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Cypress Hill
From left to right: Sen Dog, Eric Bobo and B-Real on stage during 2006 Bonnaroo Music Festival.
Background information
Also known as	DVX
Origin	South Gate, California, United States
Genre(s)	Hip hop, Rap rock, Hardcore hip hop
Years active	1987 - Present
Label(s)	Ruffhouse/Columbua/SME Records
Associated acts	Mellow Man Ace Everlast House of Pain Psycho Realm Rage Against the Machine Soul Assassins The Transplants
Website	CypressHill.com
Members
B-Real DJ Muggs Eric Bobo Sen Dog

Cypress Hill is an American hip hop group from South Gate, California. Cypress Hill was the first Latino group to have platinum and multi-platinum albums. The band was originally called DVX, but the name was changed after Mellow Man Ace left in 1988. Over the course of its history, Cypress Hill has sold more than 17 million albums worldwide, including more than 11 million records in the U.S. alone.

History

Early works

Their first album, which was self-titled, was released in August 1991. Its single was "Phuncky Feel One," but it was the B-side "How I Could Just Kill A Man" that attracted more airplay on urban radio and college radio. Based on the success of the single and other tracks such as bilingual track "Latin Lingo" and X-rated Spanish track "Tres Equis", the album sold two million copies in the US alone. Subsequently, DJ Muggs 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 on the charts they became the first rap artists 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 cannabis 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. Bobo is the son of salsa musician Willie Bobo. 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 appeared on the The Simpsons episode "Homerpalooza". Prior to Bobo joining the crew, Panchito "ponch" Gomez also 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. 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 attacked Ice Cube as well as Mac 10, and expressed that they were ready and willing to end the feud with physical violence instead of words.

In 1997 B-Real of Cypress Hill 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. 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 punk-rap band SX-10. 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 released an album entitled "The Psycho Realm" from his side project 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,^{citation needed} 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 comprised 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 Fransico) 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 Rob Aston of The Transplants on backup vocals. It is based on the classic song "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 2008.¹

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.²

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 tracks Trouble (also the first single of the album), Amplified and Catastrophe being the songs).

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. Stoned Raiders has a more authentic sound than the rest, and Till Death Do Us Part carries reggae influences.

The band is also known to involve 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.

Some fans feel that the band has drifted somewhat from the values of their earlier albums. For example in "Strictly Hip Hop" from Temples of Boom, the band complain about hip hop artists who have an album of hardcore tracks but have one or two pop songs which just so happen to be the singles. Cypress have arguably fallen into this trap with the single "What's You Number?"

Lyrics

The lyrics of tracks like "How I Could Just Kill A Man" offer an insight into the cultural expression of social stratification in L.A. at that point in history. Many other songs have cited topics such as police brutality, racial profiling, gang violence and anecdotes about invasion of privacy by police.

Furthermore the celebration of marijuana consumption is what they are often associated with in songs like "I Wanna Get High", "Stoned Is The Way Of The Walk" or "Hits From The Bong", the themes of recreational use of marijuana are prevalent.

Many of their songs also protest the current marijuana laws and voice their opinions on the hypocrisy of drug enforcement institutions.

Their lyrics often reflect the hip hop culture of Los Angeles in their earlier work such as their self-titled album and Black Sunday, which were very influential not only to Latino hip hop of the time but to many other hip hop groups around the world as well.

Throughout their career they have commonly incorporated Spanish into their lyrics as well as slang used by some Latinos in Los Angeles on songs like "Latin Lingo". Their album "Los Grandes Exitos En Espanol" features Spanish translations of many of their hit songs.

Discography

Main article: Cypress Hill discography

• 1991: Cypress Hill (4x Platinum)
• 1993: Black Sunday (4x Platinum)
• 1995: III: Temples of Boom (2x Platinum)
• 1996: Unreleased and Revamped (Gold)
• 1998: IV (Gold)
• 1999: Los grandes éxitos en español (Platinum)
• 2000: Skull & Bones (Platinum)
• 2000: Live at the Fillmore
• 2001: Stoned Raiders
• 2002: Stash
• 2004: Till Death Do Us Part
• 2005: Greatest Hits from the Bong

In popular culture

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (July 2008)

• In October 2008, on the NBC television program Saturday Night Live, the song "Hand On The Pump" was referenced in a comic sketch which featured Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin

• Cypress Hill appeared as themselves in The Simpsons episode "Homerpalooza".

• "Insane In The Brain" was used as a constant reference throughout the 1998 film Bulworth starring Warren Beatty and Halle Berry. The song alludes to the main character's state of deteriorating mental health Additionally, other Cypress Hill songs can be heard in many other films, including *"Dr. Greenthumb" in Pineapple Express, "Roll It Up, Light It Up, Smoke It Up" in the 1995 movie Friday, and "Latin Thugs" in the movie White Chicks.

• "How I Could Just Kill a Man" can be played in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas radio stations. The song features an appearance by B-Real on the radio station for the fictional city of Los Santos, making him the first musician to use his real (stage) name on a GTA series video game. "How I Could Just Kill a Man" can also be heard in the 1992 motion picture Juice (film) during the final climax scene, but was not part of the motion picture soundtrack.

• "Shoot 'em Up" is featured in the 1992 soundtrack Juice (film), but was not in the actual film. "Shoot 'em Up" was never featured on any Cypress Hill album.

• "Hits from the Bong" can also be heard as an intro to the movie How High starring Method Man, Redman which also has a guest appearance from Cypress Hill.

• The customized theme "Just Another Victim" was used by retired professional wrestler and current color commentator Tazz when he was wrestling in WWE. This theme is originally included on the WWF Forceable Entry soundtrack CD and can be downloaded online.

• "Lightning Strikes" can be found in 989 Studios' Twisted Metal 4.

• In the movie Grandma's Boy, after Josh spills the bong, Yuri the landlord says,"It smells like a Cypress Hill concert in here."

• Cypress Hill were honored at the 5th Annual "VH1 Hip Hop Honors" on October 6, 2008.

References

External links

• Cypress Hill's official website
• B Real Official website
• Dj Muggs Official website
• Cypress Hill at Allmusic
• Cypress Hill on Velvet Hammer Site
• Cypress Hill at Legacy Recordings (Sony Music)
• 2008 Sen Dog interview
• The Unofficial Cypress Hill Fan Site
• Cypress Hill's B-Real with Snoop Dogg on Solo Album