Fela Kuti smoked ritually and said so publicly. The Nigerian state used it to call his politics ridiculous. Ahead of his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, Seun and Femi Kuti on what the plant meant to their father, and what it cost him.

Sometimes it takes a while to get there, but in the end, at last, there is a reward. This November, when the lights come up at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, Fela Anikulapo Kuti‘s name will be etched in fire into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Beyond the bronze of history and the pageantry of the showbiz industry, the news carries an undeniable poetic justice: honored with the Early Influence Award, he is the first solo African artist to receive the distinction, a milestone that follows the Lifetime Achievement Award, a sort of honorary Grammy, that the Recording Academy granted him and that his children accepted in January.

For a man who made dissent his primary language and the Kalakuta Republic (his micronation in his own home!) his sovereign stronghold, these institutional laurels arrive at a time when the Western world seems to have finally figured out that Afrobeat was not a passing fad, but one of the world’s foundational musical forms. The paradox of honoring someone whom those in power relentlessly persecuted finds its clearest interpretation today in the voices of his own heirs, Seun and Femi Kuti, who have taken on the task of safeguarding their father’s legacy, an artist who never shied away from the political weight of his work, nor from his particular relationship with cannabis culture.

But no: the academies’ belated recognition does not alter the fact that music has always swayed between rhythmic genius and social agitation. For Seun Kuti, the younger of the brothers, the news feels like an act of justice long overdue: “I feel like the recognition is long overdue, for sure, because Afrobeat has been around for a while, you know, and it’s one of the world’s foremost sounds, so it’s been a long time coming, knowing that throughout Fela’s life he never got any kind of establishment recognition.”

At the same time, the musician adds that the current landscape feels like an unmistakable sign of the times, a symptom that contemporary audiences are not only looking for empty entertainment, but that “people also want substance with the music” and demand “to be educated with art.” In a complementary vein, but with much drier pragmatism, Femi Kuti prefers to strip the issue of any mysticism: “I don’t think it’s long overdue. I think it took as long as it was necessary. Don’t forget, it’s not an African award, it’s an American award. It probably took that amount of time for them to be totally convinced.” By that logic, the delay simply reflects a foreign process of deliberation.

“He Smoked Ritually”

Within the mythology of Fela Kuti, cannabis was never merely a recreational element or a cliché of artistic bohemia, but rather became a foundational pillar of his creative framework and, also, a tool of cultural resistance. At a time when global prohibition shaped common sense (what else is new, sound familiar?), the leader of Nigerian music was already viewing the plant through a medical and ritual lens.

In that sense, Seun clearly recalls the sacred dimension that surrounded weed use in everyday family life, defining his father’s practice through a strong, let’s say, mystical connection: “I know he smoked ritually, Fela smoked a lot, you know, and that was his thing. For him [it] was also a spiritual thing of connecting when he was going on, as he called it, astral travel.” If that close bond between African music icon and the plant had to be summed up, Femi’s answer is direct: “He loved it.”

This mystical vision directly intersected with an explicit defense of the herb’s beneficial properties, anticipating the current wave of legalization and medical use in the West by several decades. Femi Kuti explains that his father’s position on substances was crystal clear and was expressed openly, both in the privacy of his home and at the microphone during his public appearances.

In fact, his father often explained that cannabis helped him in different areas of his life, while at the same time drawing a line when it came to hard drugs: “He warned us about taking hard drugs. He was very against hard drugs. He said hard drugs kill the sexual drive and cannabis helped him sexually and musically. He said this not just to us, but he always said this openly. It was a known fact that this was his view,” Femi says.

The Pretext

However, this transparent and pioneering relationship with the plant quickly became the perfect pretext for the Nigerian state’s repressive apparatus. From there, they chipped away at his message and conspired against his work. Successive military dictatorships and civilian governments found in cannabis use the ideal excuse to impose censorship and imprisonment that, at their core, sought to silence an incendiary political message. The legend’s sons lived through this constant tension between their father’s individual freedom and state persecution with a deep sense of confusion in their youth.

Femi recalls the outrage of watching the local establishment exalt major figures in American music and film, who openly used all kinds of substances, as cultural heroes, while in Nigeria the plant was used as a hammer against dissent: “I think this was very difficult for us… For me it was always confusing, because many of the great American artists, musicians, actors were all smoking or even taking hard drugs and they were all seen as heroes back here. Bob Marley, James Brown, name them,” Femi explains.

This tragic and magnetic daily life inside their communal bunker was preserved for posterity in seminal works such as the documentary Fela Kuti: Music Is the Weapon (1982), filmed within the walls of Kalakuta itself, or the exhaustive historical overview offered by Finding Fela! (2014), where the archival footage brings the true cost of his insurrection to light.

Two Sons, Two Answers

Over time, the weight of that stigma and the lessons learned from persecution shaped the two brothers’ adulthoods and subsequent professional development in very different ways. Femi Kuti, for one, made the drastic decision to stop smoking entirely after having smoked in his youth. His decision was not driven by morality, but by a strategy of purely political self-defense: “I didn’t want people to say cannabis was the reason for my political view, because they used it as a weapon against my father. They said because he was smoking he had… they called it ‘ridiculous ideas.’ Meanwhile, he was speaking the truth. He was speaking our reality.”

“They said because he was smoking he had… they called it ‘ridiculous ideas.’ Meanwhile, he was speaking the truth.”

Femi Kuti

By contrast, Seun Kuti integrated the plant into his creative process in a way that evokes his father’s legacy, although adapted to the demands of maturity. The younger member of the dynasty sees cannabis as a fundamental ally in his meditation process: “I would say cannabis has always been a great companion in my own meditative process, and trying to relate to my own subconscious, and enhancing my understanding, to make my music and things like that.”

Nevertheless, although he admits that over the years he has found it increasingly difficult to smoke during technical performance sessions in the studio or onstage, the plant still plays a significant role in the earliest stage of his work, where ideas begin to develop before becoming finished musical compositions.

The upcoming November ceremony will finally settle a debate that had already been settled long ago in the world’s countercultural music circles. Fela Kuti loved the plant because he understood it as part of a bodily and mental sovereignty that the system tried to break. Here, now, through the intertwined testimony of his sons, stands the true triumph of the king of Afrobeat, which lies not in receiving a statuette or securing a place in a museum, but in the survival of a family fire that continues to use music as a tool for popular education and cannabis as a banner of freedom, freedom, freedom.

Cover photo by Ian Watts, via Shore Fire Media

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A plant nutrition schedule is the process of providing plants with the nutrients they need at the right time in an accurate and balanced way to support their growth, development, and production. Just as humans need different nutrients at different stages of life, plants also need specific nutrients throughout germination, vegetative growth, blooming, and fruit production.

A well-planned nutrition strategy ensures plants receive the proper nutrients at the right time, which leads to stronger growth, higher yields, and better adaptability to environmental stress. This is where a methodical feeding approach makes all the difference. It provides growers with a reliable road map for producing stronger, more productive plants year after year.

What Nutrients Are Essential for Plant Growth?

Plants need 16 vital nutrients to grow and develop to their maximum ability. These nutrients can be divided into macronutrients and micronutrients according to how much the plant needs. 

Potassium, phosphorus, and nitrogen are the primary macronutrients needed in larger quantities for plant growth and development. Macronutrients provide the building blocks for energy transfer, metabolic processes, and plant structure. 

Plants also require lesser amounts of micronutrients such as iron, manganese, zinc, copper, boron, molybdenum, and chlorine for different metabolic activities and enzyme functions. Micronutrients are important for specific enzyme activities and biochemical processes necessary for plant growth, development, and nutrient consumption. 

These nutrients all have different functions. Nitrogen stimulates vegetative, leafy development. Both root systems and flowering are made stronger by phosphorus. Potassium improves immunity to illness and stress and controls water absorption. Yellowing leaves, weak stems, or poor fruit and flower growth are immediate symptoms of any one of these being absent or out of balance.

The Importance of Plant Nutrient Schedules

A nutrient schedule is an organized plan specifying the amounts and timing of nutrients plants should receive at different stages of growth. Proper plant nutrient schedules help eliminate guesswork and ensure that nutrient delivery aligns with the plant’s changing needs. 

Without a proper nutrient schedule, plants can suffer from imbalances, toxicities, or nutritional deficiencies that can block growth and lower yield.

A proper plant nutrient schedule must include:

• When to increase nitrogen levels during vegetative growth to help leaves and stems develop.
• When to switch to potassium and phosphorus as plants approach flowering.
• How much taper feeding should be reduced before harvest to preserve quality and flavor.
• How to change concentrations based on the plant response.

This type of framework removes the unpredictability associated with growing and creates consistency that plants react favorably to.

What are the Benefits of Following a Plant Nutrient Schedule?

Growers who follow a consistent feeding schedule usually observe measurable improvements in almost every stage of plant performance. Here is how a plant nutrient schedule could benefit your cultivation:

• Stronger Root Development

A well-balanced early nutrition promotes strong, healthy root systems. Plants with strong roots are better able to absorb water and nutrients during each following stage of growth.

• Improved Disease Resistance

Plants with adequate nutrition develop denser tissue and more powerful defenses. As a result, they are much less prone to common diseases, mold, and pests that feed on weak, malnourished growth.

Plants can reach their maximum genetic potential when nutrition availability is matched to each growth stage. This leads to larger foliage, healthier flowers, and overall more plentiful, higher-quality harvests.

• Better Resource Efficiency

Applying nutrients only when plants actually require them reduces fertilizer waste and runoff. This reduces unnecessary costs and the environmental effect of each growing cycle.

• More Predictable Outcomes

Maintaining consistency during growing cycles enables problem-solving, results tracking, and refining feeding techniques. This leads to more reliable outcomes with each successive harvest.

It can be expensive and harmful to the environment to overfeed plants. Growers can minimize waste and runoff while maintaining ideal growth conditions by using structured plant nutrition schedules to apply exactly the amounts that are required.

How Do Nutrient Needs Change Throughout Growth Stages?

The fact that plant nutritional needs vary throughout time is one of the main reasons nutrient schedules work so well. Below are the different growth stages of plants that need to be maintained by a proper nutrient schedule:

During their early growth stages, plants need relatively small amounts of nutrients. At this point, the focus should be on:

• Gentle nutrient concentrations
• Root establishment
• Balanced nutrient availability

Overfeeding can harm sensitive roots and limit growth.

As plants start to grow leaves and stems, nitrogen becomes more important. Proper nutrition during this stage provides the following advantages:

• Strong stem development
• Larger leaf production
• Enhanced energy generation

Nitrogen is necessary for photosynthesis and the synthesis of chlorophyll, which fuel fast growth.

• Flowering and Fruiting Stage

Plants’ nutritional priorities change when they actually start to reproduce. Nitrogen becomes less important than phosphorus and potassium.

Proper nutrition during fruiting and flowering can:

• Increase the growth of flowers
• Enhance the size and quality of the fruit
• Support increased yields
• Improve taste and appearance

A carefully designed plant nutrient schedule helps ensure these changing requirements are met efficiently.

The Best Ways to Make Efficient Plant Nutrient Schedules

• Understand the plant nutritional requirements and change feeding schedules based on the type and species being grown.
• Change nutrient ratios according to growth stages. Increase nitrogen during vegetative growth and potassium and phosphorus during flowering or fruiting.
• Regularly test the soil or growing medium to identify nutrient levels, deficiencies, and pH imbalances.
• Use premium fertilizers and nutrient solutions that offer a balanced mix of macro and micronutrients.
• Keep accurate records of plant performance and feeding schedules to identify what works best and make sensible adjustments.

Conclusion

A well-planned nutrient plan is one of the best ways of improving plant health and growth. By providing important nutrients in the right proportions and at the right times, growers can support stronger roots, healthier foliage, better flowering, and increased yields. A carefully planned nutrient schedule can have a huge impact on achieving healthy and productive plants.

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For our 50th anniversary, we handed the plant to the artists making its most striking images and got out of the way. It started with a family portrait that took 144 hours to draw. Check out all of the art and pictures from our 50th Anniversary print mag below. Light up, scroll and enjoy.

This content originally appeared in High Times’ 50th Anniversary print issue. Get yours here.

It took Liam Wesley Goodman 144 hours to draw the family portrait.

Sixteen days, thirty-six faces, some rendered as small as a single square inch, every one in colored pencil. For the 50th anniversary issue, High Times asked Goodman to put fifty years of cannabis culture into a single image: the founders, editors, writers, activists, musicians and icons who built this magazine and the movement around it.

“Very little room for error,” he says of working that small. “As the drawing progresses, the odds of making a mistake increase.” Some of his reference photos dated back to the late ’70s, tiny and low-resolution, extremely difficult to see in detail. He wanted to do each person justice. If there had been no deadline, he says, he would have aimed for fifty faces, or even a hundred.

Goodman has spent eight years and more than nine thousand hours drawing this plant. He came to it in 2017, when a vapor lounge in Toronto asked him for “weed art” and he was surprised to find how little realistic cannabis-flower work existed. It clicked that he could carve out that path. His first vision was a space filled with four hundred and twenty hand-drawn flowers, each showing off the diversity the plant is capable of.

“They can outlaw the plant but they can’t outlaw the art.”

Liam Wesley Goodman

He was on fire. It became an obsession with mastery, and he has been chasing the challenge since, moving from twenty-hour drawings to sixty-hour drawings to the hundred-and-fifty-hour pieces he makes now. Flowers to trichomes to hash. Detail in realism, he says, is a practice that allows for constant improvement through every drawing. Because he works mostly from reference photos, his interest is in recreating every single thing he can see, controlling which colors to select, blend and layer. “Every detail is a different colored pencil mark, every mark is intentional, every intention a purpose.”

The mural carries more than craft. Goodman calls it wild to think of being part of history within the culture, and the feeling that runs underneath the pride is loss.

“Saddened that friends who believed in me are no longer here to see this achievement. Proud to have those who still support me, strangers who believed in me early on, and purchased originals and prints to keep the vision alive.”

Liam Wesley Goodman

He hopes people notice who is missing as much as who made it in. The mural, he says, leaves out other important individuals who shaped the magazine and the culture over fifty years: photographers, artists, breeders, farmers, doctors, researchers, authors, leaders, advocates and activists who all played their part and deserve it just as much.

His one piece of advice to a young artist inspired by his work and by this magazine is the same rule he draws by. “Draw what you see.”

High Times in Vision

Goodman’s mural anchored a larger idea in the anniversary issue: that after fifty years, the most interesting thing you can still do with cannabis is look at it closely. Weed talks back through images. A flash, a frame, a swirl of ink and resin.

So we gathered a crew twisting the plant into new shapes, giving it faces, giving it stories. High, low, underground, loud. Five visions of the same plant, running from Los Angeles lifestyle shoots to European grow rooms, from Uruguayan gardens to Italian rosin labs.

Matca Films

From lifestyle shoots in Los Angeles to trichome stacking in European grow rooms, Matca’s photography explores cannabis in its many forms, always aiming to reflect the culture with authenticity and strength. Their work spans the “Art of Trichomes Science” series, hash studies like Pedro Masetti’s Hash Ball, and the classic bud-and-resin shots that made the plant worth photographing in the first place. Matca also shot this issue’s cover.

Ramiro Mordcovich & Universal Growing

Through the lens of photographer Ramiro Mordcovich, we step inside Universal Growing, a project dedicated to exploring the plant through innovation, sustainability and global connection. From vibrant flower portraits to the quiet details of cultivation, these images capture cannabis as both craft and culture, rooted in tradition yet looking toward the future. All varieties shown were cultivated by Nani and Nacho Viano for Universal Growing’s R&D department, among them Full Zest, Brrberry and BoofScotti.

Lelen Ruete

Lelen Ruete is a Latin American photographer whose work blends fashion-editorial flair with the raw beauty of cannabis. Through projects like Herbarium and Magia, and her ongoing work with The Rabbit Studio, she has become one of the world’s leading cannabis visual storytellers. Her images celebrate the plant’s colors, textures and spirit, destigmatizing cannabis while capturing its surreal, botanical elegance. The work shown here draws from her “Ladies,” “Libre” and “Magia” series, with growers including Juan Vaz and the Uruguayan clubs behind the flowers in frame.

Talking Terps

“Skipping Stoned” is illustrated by Sunflower Form, the moniker of an illustrator whose work grows from a love of nature and the radical act of expression. Using traditional methods and the visual language of underground comics, he created the piece with Talking Terps co-founder and conceptual artist HopeLord. First released in color as a print in 2020, it is reimagined here in black and white for the 50th anniversary, symbolizing the idea that what goes around comes around. Talking Terps, which appeared on the cover of the 2022 Art Issue, has since grown into a cultural force that now extends into cannabis collaborations, including with Alien Labs in California and Florida on the horizon.

TerpShotz

TerpShotz is a project created in Italy in 2017 from the union of two big passions, cannabis and photography. Through that union it tells the story of the plant, hoping to change the way people see it and help the world appreciate it with more respect and curiosity. Shot so close that hash rosin turns into terrain, the work here runs across rosin and water hash from growers and hashmakers around the world.

One Plant, Many Eyes

Different countries, different tools, one plant. What ties Goodman’s colored pencil to Ruete’s editorial eye to a hash-rosin macro shot in Italy is the same thing that has run through this magazine for half a century: the conviction that cannabis is worth looking at closely, and worth taking seriously as a subject.

Fifty years in, that is still the whole idea. Look closer.

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Woodstock is one of those words that still carries heat. It’s the 1969 festival mythos, the long shadow it cast over American counterculture, and the way cannabis quietly threaded through that era’s music, politics, and refusal to play along. It’s also a real place—Woodstock, New York—where the vibe isn’t a slogan so much as a lived-in current that runs through every record shop, gallery, and mountain road.

For over half a century, “Woodstock” has meant something: a moment when peace, love, and music collided with a generation’s refusal to accept the official story about war, freedom, or the plant that became a symbol of rebellion. Now, Woodstock is also a cannabis brand trying to do something harder than printing their iconic dove and guitar on packaging: deliver products that feel worthy of the name.

In a legal market full of loud promises and short attention spans, Woodstock Cannabis is staking its claim on whole-plant quality, culture-forward storytelling, and a consumer experience that’s more than the THC count. The mission isn’t nostalgia. It’s delivering on the values that made Woodstock matter in the first place—authenticity, community, and questioning authority. 

Questioning Authority Since 1969

If there’s a through-line connecting Woodstock the festival to Woodstock the cannabis brand, it’s the same instinct that built High Times: questioning authority.

Martin Mills, who helps manage the Woodstock Cannabis brand in New York and New Jersey, put it plainly: “High Times was questioning what the norm was on cannabis for as long as the Woodstock generation.” Both brands were born from the same cultural movement that insisted cannabis wasn’t what the government claimed it was.

That shared DNA matters because it’s not just branding—it’s mission. For more than a century, cannabis has been wrapped in prohibition lies. High Times carried the counter-narrative through the media. Woodstock carried it through music and culture. Now, in the legal era, Woodstock Cannabis carries it through meticulous product quality and, of course, music and the arts. 

The 1969 Woodstock Festival, where cannabis, music, and counterculture converged into a movement that would define a generation.

Honoring the Whole Plant

The Woodstock generation didn’t just show up for three days of music in 1969. They showed up to reject what was happening around them: war, injustice, racism, and a system that told them what to think. Cannabis was part of that rejection—a plant that represented freedom, community, and a refusal to play by rules designed to control.

Woodstock Cannabis isn’t trying to recreate 1969. It’s trying to honor what that moment represented: authenticity over hype, community over profit, and a belief that culture—music, art, conversation—can change the world.

That philosophy shows up in how the brand thinks about its products. “We focus on whole plant products,” Mills explained. That means full-spectrum thinking: terpenes, minor cannabinoids, not just THC potency. It means pre-rolls made with “whole flower”—never shake, never trim. It means vapes made with live resin or whole-cured resin, not distillate shortcuts with added flavoring.

“We don’t add potent THC or terpenes from other plants,” Mills said. “We add the extract that’s coming from the material that we’re using to make it.” 

That whole-plant philosophy shows up across Woodstock’s product line: pre-rolls filled with whole flower (never shake or trim), full-spectrum vapes using live resin and whole cured resin, and a hemp beverage line that layers minor cannabinoids with functional mushrooms like Lion’s mane, reishi, and cordyceps. It’s cannabis designed for the effect, not just the number.

It’s a standard people can understand immediately, and it’s a way to bring the conversation back to the plant itself rather than letting the experience get hijacked by potency culture.

The pitch isn’t “ours is better.” It’s “know what you’re buying.” In a market where shelves are crowded, and consumers get rushed, that distinction matters.

Never shake, never trim: Woodstock’s pre-rolls use whole flower, and their vapes prioritize live resin and whole cured resin over distillate shortcuts.

When Music Does the Marketing 

Woodstock can’t separate itself from music without losing the plot. Mills doesn’t treat music like a marketing theme. He treats it like the most natural environment for cannabis to make sense.

“Nothing is better than smoking a joint at a concert and listening to music,” he said, describing music as a way to “break down the barriers” and help people seek something beyond their daily routine. “Seeking is the backbone to revolution. Seeking is the backbone to discovering music, and seeking is the backbone to discovering cannabis.”

That matters because, as Mills pointed out, dispensaries remain confusing for many shoppers. “When a customer comes into a dispensary, it’s confusing,” he said. “There’s not a lot of brand recognition. There’s not a lot of knowledge around all the products available… People don’t know the difference between a distillate vape and a full-spectrum resin or rosin vape.”

So Woodstock’s job—beyond showing up on dispensary shelves—is to educate in the places people actually feel open: live music, cultural events, moments where someone might ask the right question and get a real answer. Education without a lecture. The old-school way: in the crowd, in the culture, with the music loud enough to make you feel open.

Woodstock Goods hemp beverage line now features six flavors ranging from 2.5mg to 10mg, enhanced with functional mushrooms and minor cannabinoids.

How the Outlaws Became the Stewards

Mills’ personal path to Woodstock is very on-theme for the era he fell in love with. He discovered the 1969 Woodstock documentary as a kid—”maybe 13, maybe 12″—and that first glimpse of cannabis on screen landed hard. “After seeing that movie, I was obsessed with 60s culture. I was obsessed with the music of that culture,” he said.

He lived on tour with Phish in the late ’90s and early 2000s, worked in cannabis in California during the prohibition era, and eventually landed in Woodstock, New York, with his wife, designer Erin Katigan. They started a “psychedelic rock and roll hotel” and lived what Mills called “the Woodstock lifestyle in real time.”

When New York legalization arrived, Mills connected with Radio Woodstock and helped create Cannastock—a series of cannabis events that introduced the Hudson Valley to what adult-use culture could look like. That led to a role managing the Woodstock Cannabis brand in New York and New Jersey, acting as both cultural steward and quality control voice.

His story matters not because it’s exceptional, but because it’s representative. Prohibition punished people like Mills for decades. Legalization gave them a chance to do it right—to build something that honors the plant, the culture, and the people who carried both through the dark years.

New Cherry Pomelo (Drift) and Salted Melon (Bliss) have 10mg of hemp derived THC for consumers seeking a stronger dose.

Woodstock in 2026: Same Values, New Formats

Woodstock is bigger than one person, one product line, or one moment in 1969. The name has survived because it represents a feeling people still want: community, music, rebellion, and the kind of freedom you can’t legislate into existence.

The question for the legal era is whether “Woodstock” can stand for quality, too—whether it can become a signal on shelves that means something beyond nostalgia. Woodstock Cannabis is trying to answer that with whole-flower standards, full-spectrum extraction choices, and hemp beverages designed for the next wave of social cannabis use.

The dispensary shelves carry those whole-plant pre-rolls and vapes. The hemp beverages reach beyond dispensaries entirely—available in select states for people looking to replace alcohol or unwind with something cleaner. This month, the Woodstock Goods’ beverage line is expanding with two new delicious 10mg flavors, Cherry Pomelo and Salted Melon. 

The brand isn’t trying to recreate the past. It’s trying to prove that the values from that era—authenticity, community, questioning authority—still matter when you’re making product decisions in 2025.

If Woodstock keeps treating the name like a responsibility instead of a shortcut, the future looks less like a throwback and more like a continuation: new formats, new markets, same cultural spine.

To learn more about Woodstock—the town, the culture, and the brand—check out High Times’ video on YouTube.

All photos courtesy of the Woodstock Festival Archive and Woodstock Cannabis Co

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