The Legend of Bubba: Bubba Kush

If you’ve been dibbling and dabbling with cannabis, I am almost sure you have heard of Bubba Kush. I mean, who hasn’t?!, but if you haven’t we’ll fill you in on some of the details.

Bubba Kush is one of cannabis’ most renown strains. Hell, it’s almost infamous, as its notoriety changed the game, nearly driving the public to madness; but we will touch on that later. For now, let’s take a trip back in time and talk a bit about where this Kush came from.

Kush, the surname of many well known strains, is actually a term given to describe the dank weed in circulation, circa 1970 in North America. Strains from India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan found their way here as seeds and were cultivated not so long after.

Although there is no uniform agreement on who gave Kush its name, master grower Matt Berger, aka Bubba, claims his friend dubbed one of his phenos “Kush” sometime in the 80’s, unknowing to the fact that the name was taken by Hindu Kush, which also happens to be a mountain range in India, where Cannabis Indica grows in nature.

 

Bubba and Kush

Berger grew Kush through his college years, learning more and more about cannabis and horticulture as he went. By a random stroke of fate sometime during a late Marti-Gras night, Berger was gifted some Northern Light Seeds by another grower from Humbolt County that just Bubba just happened  to meet partying ^[1].
Berger non the less popped the seeds and started experimenting with the strain. After he moved to a small apartment in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, his new strain, “Bubba” was about to get some unexpected revamping. His Kush strain hermied, changing sexes sometime during its growth, pollinating a Bubba cut, and thus creating Bubba Kush; but this is only the tip if the iceberg, the madness comes next!

One of Berger’s roommates, Josh D, was a good friend of Cypress Hills, and frequently had members of the group come through to his apartment for a baggie of fire. On a fateful day sometime after his Bubba harvest, B-Real, a member of Cypress Hills visited Berger to purchase some product, only to find that Berger’s new budda had seeds!

Bubba’s Big Break

Despite the seeds, the flowers turned out to pack quite a punch; so much punch that Cypress Hills started talking about the Bubba Kush in their songs. Bubba Kush went viral off of Cypress Hills hype up, so viral that other rappers, musicians, and actors in the industry had to try it. Berger himself names Dr. Dre and Snoop in particular, giving them credit for the jump into popular hyperspace.

Bubba’s Bubba became the who’s who of weed, fetching nearly $10,000 CAD a pound, spanning all of North America, and even across the ocean all the way to the mainland of Europe ^[2]. The demand for Bubba was so high that Berger quotes: “People paid me months in advance in order to keep from missing their turn with the crops,”; it was just that serious.

At the time, Berger wasn’t the only grower with Kush. In fact, there were so many so called “copycat” strains, that Berger and his circle of growers created the name “OG” Kush to differentiate between the two Kushes, but there’s more! Berger inevitably gave out a few cuttings of Bubba Kush.

In my mind, that was the beginning of the end of his reign as Kush King. Berger was the only grower with Bubba Kush for a time, but with every great rise, there is a fall, and before Bubba knew it, there was an influx of other copycat strains that eventually drove the price down from $10k to around $8,000 CAD. Try the 2021 version of Pre-98 Bubba Kush right here, for much less! :^)

Today’s Bubba Kush

Isn’t that insane? At $8,000 CAD in today’s money, we estimate that Bubba Kush was selling for nearly 50 a gram from unofficial retailers. I have no idea how someone could justify paying that much for a doob’s worth of weed, that’s jsut plain silly.

Now I bet you are wondering, what does this trip down Strain Memory Lane have to do with me? Well for a better understanding of course! Besides that, Bubba Kush gave rise to many of our favourite strains here at High Grade Aid.

One of our Flagship strains Death Aid is a direct result of everything that happened pre-98! Somewhere along the line, Bubba Kush made it’s way into Canada, eventually being tinkered with by one of our growers to create Death Bubba, another one of our flagship strains.

Death Bubba was inevitably crossed with our Pink Aid, giving rise to the Death Aid we have in store currently. Everything is connected in this world in one way or another, sometimes it takes looking at life through a different lens to see that.

We couldn’t be happier with the way things turned out. Our Death strains are some of the strongest Indicas around, paying homage to their long lost kin, as Berger claims the original Bubba Kush (pre-98 Bubba to some people) has died out with the turn of time.

Our buddies at Weedmaps got a chance to interview the one and only Bubba a few years back, getting his take on how everything went down ^[3].

 

Footnotes

1) Legendary Master Grower Bubba Kush
2) A Legendary Indica: BUBBA KUSH
3) The History of Bubba Kush