Cypress Hill
is an American/Latin American hip hop group from South Gate, California. Originally called DVX
, the name was changed after Mellow Man Ace left in 1988. Cypress Hill was the first Latino group to have platinum and multi-platinum albums have sold over 18 million albums worldwide.
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History
Early works
Cypress Hill's
self-titled first album was released in August 1991. The lead single was the double
A-side "
The Phuncky Feel One"/"
How I Could Just Kill A Man" which received heavy airplay on urban and college radio. The other two singles released from the album were "Hand On The Pump" and "Latin Lingo", the latter of which combined English and Spanish lyrics. The success of these singles led to the album selling two million copies in the US alone. DJ Muggs, Cypress Hill's producer, subsequently produced
House of Pain's first album, then worked on other
Soul Assassins projects like
Funkdoobiest. The band made their first appearance at
Lollapalooza on the side stage in 1992.
Black Sunday
, the group's second album, debuted at number one on the
Billboard 200 in 1993, recording the highest
Soundscan for a rap group up until that time. Also, with their debut still in the charts, they became the first rap group to have 2 albums in the top 10 of the
Billboard 200 at the same time. With "
Insane in the Brain" becoming a crossover hit, the album went triple platinum in the
U.S. and sold about 3.25 million copies.
Cypress Hill was banned from
Saturday Night Live
after Muggs smoked a joint on-air and the band trashed their instruments while playing their second single "I Ain't Goin' Out Like That". The band headlined the "Soul Assassins" tour with
House of Pain and
Funkdoobiest as support, then performed on a college tour with
Rage Against the Machine and
Seven Year Bitch. In 1993, Cypress Hill also had two tracks on the
Judgment Night
soundtrack, teamed up with
Pearl Jam and
Sonic Youth.
The band played at the 1994
Woodstock Festival, introducing their new member Eric Bobo, formerly a percussionist with the
Beastie Boys.
Rolling Stone
magazine named the band as the best rap group in their music awards voted by critics and readers. Cypress Hill played at
Lollapalooza for two successive years, topping the bill in 1995. They also appeared on the
The Simpsons
episode "
Homerpalooza". Prior to Bobo joining the crew, Panchito "Ponch" Gomez sat in as a percussionist when not acting.
Their third album
Cypress Hill III: Temples of Boom
was released in 1995, selling 1.5 million copies and reaching number 3 on the Billboard 200 on the strength of the hit single "Throw Your Set in the Air" . Cypress Hill also contributed a track "I Wanna Get High" to the
High Times sponsored
Hempilation
album to support
NORML.
Currently managed by
Velvet Hammer Music and Management Group
Feud with Ice Cube
For over two years, Cypress Hill had a running feud with
West Coast rapper and former friend
Ice Cube. The feud allegedly started when
B-Real played a demo of the then unreleased album
Temples of Boom
for Ice Cube. According to B-Real, Ice Cube asked if he could use the song "Throw Your Set in the Air" for the soundtrack of his upcoming film
Friday
. B-Real refused because the song was the single for their
III: Temples of Boom album. Ice Cube then recorded the song "Friday", which features a similar
hook to "Throw Your Set in the Air". Cypress Hill viewed this as biting (stealing), and recorded the song “No Rest for the Wicked”, in which they attack Cube and accuse him of stealing their music.
Soon after “No Rest for the Wicked” was released, Ice Cube recorded the album
Bow Down
with his partners
WC and
Mack 10 of
Westside Connection. The album contains two
diss tracks aimed at Cypress Hill: “King of the Hill” and “Cross em out and put a K”. “King of the Hill” is a direct response to “No Rest for the Wicked”.
In response, Cypress Hill recorded the track “Ice Cube Killa”. The track features the same beat as “King of the Hill” and was never officially released on an album. In the song, Cypress Hill venomously attacks Ice Cube as well as Mack 10, and expresses that they were ready and willing to end the feud with physical violence instead of words. Even due to his affiliation with Westside Connection, WC did not participate in the feud, due to his friendship with members of Cypress Hill.
In 1997, B-Real and Ice Cube were invited to a late night talk show in order to reconcile their differences for the benefit of the hip hop community, and the feud thus ended. Ice Cube and B-Real worked together later that year as guest features on the track "
Men of Steel" for the soundtrack of
Shaquille O'Neal's film
Steel
. B-Real and Cube even featured as guests in
Warren G's double "Get U Down" which also featured
Snoop Dogg.
Continued career
Sen Dog took a break from the band to form a
Los Angeles based rap rock band
SX-10.
[1] Meanwhile in 1996, Cypress Hill appeared on the first 'Smokin' Grooves' tour, featuring
Ziggy Marley,
The Fugees,
Busta Rhymes and
A Tribe Called Quest. The band also released a nine track EP
Unreleased and Revamped
with rare mixes. In 1997, band members focused on their solo careers. Muggs released
Muggs Presents ... the Soul Assassins
featuring contributions from
Wu-Tang Clan members,
Dr. Dre,
KRS-One,
Wyclef Jean and
Mobb Deep. B-Real appeared with Busta Rhymes,
Coolio,
LL Cool J and
Method Man on "Hit Em High" from the multi-platinum
Space Jam Soundtrack
. He also appeared with
RBX,
Nas and KRS-One on "East Coast Killer, West Coast Killer" on Dr. Dre's
Dr. Dre Presents the Aftermath
album, and contributed to an album entitled "The Psycho Realm" with the band of the same name. Though the focus that year was not on Cypress Hill, the band played Smokin' Grooves with
George Clinton and
Erykah Badu.
Cypress Hill released
IV
in 1998 which went gold in the U.S., even though the reviews were somewhat negative, on the backs of hit singles "Tequila Sunrise" and another tribute to smoking cannabis "Dr. Greenthumb." Sen Dog also released the
Get Wood
sampler as part of SX-10 on the label Flip. In 1999, Cypress Hill helped with the
PC crime/very mature video game
Kingpin: Life of Crime
. Three of their songs from the 1998
IV
album were in the game ( "16 Men Till There's No Men Left", "Checkmate" and "Lightning Strikes"). B-Real also did some of the voices of the people in the game. Also in 1999, the band released a greatest-hits album in Spanish,
Los grandes éxitos en español
. Cypress Hill then fused genres with their two-
disc release,
Skull & Bones
, in 2000. The first disc, "Skull" was composed of rap tracks while "Bones" explored further the group's forays into
rock. The album reached the Top 5 on the
Billboard 200 and number 3 in
Canada. The first single was "Rock Superstar" for rock radio and "Rap Superstar" for urban radio. The band also released
Live at the Fillmore
, a concert disc recorded at the
Fillmore (in San Francisco) in 2000. Cypress Hill continued their experimentation with rock on the
Stoned Raiders
album in 2001. However, its sales were a disappointment, as the disc did not even reach the top 50 of the U.S. album charts. In 2001, the group appeared in the film
How High
.
Cypress Hill recorded "Just Another Victim" for the
World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) as a theme song for
Tazz. At the time, WWE was using original music for almost all of the wrestlers, so this was an unusual step for the company to take, but it remains one of the more memorable songs to emerge from the wrestling organization. The band released
Till Death Do Us Part on March 23, 2004. The album saw the band experiment with
reggae especially on the lead single "What's Your Number". The track features
Tim Armstrong of
Rancid on guitar and backup vocals. It is based on the classic song "
The Guns of Brixton" on
The Clash's
London Calling
and has proven to be a success on the modern rock charts. However, the album represented a further departure from the signature sound of their first four albums. The album also features appearances by
Damian Marley, son of
Bob Marley, Prodigy and Twin of
Mobb Deep and producer
the Alchemist.
In 2004, the song
How I Could Just Kill A Man
was included in the popular
videogame Grand Theft Auto San Andreas created by
Rockstar Games, playing on
West Coast hip hop radio station
Radio Los Santos. In December 2005 a best of
compilation album titled
Greatest Hits From the Bong was released including 9 hits from previous albums and 2 new tracks. The group's next album was tentatively scheduled for an early 2007 release. In the summer of 2006, B-Real appeared on
Snoop Dogg's single "
Vato". Pharrell Williams produced the track, and originally sang the hook, but because of the video idea, B-Real was asked to sing the hook. Sen Dog is now currently touring with the
Kottonmouth Kings,
Kingspade and
Dogboy on the Joint is on Fire Tour
In 2007 Cypress Hill toured with their full line up as a part of the
Rock the Bells tour, held by Guerilla Union, and headlined with
Public Enemy,
Wu-Tang Clan,
Nas, and a reunited
Rage Against the Machine. Other acts included
Immortal Technique,
Mos Def,
Talib Kweli,
The Roots,
EPMD,
Pharoahe Monch,
Jedi Mind Tricks,
Erykah Badu,
MF Doom,
Sage Francis,
Brother Ali,
The Coup,
Blue Print,
Lucky I Am,
Living Legends,
Felt,
Cage,
Mr. Lif,
Grouch & Eligh, and
Hangar 18.
Departure from Sony
Having fulfilled their contractual obligations with Sony Music, Cypress Hill will release an as-yet untitled album through a different record label in 2009.
[2]
Recently, it was announced that Cypress Hill will be members of the Kannabis Kartel along with the
Kottonmouth Kings and
Potluck. Their album will be released on
Suburban Noize Records.
On July 25, 2008, Cypress Hill performed at a benefit concert at the House of Blues Chicago, where a majority of the proceeds went to the Chicago Alliance to End Homelessness.
[3]
In August of 2009, a new song by Cypress Hill, titled "Get 'Em Up", was made available on iTunes. The song is featured on the Madden NFL 2010 video game and was available for free download for a limited time.
[4]
Style
Production
One of the band's most striking aspects is B-Real's exaggeratedly high-pitched nasal vocals, which fits and emphasizes the lyrics' concentration on parodied
gangster stories.
Sen Dog's lyrics are progressively more violent and tend to involve fewer rhyme schemes compared with B-Real's. In addition words are emphasized by adding a background voice to say them, however, Sen Dog's emphases are always more prominent, mostly shouted alongside with the rapping.
The sound and groove of their music, produced by Muggs, is also notable for its influence and stoned aesthetic; with its bass-heavy rhythms and odd sample loops ("Insane in the Brain" is notable for having a horse neigh looped in its chorus), it carries a psychedelic value, which lessened in the later albums.
The band is also known for involving rock instruments in their songs. This has caused the band to sometimes be classified as a
rapcore group. In
IV
, there is
Lightning Strikes
which doesn't truly use electric guitars, but a synthesized version of it.
Skull & Bones
has an entire disc using such instruments, labeled
Bones
. As for their later works, their involvement in rock ended with the album
Stoned Raiders
.
The band's music is constantly subject to change; while the first album follows a more minimalistic and funky sound,
Black Sunday
, the successor, has a slightly darker side to it.
III (Temples of Boom)
and
IV
are mostly influenced by psychedelic music. The band abandoned that on
Skull & Bones
and got closer to the modern rap as it is today.
The band involves horns in their songs, and often have guitar and horns together in the instrumentals.
What's Your Number?
,
Trouble
,
Tequila Sunrise
, and
(Rock) Superstar
have become some of the bands most popular songs featuring these elements. Cypress Hill's experimenting in different genres of music even includes
reggaeton in their track "Latin Thugs," which features Tego Calderon.
Discography
- 1991: Cypress Hill
(2x Platinum
) [5]
- 1993: Black Sunday
(3x Platinum
) [6]
- 1995: III: Temples of Boom
(Platinum
) [7]
- 1998: IV
(Gold
) [8]
- 1999: Los Grandes Éxitos En Español
- 2000: Skull & Bones
(Platinum
) [9]
- 2000: Live At The Fillmore
- 2001: Stoned Raiders
- 2004: Till Death Do Us Part
- 2009: Rise Up
[10] [11]
References
- ''SX10 tocara hoy en el DanZoo''
- Latin Hip Hop Interview - "Sen Dog's Still All Bite with the Reyes Brothers"
- Cypress Hill To Perform At Benefit of Homelessness in youth dance event for euphoria and aid relief
- http://cypresshillblog.blogspot.com/
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- Cypress Hill Coming Back With New Album, Label
- interview Cypress Hill