ethiopian through-line intact.
Issa Rae put her money into bricks and mortar instead. The Los Angeles Times lists her as a co-owner of Hilltop Coffee + Kitchen with Yonnie Hagos and Ajay Relan, a Los Angeles operation organized around coffee, food, creativity and neighborhood — hospitality equity rather than packaged goods.
Angela Yee has leaned into the community angle. Coffee Uplifts People says the radio host started the Brooklyn company in 2020 with Tony Forte and LaRon Batchelor. The business reports a supply chain that is entirely people of color and buys from Ethiopia, Peru, Indonesia, Mexico, Kenya and Brazil, among others. CUP sells online and runs a Brooklyn café, making Yee an operator rather than a short-term collaborator.
The pattern reaches past entertainment. Jimmy Butler converted the coffee habit he cultivated inside the 2020 NBA bubble into BIGFACE and eventually a café in Miami’s Design District. The Washington Post has tracked the growth of his specialty coffee operation, and Axios reported that the first permanent Miami location opened in December 2024.
Grindin arrives with an advantage most celebrity products lack: nobody had to invent a backstory. The name has carried cultural weight for over twenty years, and the early-morning coffee habit the pair describe ties the product to how they say they actually operate. In a field crowded with famous-name launches, that consistency is worth something.
The brand is one more sign that hip-hop entrepreneurship has traveled well past apparel, spirits and endorsement checks — coffee has become another route for artists to convert routine, heritage and cultural capital into a business people buy from every morning.
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