Hip hop and product placement go together like bread and butter, but sometimes the way artists form their relationships with brands is far more organic than a lifetime of being inundated with inauthentic advertising may lead you to believe. Some brands choose to approach artists directly because they realize the potential of nurturing that person’s support for their brand, and if you ask me that’s a far more respectable way for both parties to do business. G Pen, the portable vaporizer created by the brilliant minds at Grenco Science, is one such product. The creators realized early on that by working with people who actually believed in their product that they could do far more from a promotional standpoint than other companies who simply threw money at big names for endorsements, and in the two years since launching they have become a staple in the urban music scene. Now with 2014 on the horizon, the company is planning to expand more than ever before in the months ahead, and today we’re going to shed a bit of light on what they have in store.

We realize not everyone who reads UTG has a use for vaporizers, but there is a good portion of our audience who does, and it’s because of their ongoing interest in G Pens and the artists who use them that we approached Grenco Science about doing this feature. We were fans of their product before speaking to them, but now that we’ve learned about the inner-workings we’re even bigger supporters of their efforts. There is no other company quite like Grenco Science on the market, and with each new release they’re further refining their already great products to such a degree I find it hard to imagine anyone being able to compete with them in the years to come. If you want to learn more about their products and the people who use them, click here to visit their official website.

The Snoop Dogg ‘Artist Series’ G Pen (Available now)

UTG: Hello, guys. Before we dive in, could you take a moment and introduce yourselves?

Tim Patenaude: We work directly with Chris, the owner of Grenco Science, and help a lot with the marketing efforts. Jordan runs all our lifestyle stuff, events, and a million other tasks like running the site, designing ads, etc. We all work many tasks here. We all come from the music industry though, so we’re all used to doing 4 or 5 people’s jobs at a time. [laughs]

UTG: How long has Grenco Science been around?

Tim: A little under two years.

UTG: Was music always a big part of your efforts, or did that come at a later point?

Tim: No, music has been a big part of what we do since day one. Chris Folkerts, the owner and founder of G Pen, was an /promoter in St. Louis for a number of years. He also tour managed bands worked for Sumerian Records for a number of years as well before leaving the music industry to start G Pen. So music has always been a part of what we do, and really it was our first way of getting the product out there. We were able to get it in front of artists, fans, managers, and everyone in between.

UTG: For people who have no idea what G Pens are, what is your quick pitch for the product?

Tim: The quick pitch is essentially that you can vaporize on the go. We have a whole slew of new products that are coming out, or are out now that essentially sets up our product to be used for essential oils, herbal, or hookah. We’re basically you’re one-stop-shop for vaporizing. Whatever you’re trying to vaporize, get a G Pen and we have all the different attachments you could want. So we’re setting you up with everything you need. Really sleek, simple design as well.

UTG: You have a number of ‘Artist Series’ pens. Can you tell us about the original ‘Artist Series,’ and how it became a staple of your business model?

Tim: The first one we did was with Action Bronson, and up and coming rapper from Queens. That happened because Action was using the pen and we just happened to meet him by chance one day. He told us we should do something together and we thought it sounded like a great opportunity. We did it just for a tour, it was Cypress Hill and Action Bronson, and we did the custom pen for him. Next thing you know, he’s using the pen at every show, in every video, photo, and even on the covers of magazines. It was insane. His pen then went from being a tour only product to one of our best-selling products to date. It’s actually sold out right now, but we’re going to do another ‘Artist Series’ with Action soon. We’re going to work together on our new pen, an updated Micro G, so that will be two launches we have done together.

UTG: A lot of what you have done with music has been in the hip hop realm, can we expect to see the G Pen appearing in other areas of music in the future?

Tim: Absolutely. We’re going to be everywhere. It’s just a matter of finding the right timing and partnerships. We like to do everything organic and natural, so we’ve gone and seeded in many different areas of entertainment over the last year, and now we’re getting to see who uses the product everyday and actually support the product. We can find who really wants to do interesting collaborations and partnerships versus just wanting to slap their logo on it. We get emails everyday from people who want pens they can sell at their merch table or wherever, but that’s not what we’re trying to do. We want to make each collaboration a special, limited edition collector’s piece. Some people may not even want to vape out of it, you know? It can be a cool collector’s thing and some people will choose to buy the basic black model as well to use.

UTG: We’ve reached the end of our questions, but before I let you go I wanted to know what else you could tell us about the future of the G Pen. You mentioned a new ‘Micro G,’ as well as artist collaborations, but is there anything else you can share at this time?

Tim: We will have the G Pen hookahs, which is our take on the craze everyone seems into right now, and you can load different flavor oils into the pen and go crazy. We also have lots of artist collaborations on the way, as well as a lot of content being produced through out G Life side of our brand. We want to build it out in 2014 into its own entity. It’s going to become a cool content source for original content from all these artists we work with, so even if we don’t do a pen together we can create cool, new original content.

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James Shotwell

James Shotwell is the founder of Under The Gun Review. He loves writing about music and movies almost as much as he loves his two fat cats. He's also the co-founder of Antique Records and the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. You should probably follow him on Twitter.

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