Branson B. has provided rap’s royalty with fine champagne. Now he’s trying to make his own brand of bubbly pop in a crowded marketplace.

On a ragged stretch of sidewalk in northwest Harlem across the street from a dingy bodega, a weathered wooden door separates the outside world from an oenophiles’ wonderland. A homemade bar dominates the room, backed by walls plastered with cutouts from wine publications. Empty bottles of Nicolas Feuillatte, Armand de Brignac and Cristal loom like a hunter’s trophies along the shelves.

On a torpid summer evening, Branson Belchie—better known as Branson B., hip-hop’s unofficial sommelier—hovers behind the bar in search of an acceptable champagne, every move punctuated by a slight flutter of his dreadlocks. Life is too short to struggle through a bad bottle of bubbly.

“I never particularly cared for Moet, personally,” Branson offers. “Moet has a tendency to give me a headache. Back in the day, we drank Clicquot. I turned a lot of people on to Clicquot.” He lowers his voice. “At the time, Clicquot was really good.”

Branson is the man who introduced Cristal, Dom Perignon and a number of other pricey brands to his friends Christopher “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace and Sean “Diddy” Combs in the late 1980s. Within a few years, that suggestion sprouted into hip-hop’s full-fledged obsession with champagne. Branson is widely credited with starting the craze, and his name has been mentioned in more than 60 songs over the past two decades.

A self-described street entrepreneur, Branson, 52, got involved in the entertainment business during the early 1990s, serving as road manager for R&B singer Chris Williams and DeVante Swing of Jodeci. He also did consulting work for a number of other artists, and later for the producers of the film American Gangster. As Branson’s career blossomed, so did his taste in champagne. He bought Biggie a six-liter bottle of Taittinger brut one year for the rapper’s birthday; on another occasion, he provided bottles of Cristal and Dom Perignon to singers Faith Evans and Luther Vandross.

“You bust a bottle, pour a couple glasses, and just sip on it as they engage in the creative process,” says Branson. “Sometimes people acquire a taste for one or the other. Like, ‘Yo, I really like that Cristal.’ You go back through there, they’ve got their own bottle of Cristal and they’re offering you a drink now.”

(Editor’s note: You can read the rest of the article here. It’s kind of a silly article, primarily because it makes no mention of the epic amounts of weed this guy moved uptown…as if he became famous simply by recommending liquors to rappers lol.)