The World is Ours

After Meg, Head Brewer at Rock Bottom, and I agreed on tackling a Brut IPA for our collaboration, I suggested we infuse the product with honey (honey...huny...get it?) and either honeysuckle nectar, elderflower, or passion fruit. Over subsequent weeks I traveled to Rock Bottom and conducted taste tests with some of the infusions and determined that passion fruit was the perfect marriage with the honey. My transition from "I don't really like beer" to creating and approving a flavor profile for my own beer was admittedly lightening quick.

The next step, after establishing the flavor profile, was coming up with a name. My early suggestions included QUEEN OF HEARTS, THAT BITCH (a callback to my very first website), and SPECIAL GIRL (REAL GOOD GIRL)—a reference to the Q-Tip song "Vivrant Thang." Meg pointed out that several craft beers were already named QUEEN OF HEARTS, so I axed that one. I was leaning heavily on THAT BITCH, but I wasn't 100% sold. I needed a name that would be iconic and, thus, dictate iconic pop-cultural imagery which is decidedly my lane. That's when the Al Pacino cult classic movie "Scarface" came to mind.

Toy companies and 3D fabricators alike have recreated the famous gold statue that guarded Scarface's pool many times. It's very recognizable, especially in the hip-hop community, and primarily the "THE WORLD IS YOURS" mantra that wraps around the globe. And nobody has ever recreated that statue with actual models that I've found, especially not with Black women, so it was intriguing, ambitious, and perfect. I slightly altered the words to read THE WORLD IS OURS to cement the celebratory theme of Black womanhood.

For the photoshoot, I enlisted model and designer Nami Bey, singer Clara Kent, and YouTube beauty guru Monique Hamlett to be my golden muses. Instead of relying on post-editing to make the three women look gold, I actually bronzed them with Mehron metallic body paint coupled with matching gold bodysuits and headscarves to achieve the proper effect. The models even painted themselves and each other when I had to keep stepping away to adjust the lighting or cut fabric. I also spray painted an oversized beach ball gold for the globe, but replaced it in post with a 3D rendered orb. The synergy and sisterhood that developed between me, my photo assistant Kimberly, and my three muses is just a much a highlight of this end product, to me, as the product itself.

After experimenting with more celestial backdrops intended as a nod towards Afrofuturism, I settled on a Miami-themed backdrop as an added visual references to "Scarface."

Fresh Fest took place on August 11, 2018 on the Northside of Pittsburgh. Record numbers of attendees happily swarmed Nova Place the entire day to sip samples, enjoy the live performances (including one by THE WORLD IS OURS muse Clara Kent), and revel in a historic meet-up of Black artists, entrepreneurs, entertainers, and, of course, craft beer aficionados of all races.

A stickler for presentation, I treated my table setup for Fresh Fest as an extension of the theme and brand. The setup included an Ankara-print tablecloth from Ujamma Collective, a framed poster displaying my name and social media information, a vase wrapped in gold fabric (a leftover from the photoshoot) overflowing with faux sunflowers and hops (the flowers of the hop plant Humulus lupulus that are used primarily as stability agent in beer), THE WORLD IS OURS buttons, and the star of the show: dozens of 4-packs of THE WORLD IS OURS cans.

I had the time of my life at Fresh Fest; I’ll never forget it. The overwhelming love for me and my work, the camaraderie amongst people in the beverage/brewing industry and the artist-collaborators, the support I received from my friends who served as volunteers and ambassadors for the day ("dressed in all Black like the Omen" - word to Lil' Kim) and the attendees—it was a magnificent, monumental, highly successful event. I was particularly touched by everyone who stopped by my table to gush over the design, the name, the taste, and the concept and grateful to everyone who interviewed me, snapped selfies with me, or just ran up to the table like kids in a candy store to take pics with the cans (and begged me to let them take a four-pack home). My most triumphant takeaway was all the Black women who told me how next level it was, and how dope it felt, to see women that look like them on this kind of packaging.

I ordered 100 buttons to sell at Fresh Fest as a collector's item. They sold out two hours prior to the end of the event.

A few days after Fresh Fest, 100 limited-edition silver halide prints went on sale online at either 11" x 17" or 24" x 36". I chose Kodak ENDURA Premier Metallic Paper for a glossy, highly saturated, stunningly vivid metallic appearance. Each print, which I sold exclusively online, was made-to-order and signed and numbered before shipping. A digital version of the print was also curated to VSCO Selects, "a showcase of exceptional content from around the globe" by Visual Supply Co (my third VSCO honor at the time, my fifth to date).

THE WORLD IS OURS merchandise, including t-shirts, hoodies, shower curtains, beach towels, tote bags, and throw pillows are currently available at theworldisours.co.