A deal, not a feature
In 2019, in the middle of the DEDICATION and SPORT run, I did a brand partnership with KONG WRAPS — the hemp wrap company. Not a one-off promo post. A real partnership with real deliverables, and I was the operator on the deal, not a face that got booked.
The connection came through the Broadus family relationship — the same orbit that produced the Film School Productions video era. That's how deals actually happen at that level: not through a cold email, but because you've been in rooms long enough that when a brand needs a credible face for a product, somebody says your name. The Code Black timeline logs it exactly that way: brokered through the Broadus family relationship. Operator framing, not a cosign.
That photo is from my own archive — the product in hand, hemp wraps, exactly as sold. Every archive photo on the site ships with a metadata sidecar marking it ai_generated: false. In 2026 that distinction matters: this is a camera, not a model.
The deliverables
Two pieces of branded content came out of the partnership, both preserved at full resolution in the archive:
- How To Roll A Kong Hemp Blunt ft. SuperCoolDaj — the flagship piece, 4:46, me fronting the brand's core product demo under my SuperCoolDaj handle.
- KONG WRAPS Presents: How To Roll A Kong — the 1:58 short cut for social.
And the relationship wasn't camera-only. There's an archived clip from my own feed — Brodie from KongWraps pulling up to the studio — because that's what a working partnership looks like between shoots: the brand's people in your space, checking what you're building.
What being "the operator" meant
Here's the distinction I want independent artists to take from this, because it's the whole reason I'm writing it down.
A feature is: they book you, you show up, you get paid, you leave. An operator does the deal: negotiates what gets made, whose channels it runs on, how the brand and the artist brand touch each other, and what each side walks away owning. On KONG WRAPS I was the operator. The content featured me, but the deal structure ran through me.
Three things that made it work:
- The relationship preceded the ask. By the time KONG WRAPS was on the table, the Broadus-orbit relationship was years deep — videos shot, studio time shared, trust built. Deals ride on rails that already exist.
- The brand fit was honest. A hemp wrap company and a rapper whose content already lived in that culture. No reach, no costume. Audiences smell a mismatched endorsement instantly.
- I kept my own copies. The brand's channels were the distribution, but every deliverable lives on my infrastructure at videos.dajai.io today. Seven years later the partnership content is still citable because I archived it like an operator, not talent.
Where it sits in the story
2019 was the densest year of the early operation: DEDICATION (8 freestyles), the SPORT album, the AVN red carpet, the KONG WRAPS launch, and the opening of the Film School × Bosslady era — all in one push. The Code Black timeline lays out the full sequence with the receipts attached. KONG WRAPS was the proof that the music relationships could convert into brand business — the first time Code Black functioned as a deal shop, not just a label.
FAQ
What was the KONG WRAPS partnership?
A 2019 brand partnership between KONG WRAPS (hemp wraps) and DAJAI, producing branded video content including the "How To Roll A Kong Hemp Blunt ft. SuperCoolDaj" demo and a social short. It launched during the DEDICATION / SPORT era.
How did the deal come together?
Through the Broadus family relationship — the same network behind the Film School Productions video era. The Code Black archive frames it precisely: brokered through the relationship, with DAJAI as operator on the deal, not a cosign.
What does "operator framing, not a cosign" mean?
It means the claim is about work, not anointment. Nobody's name is being borrowed for weight. The partnership happened, the deliverables exist, the archive preserves them with verifiable metadata — and that documented record is the entire claim.
Where can I see the KONG WRAPS content?
The archival cuts are at videos.dajai.io — the full ft. SuperCoolDaj demo, the 1:58 short, and the studio pull-up clip — and the partnership is logged on the Code Black timeline at dajai.io/cba/timeline.