2023-08-25 11:21:06
The refrains and punchlines of Insane in the Brain and I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That, anthems from this second disc, should thrill the crowd this Saturday August 26 at Rock en Seine, a festival just outside Paris. Like everywhere where the Californians go, led by their two leaders B-Real and Sen Dog, real beasts of the stage.
These fifties are the ambassadors and pioneers of the opening of English-speaking rap to the Spanish language. Sen Dog has Cuban roots, as does B-Real from his mother’s side, while his father’s family is from Mexico.
Sold at three million units, Black Sunday, released on July 20, 1993, is the disc which made them change dimension. “The album rose to the top of the American charts and marked an important crossover, since the group opened up to a rock audience”, summarizes Olivier Cachin, journalist specializing in rap, for AFP. “Black Sunday is the album they’re going to play on stage. It is indeed a hip-hop group that appeals to rock audiences, our DNA. We are going there in complete confidence with them, it is the third time that we have programmed them, we have sometimes been a little mistaken regarding rap groups in the past, not with them”, welcomes Matthieu Ducos, director of Rock in the Seine.
“First to brag regarding it”
The keys to Cypress Hill’s success? A heavy flow, nasal voices, dark sounds and texts. And this opus opens with another title that has become a great moment on stage, I Wanna Get High (“I want to get high”), an ode to a soft drug, cannabis.
Sen Dog, Bobo and B-Real in concert in 2006. Photo taken from Wikipedia
The group, which takes its name from a street in southeast Los Angeles, was the first in rap to openly sing regarding its weed consumption. And to demand its legalization (“Legalize It” also appears on Black Sunday), at a time when this demand was not yet trendy in hip-hop. “They are not the first to smoke firecrackers, but the first to brag regarding it in rap. The name of Dr. Dre’s album The Chronic comes from the name of a Californian herb, but this album was released in 1992, while Cypress Hill’s first eponymous album was released in 1991, honor to the former”, says Olivier Cachin.
On the other hand, in 1988, NWA, another group from Los Angeles linked like Cypress Hill to gangsta rap, sang on Express Yourself: “I don’t smoke weed or sess / ‘Cause it’s known to give a brother brain damage’ (“I don’t smoke weed or sensemilla / Because it’s known to screw up the brain”).
Excalibur
Cypress Hill, he drives the point home on Black Sunday: “Hits from the Bong” once once more proclaims their love for “Mary Jane”, a first name declined in all languages to evoke grass. The shows remain hard-hitting, despite the foggy atmosphere: the members of Cypress Hill sometimes smoke on stage using a bong, a water pipe called “Excalibur” for its monumental size. This indulgence and their notoriety led them to appear in an episode of the hit cartoon The Simpsons in 1996 with a gag come true. In a rock and rap festival, the stage manager arrives in the boxes with the London Symphony Orchestra “commanded by a group that is probably stoned: Cypress Hill, I’m talking to you! This summer, for the 30th anniversary of Black Sunday, on stage in the United States, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra accompanied the rappers, dressed in suits and ties or bow ties for the occasion. At Rock en Seine, it is in a more classic formula – two singers, a DJ and percussion – that they will try to make the public hallucinate.
The refrains and punchlines of Insane in the Brain and I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That, anthems from this second disc, should thrill the crowd this Saturday August 26 at Rock en Seine, a festival just outside Paris. Like everywhere where the Californians go, led by their two leaders B-Real and Sen Dog, real beasts of the stage. These fifties are the ambassadors and pioneers of…
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