THE ROLL-OUT BEGINS

Hey everyone -

My name is Ben Fredette and I am the creator and artist behind Buddha’s Buds

Yesterday I released the first episode of a series I have been working on called The Making Of “The Musical”

This series documents the past 4 ½ years as I have been working to create an album with each song based off a different one of my paintings

I wanted to give a little background here for anyone who is interested, as well as use these blogs to provide more insight along the way as further episodes come out

So a quick rewind - I am from New Jersey and I am 33 years old. I grew up both drawing and making videos from a very young age

Filmmaking became my passion, and I eventually moved to Pittsburgh after graduating High School in 2011

I quickly became heavily involved in the Pittsburgh music scene filming Music Videos

This led to a few opportunities to film on concert tours, travel the country, and really experience a bunch of cool stuff

In August 2015, at age 22, I moved back home to New Jersey

I started working a few freelance filming/editing jobs while trying to figure out what I would be doing next

Then in November 2016 I landed a full-time a job at Barstool Sports as a video producer (and their 36th ever employee)

Huge thank you to Henry Lockwood, the producer of Pardon My Take, for bringing me in the door there

I worked at Barstool for almost three years and had such an amazing time, learning so much and collaborating with some of the most talented creators on the internet

And then in August 2019, at age 26, I decided to move to Los Angeles to see if I can try to make something happen on my own

When I got to LA, I started filming Music Videos again, working mostly with an artist named Javan who I met through our mutual friend Yofray

Javan has a really cool sound and I loved his music as soon as I heard it

At the time I was still trying to figure out a larger plan though

I always had the name “Buddha’s Buds” in the back of my head, because I had a friend who was trying to open a dispensary once and he told me I could do the creative behind it. And since my nickname is “Buddha Ben”, I was going to call it Buddha’s Buds. So I was thinking “is there something I can do with that name?”

I even had the @buddhasbuds twitter handle already

Then one day I Facetimed my friend Caleb Pressley, who was one of the personalities I filmed for at Barstool Sports

I asked him “hey- you know me well, what do you envision me creating? Like what do you picture me making on my own?” and i mentioned to him the name “Buddha’s Buds” to which he replied in what I assumed was a joking manner - “you should make a children’s show”

I laughed at that idea, and didn’t really come away from that conversation with anything right away

But then a few nights later, on Thanksgiving Eve 2019, I was sitting on my couch brainstorming

I think I had South Park on in the background muted

That’s when Caleb’s suggestion came back into my mind and I thought “I can make an Adult Swim style cartoon out of the Buddha’s Buds idea, based on a little Buddha character and his group of friends (buds)”

So right away I started drawing, coming up with all the characters, building the world, figuring out the story, etc. I had my full dry-erase board covered with sketches hanging up by the end of that night

Shoutout my friend Jeremy Butts (that is his real name) who was on Facetime with me for a bunch of those early days helping me write the scripts. His favorite character is Roy, the Royal Penguin who owns a solar panel shop

I ended up putting together a full pitch-deck and was going to try to pitch it to networks

But then the pandemic hit in March 2020, and during the first week of lockdowns my friend Yofray posted a picture of a painting he did

I thought it was really cool, and I asked him what kind of paint he used, and ordered some off Amazon. As I mentioned before, I grew up drawing, but I never got into painting. I always thought it took way too long. But we were all on lockdown now, so I had plenty of time

I did my first painting of the little Buddha character from my cartoon and posted it on social media, and it got much more of a response than I expected

I kept painting, and by the next month April 2020 I had already created a website (with the help of my website guy Sean) and was putting prints on sale

This led to stickers that Summer, and then in November 2020 I released the first piece of clothing featuring my artwork “The Burning Planet” Limited Edition Hoodie

This was the start of what would become my clothing brand High Fashion For High People

The first hoodie (“The Burning Planet” Limited Edition Hoodie) did well and exceeded my initial expectations, but it didn’t do any crazy numbers

Then my second hoodie (the “Buddha & The Other Side Of The Door” Limited Edition Hoodie) in January 2021 did alright, but it sold less than my first hoodie

But when I released my third hoodie in May 2021, the “Buddha & The Big New World” Limited Edition Hoodie, sales really started to take-off

And for the first time I had some extra money to try to create something with

My goal at the time was to do one more big clothing drop “The Summer 2021 Collection”

I would then use that money to move back to the East Coast and set up a headquarters for Buddha’s Buds in New Jersey

From there I would try to grow the clothing business while writing and creating the cartoon

But then I had to cancel “The Summer 2021 Collection” due to the samples getting delayed…

.Also the next batch of hoodies “The Joyride Collection” got delayed too because of all the shipping ports in California getting backed up that year…

That brings us to the end of 2021 when I was getting ready to release my 5th hoodie:

The “Buddha & The Stolen Painting” Limited Edition Hoodie

The painting on this hoodie was based off an incident in the Summer of 2020

My friend Rone (who I also worked with at Barstool Sports) traveled out to Los Angeles for a video shoot

I was hired as a freelance filmer on the shoot, and we drove out to the desert to film a hotdog eating contest with a live bear

The night before the shoot, Rone came by and hung out at my apartment

He brought a GoPro with him and told me he was filming some footage to include in Stool Scenes (the weekly behind-the-scenes show Barstool had at the time)

I was also mailed a few of his props for the shoot, so he brought his suitcase inside to “pick those up”

At one point though, I was at my computer with my back turned, and he told me was going to put all the props in his suitcase

But it turned out…

Rone had actually created a replica of one of my paintings, and filmed himself committing an “art heist” while I wasn’t looking

I realized this about two weeks later when I noticed the fake version of my painting, and needless to say I was not very happy

So the “Buddha & The Stolen Painting” hoodie was based on that incident, and I was trying to think of ways to promote it at the time

Enter : The Island Boyz

In October 2021, The Island Boyz had just recently captivated the world, going viral with their undeniably catchy melodies and unorthodox appearances. This was way before they went on to do a whole bunch of other stuff that I’d rather not mention here

Regardless, they had just gone viral at the time, and they started doing videos on Cameo for only $50

And as someone who has purchased dozens of Cameos in the past for various promotional and entertainment purposes, I knew that $50 was MASSIVELY underpriced for how popular The Island Boyz were at the time

So I booked a Cameo from The Island Boyz and asked them to “sing a song for Buddha”

I said “he loves Buddha’s Buds and High Fashion”

And within only a few hours, they sent me back a video of them singing a super catchy jingle about my brand

I was about to post it on Twitter, then I thought to myself - let me hit up my friend Billy Hoyle (a producer from Pittsburgh) and see if he can make me an island beat to put behind this

And while Billy was working on the beat, I booked several more Cameos from The Island Boyz

I told them “Booda loves High Fashion” "(I had to spell it Booda now because they pronounced Buddha wrong in the first video)…. “Booda got his painting stolen by a guy named Rone”…… “Rone is a criminal and a bad guy”…… “he has a sidekick named Big Cat”…….. etc

Before I knew it, I had a whole song put together over a fully produced tropical beat

And after being turned down by both Chet Hanks and Rachel Dolezal, I managed to get a Cameo from one of the leading members of The Baha Men for the intro

This song was The Island BOYZ featuring The Baha MEN, the real-life Boyz II Men collab the world had been waiting on

And shoutout Billy Hoyle for coming up with the funniest line of the song

He said - tell them to say “Somebody call Ja Rule, we’re gonna need another island for this one”

Unbelievable

Once we had all the vocals chopped up, we were ready to get the song mixed

We sent the files to Pittsburgh legend Grammy Nominated Multi Platinum producer and engineer Big Jerm

And while Jerm was working on the mix, I painted a new painting for the cover art

On January 10, 2022 I released the pre-order for the hoodie, but I was still working on finishing the song and editing together a Music Video for it, so I didn’t put the song out yet

And then on the evening of January 23, 2022, I had an idea that would go on to change the entire course of my life since then

I can remember exactly where I was in my apartment as I thought to myself:

“This is the best song The Island Boyz have ever made, and they aren’t even aware that they made it or that it even exists…. What if I reach out to all the music artists that I know personally, and have them actually make real songs based off my paintings intentionally, and put together a full album with each song based off a different one of my paintings?”

I would call it "High Fashion For High People Volume 1” and release it 10 months later that October 2022

I put together an idea for a tracklist that night, using the names of my different paintings as the song titles, and formatting them in a way that could tell a story

And then I reached out to all the best producers I know to send me beats. I listened to 1000’s of beats, trying to find the right ones that match my paintings and song concepts

Then I reached out to all the artists who I wanted on the project, and sent them emails that included the paintings, the song concepts, the instrumentals, etc.

By February 1st 2022, I already started receiving demos back from some of the artists on the East Coast, and all throughout February little pieces kept coming in

But on March 3rd, 2022, I finally had the first session in Los Angeles with Javan, the artist who I started filming for when I first moved to LA and had become good friends with since then

And that is where our story begins

Episode 1 documents that first session with Javan, a HISTORICAL EVENT, and the start of a VERY LONG JOURNEY !!!!!

Also for the record:

A. Shoutout to Rone and The Island Boyz because this album idea probably never would have crossed my mind if it weren’t for them and that series of events

B. The Island Boyz song was originally intended to be on the actual album, but it was QUICKLY SCRAPPED once I started receiving the first demos back and realizing the potential this album has (that is not meant as an insult to The Island Boyz, it was just that the entire song was composed of vocals recorded from iPhone videos and chopped together into a song. It was actually pretty fire for what it was, but the quality was noticeably bad compared to songs with real studio quality recordings)

And lastly, as I am writing this, the album is still not finished today

You will see throughout this series how this all play outs, but as of now the last recording sessions in Los Angeles took place in August of 2025. Since then I began mixing the project with my engineer over Zoom, but I have not been able to afford mixing sessions consistently enough to make real progress

But what I do have is thousands of hours of footage and a bunch of episodes already edited of this series ready to be released, and it costs me nothing to edit and release these myself, so my plan is to start rolling these videos out and hope that my clothing sales increase as more and more interest grows

And once my sales increase, I will be able to make the final mixing push, and hopefully have the album ready to be released by the time I am finished editing all these episodes (or even earlier hopefully!!!)

So thank you all so much for watching this series, supporting me and Buddha’s Buds, and of course for reading all of this. You are all the reason this is possible, and I couldn’t be more grateful because this was a dream project for me to create

Love you all and I can’t wait for you to hear this album and to see how it all unfolds

Sincerely, Ben