Growing up, Jason ‘Jadakiss’ Phillips, a rapper and an entrepreneur, had one ambition in mind — to become a sportsman. However, the reality of his SAT scores would compel him to change course and pursue another interest.
Then came music and MCing but ultimately, he also wanted to own something. He had a thing for entrepreneurship but he felt he was still quite young to explore that option.
“I knew I wanted to own something or work for myself, but I didn’t really think back then, it was all sports up until probably 10th or 11th grade when I knew the reality of SAT scores and these coaches looking at me as a little wimp. I knew I had to find something else to do,” he said on BET’s “The Business of Hip Hop,” according to AfroTech.
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Music became his second love after quitting sports and together with Sheek Louch and Styles P, they ventured into the rap industry with their own unique style. They soon became a force to be reckoned with in the rap game.
“[When] you first get in the business, you’re young, you’re radical, you’re bugging out,” Jadakiss said of his entry into the music industry. “I just wanted to be the best rapper so I didn’t know about publishing, I didn’t know about splits. I didn’t know about none of the stuff that I learned over the years. When I looked back at it, I was like, ‘You should have been learning that when you was writing them 16s… you should’ve been reading some chapters as well.’”
He added, “But then, as you grow you start setting up, you start paying your taxes, and then you want to start, eventually, either getting into real estate or some sort of ownership.”
While building his music brand, he saw a business opportunity and capitalized on it. His first move was to invest in Juices For Life, the health bar that he launched alongside his brother and former fellow LOX group member Styles P in their hometown of Yonkers, NY, in 2011.
“Once you create some financial revenue and invest wisely, do something you love to further it,” Jadakiss said.
Combining his experience in building a music brand and business, he decided to launch a business that would live among his family for generations, and he did it alongside his father and son.
“I worked for the largest, at the time, coffee company in the country,” Jadakiss’ father, Bob Phillips, recalled. “As I acquired more experience in the trade, and as my son acquired more notoriety, I thought that we had the vehicle to launch a product to get it to the masses. As I more approached retirement age, it’s something that I wanted to leave for the next generation.”
Jadakiss launched Kiss Cafe Coffee, a family-oriented, three-generation coffee brand, teaming up with his father and son, Jae’Won Phillips. Kiss Café, established in October 2022, is a coffee brand built on 40 years of legacy, loyalty and love. The mission of the company is to appeal to the ever-evolving community of coffee lovers the freshest and most flavorful blends and coffee-based products.
Kiss Cafe is “grinded, pressed and brewed [for] each sip [to commemorate] a story passed down.” Meanwhile, the company has released Central American-sourced medium-dark roast blend called “Beijo,” which translates to “kiss” in Portuguese. The blend is available exclusively on the company’s site for $14.99, according to Blac.media.
“I feel like I’m on the way to being a mogul in the making, but it’s bigger than that for me because we got something great here. We got a legacy here, a tradition, a family business,” Clark Atlanta University alum Jae’Won said.
