Happy 30th Anniversary to Cypress Hill’s eponymous debut album Cypress Hill, originally released August 13, 1991.
In the early ’90s, hard-edged Los Angeles-based hip-hop wasn’t a new phenomenon. The “gangsta rap” scene was thriving, and rougher-edged, no-nonsense artists populated the landscape.
Still, there had never been a group quite like Cypress Hill. The trio exploded on the scene with a unique brand of dusted, blunted, and raw hip-hop. Their self-titled debut album, released 30 years ago, shaped the ways the music was made for years to come and is one of the best hip-hop albums ever released.
Cypress Hill is comprised of rappers Louis “B-Real” Freese, Senen “Sen Dog” Reyes, and Lawrence “DJ Muggs” Muggerud. Muggs, born in New York but raised in Southern California, was the primary architect of the group, having initially served as the DJ for the crew 7A3. Their sole album Coolin’ In Cali (1988) was solid enough, but didn’t resonate that well with the larger hip-hop audience.
Cypress Hill was born out of the DVX crew, a collective of rappers, DJs, and producers that Muggs was working with while in 7A3. Along with B-Real and Sen Dog, their ranks included Mellow Man Ace, Sen Dog’s brother, who went on to sign with Delicious Vinyl Records and become a pioneering Latino emcee. Muggs had an eye for talent and figured that B-Real and Sen Dog would work well together on record. At the same time, he was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with his role in 7A3 and the group’s creative direction. Hence, he left the group in 1989 and got serious about Cypress Hill.
As Muggs told Brian Coleman in Don’t Sweat the Technique, much of the album was put together from a few different demos that the group had recorded during the late 1980s. But even though many of the offerings were recorded in 1988 and 1989, they still sound ahead of their time and downright revolutionary.
From a stylistic standpoint, Cypress Hill made a unique team. B-Real’s sharp high-pitched nasal rhyme flow contrasted perfectly with Sen Dog’s “Beta Bass” vocal tone, characterized by its blunt huskiness. The pair went back and forth like a blazed Chuck D and Flavor Flav, trading rugged bars and ad-libs about the struggles of surviving on the streets of Los Angeles. And getting high. Lots of getting high.
One of Cypress Hill’s legacies is making it “acceptable” to talk about smoking weed on records. To be clear, other rappers and groups had mentioned toking that good herb on their albums, but by in large, most didn’t talk openly about puffing. Cypress Hill baked (pun intended) their love of good green into their identity. The love for marijuana never felt like a gimmick or novelty, as the group expressed their “need” to get stoned as a way to escape the dangerous realities of their environment. Their recordings helped cause a shift moving forward, so by the time Dr. Dre released The Chronic (1992), weed-infused content barely caused a raised eyebrow.
From a production standpoint, DJ Muggs was also a pioneer, using samples from soul, rock, jazz, and blues and layering them in palpable grit. Muggs was definitely influenced by the Bomb Squad and the Ultramagnetic MCs, in that he often put together a sonic collage through his beats, mixing in elements and vocals from many different sample sources into one track, adding in frequent beat switches to keep things interesting. However, his creations sounded even dustier than the soundscapes of Public Enemy and the aforementioned Ultramag. He was able to take the template created by his influences and successfully build upon it.
When it all came together, Cypress Hill featured aggressive, uncompromised hip-hop music, filled with realistic takes on life in the streets of South-Central Los Angeles in the late 1980s/early 1990s. None of this is a recipe for commercial success, which is why I’ve always been pleasantly surprised that Cypress Hill became an undisputed hit. The album is now certified double platinum and went Gold within six months of its release.
Over the years, I’ve tried to put my finger on what made the group appeal to a wider audience. During the early 1990s, “crossover” success was usually reserved for the MC Hammers and Vanilla Ices of the hip-hop world, and Cypress Hill wasn’t that. At all. And yet, less than a year later, Cypress Hill would tour as part of the Lollapalooza 1992 lineup.
I don’t think their success can be simplified to the copious amounts of marijuana-related content. I also don’t think their “gangsta”-ish subject matter can account for it either. Cypress Hill didn’t feature the exaggerated, bordering-on-cartoonish violence that listeners would find on N.W.A’s Efil4zaggin (1991). Like everything else on Cypress Hill, the violent content was unglamorous, though the songs occasionally included the type of macabre humor that you’d find in a film like Reservoir Dogs.
Building up to their album’s release, Cypress Hill worked hard to keep themselves shrouded in mystery. It’s notable that for the promo photos and 12” covers, members of the group frequently appear in semi-darkness, or have their visages obscured. There’s not even really a clear picture of what any of the members of the group look like on the Cypress Hill cover. Even in the liner notes, B-Real and Sen Dog’s hats are tucked very low, while Muggs hides near the back of the photo, face shadowed by a hoodie. The tactic definitely made the group seem like enigmas.
The album’s first single, “Phuncky Feel One,” is perhaps the “cleanest” and closest to accessible that Cypress Hill gets. It’s still an incredibly funky jam that gets overshadowed by the success of their subsequent singles (we’ll get to those in a second). It serves as a good introduction to B-Real and Sen Dog’s lyrical abilities, as well as Muggs’ musical sensibilities.
However, it would end up being the B-side to Cypress Hill’s first single that would put the group on the path to blowing up. “How I Could Just Kill a Man” is one of the most unusual mainstream hits of the era. The emcees (and even Muggs) drop verses over a scratchy loop of Lowell Fulsom’s “Tramp” and the drum break from Manzell’s “Midnight Theme.” Muggs further layers in what sounds like radio station and various vocal snippets.
Nothing about the song’s subject matter suggests “pop hit,” as B-Real raps about using deadly force in self-defense. The only thing remotely “catchy” about it is B-Real and Sen Dog’s call-and-response chorus, which apparently had its genesis as a line within the song. And yet, the song became a favorite of hip-hop audiences and more broadly, rock/alternative fans; it’s correctly considered one of the best songs of the era.
“Hand on the Pump,” the group’s third single, is one of the album’s strongest overall tracks, and a masterwork in production. Muggs takes the easily recognizable vocals from Gene Chandler’s “Duke of Earl,” and chops them to pieces, later adding in snatches of guitars, organs, and vocals from a myriad of other sources. The song features B-Real and Sen Dog at their most brutal, hunting down enemies and generally showing a complete disregard for human life. However, there’s a sense of world-weary anguish apparent in their verses, demonstrating how the harsh environment of their youth shaped their mentality.
Much of the first half of Cypress Hill is dedicated to similar grim pictures. “Hole in the Head” follows the path of a Latinx gang member navigating through hostile territory, forced to deal with rival crews and rogue police officers. B-Real targets crooked cops on the confrontational “Pigs,” his nursery rhyme inspired dis to the boys in blue. He delivers a sole verse of a piercing guitar sample from Chuck Cornish’s “Ali Funky Thing,” re-purposing “This Little Piggy” into a tale of revenge and death against cops who wreak havoc in the community.
Cypress Hill is well-known for its frequent pro-marijuana anthems. Given that many other rappers only slightly alluded to smoking weed in the years before, it was pretty startling at the time to hear Cypress Hill be so brazen with the rhymes about the joys of toking up. On “Light Another,” a horn-heavy head-nodder, B-Real extols the virtues of kicking back and feeling the effects of the high that either the weed or Cypress Hill’s music will give you. “Brain cells get lit, but I’m the joint you can’t grip,” he raps.
Cypress Hill were also the pioneers of creating songs about smoking weed that make you feel like you’re actually high. Brief instrumental interludes like “Ultraviolet Dreams” and “Something for the Blunted” are good examples, but they execute this formula to perfection on “Stoned Is the Way of the Walk.” Muggs takes the rumbling bass and percussion from Grant Green’s “Down Here on the Ground” and mixes in some horns from the end of Ingrid’s “Easter Parade,” to create a hypnotizing track. B-Real kicks a single lengthy verse, declaring himself as “the freaker: the one who freaks the funk,” and detailing a few of the misadventures he’s undertaken in pursuit of getting blasted.
Cypress Hill also features Sen Dog occasionally rhyming in Spanish. Again, he wasn’t the first emcee to rap in Spanish: Mellow Man Ace’s “Mentirosa,” where he mixes rhymes in both English and Español, was the biggest hit of his career. Sen Dog utilizes Spanglish on “Latin Lingo,” the album’s fourth single, effortlessly switching from tongue to tongue over funky Latin guitar licks, as well as percussion taken from Elephant Memory’s “Mongoose.”
Sen rhymes solely in Spanish on the raunchy “Tres Equis,” which translates to, of course, “Triple X.” In Check the Technique, Sen explained that he began performing the rhyme/verse at house parties and clubs, much to the delight of the audience. Through his raps, Sen describes banging a hot woman all through his home in minute detail.
When not celebrating the effects of marijuana or rhyming en Español, B-Real and Sen Dog spend much of Cypress Hill’s second half delivering lyrical exhibitions. For these tracks, Muggs keeps the pace brisk and the beats unbelievably funky. The two emcees tag team on “Real Estate,” blazing rhymes on the bass breakdown to the Tony Alvon and the Belairs’ “Sexy Coffee Pot” and a snatch of guitars from The Bar-Kays’ “Humpin’,” flowing smoothly as the beat continuously shifts. The song is one of Cypress’ earliest works, as they first recorded it back in late 1987/early 1988, with Mellow Man Ace writing the lyrics. The re-recording, which is featured in the song’s video, is even better the album version, as B-Real and Sen update their lyrics.
Muggs’ aforementioned penchant for dusty soul loops differentiated him from many of his Los Angeles peers, who were just warming up to digging through George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic’s catalogue to find musical inspiration. Muggs decides to go this route on “Psychobettabuckdown,” but in keeping with his stylistic leaning, he takes a sample of Parliament’s “Aquaboogie” and turns it into a sloppy, squishy mess. B-Real delivers tongue twisting rhymes, rapping, “See I’m from South Central, busting out my metal / Rapid-fire petal, fuckers making me get mental / Yo, it make no sense, so, here son, the scalpel / Sen start the massacre as I get nasal.”
The album ends with “Born to Get Busy,” where Sen Dog makes more with less. He kicks a solid 16-bar verse over a sample of Booker T and The MGs’ “Boot-Leg.” “Using modern technique, I place a beat in a rap,” he explains. “I went to learn, acquire knowledge of a scholar went to college / All comes very handy when it comes to pushing, shoving, and stuff.”
Cypress Hill is a slice of hip-hop perfection, as rugged and unflinching now as it was three decades ago. I still don’t understand what made it catch on with a “non-traditional” hip-hop audience, but I’m happy that such a great album is beloved by a large swath of the musical loving population. Music about getting into gangsta shit or blunted the fuck out rarely, if ever, sounded better.
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