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" (formerly "Trigga Happy Nigga") 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 the first House of Pain album, then worked on other 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".
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.
Feud With Ice Cube
Ice Cube asked to put "Throw Your Set in the Air" on his Friday soundtrack, but B-Real refused, prompting Cube to record a new song "Friday" with a similar chorus; Cypress Hill responded with the track "No Rest For The Wicked." Westside Connection replied with the diss track "King Of The Hill" and "Cross Em Out & Put a K", to which Cypress Hill replied with "Ice Cube Killa," which uses the same beat as "King Of The Hill" and disses Ice Cube and Mack 10. "Ice Cube Killa" has never been released officially. 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 would work 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 did even feature as guests in Warren G's single "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 of 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, Pharoae 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.
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.
STYLE
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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, as the style is today, some 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?"
The sound contribitions of DJ Muggs seems to be clearly influenced by marijuana consumption. Since one of the effects of a cannabis high is an altered audio sensual perception, the often slow paced and deep bass can be better appreciated. Furthermore, psychedelic sequences underly some parts of certain tracks such as "I Wanna Get High" for example. This is an interesting feature of their music, that had also been used before, especially during the 60's and 70's (e.g. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles).
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.
Years active 1987 - present.
Another Victory
Cypress Hill Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
You can't fuck with the steezo
Please no interruptions
Your crew pull up guns get waxed in the sun
Like my rag top six-five
Smash you with the switches
The hitch is, you're getting too big for your britches
With your tail up, I'm the thug pirate
Put the sail up, your whole crew frail, what
You want this joint, suck it inhale nut
Niggas are feelin' this track in Braille, huh
We're grade A while you motherfuckers fail, what
You understand, imitators gotta bail up
To all the males and females gangin' up
All on my cell phone talkin' shit, hangin' up
I gotta show you how a nigga bang it up
Slangin' cuts
Your squad against mine
You're minor leagues with major
Detail the plans like verse
Hit hard, catch you off guard
Another victory
Your squad against mine
You're minor leagues with major
Detail the plans like verse
Hit hard, catch you off guard
Another victory
I slay rappers with precision
I got vision like Anakin
You panicking' I'm leaving you stiffer than a mannequin
My high lyrics constantly brain damagin'
Brandishin' a fire arm, still managin'
Hurt niggas, bandagin' who give my lyrics
That play like a mandolin
I hold my mic like my dick, but you handlin'
I kill flows on tracks who abandoning'
I eat you like pussy, then take a sample
Then spit fire in the places you standin' in
I take a fool to the Hill
Light a candle then you in the dark stuck part in the scandalin'
Now I see your whole brain's scramblin'
Don't like what you hear, change the channel then nigga
Your squad against mine
You're minor leagues with major
Detail the plans like verse
Hit hard, catch you off guard
Another victory
Your squad against mine
You're minor leagues with major
Detail the plans like verse
Hit hard, catch you off guard
Another victory
I spark cells of a rhythm
You best listen, get it over with
Stolen shit, rolling it, Cypress ownin' it
Bitin' niggas clonin' it
I got a dog got a bone to pick, you holdin' it
Suck it hard swallow easy, put a soul in it
Your body's on the floor, head got a hole in it
The weed master, rhyme killer, mic controllin' it
You still fuckin' but your wack, ain't throwin' it
Stepped in shit, now your chillin' all alone in it
Head full of hair, still ain't combin' it
Five child in the world who's romin' it
Never know if I'm high or I'm throwin' shit
I got you stuck in the Twilight Zone on shit
I'm the owner of the fat joint you rollin' with, bitch
Your squad against mine
You're minor leagues with major
Detail the plans like verse
Hit hard, catch you off guard
Another victory
Your squad against mine
You're minor leagues with major
Detail the plans like verse
Hit hard, catch you off guard
Another victory
The lyrics to Cypress Hill's "Another Victory" are full of aggression and swagger, with each verse serving as a boastful proclamation of the group's superiority over their rivals. The first verse begins with a warning to anyone who would dare challenge them, telling them they "can't fuck" with Cypress Hill. Any who would try are sure to meet a violent end, with guns and switches used to dispatch them. The singer revels in his own power, comparing himself to a pirate before boasting that even the blind can feel the intensity of his rhymes. The chorus serves as a rallying cry for the group, calling for their enemies to step up and be defeated once again.
The second verse is more focused on lyrical prowess than brute strength, with the singer comparing himself to Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars. His words are said to be devastating, leaving his foes panicked and helpless. He wields the mic like a weapon, leaving all who hear his rhymes in awe. The third verse continues this theme, with the singer asserting his dominance over anyone who would try to copy him. He is the weed master, killing it on the mic while his rivals flounder. Despite their best efforts, no one can match his skills.
Overall, "Another Victory" is a track that celebrates raw power and lyrical mastery. Cypress Hill is on top and no one can hope to take them down.
Line by Line Meaning
Get ready motherfuckers!
Buckle up, because things are about to get intense.
You can't fuck with the
Don't even try to mess with us.
Please no interruptions
Don't interrupt what we're doing, we're focused.
Your crew pull up guns get waxed in the sun
If your crew brings guns, they'll regret it.
Like my rag top six-five
I'm cruising in my classic car.
Smash you with the switches
I'll hit you hard with my lyrics.
The hitch is, you're getting too big for your britches
You're getting overconfident.
Why you running like bitches
Why are you being cowardly?
With your tail up, I'm the thug pirate
I'm the one in charge here.
Put the sail up, your whole crew frail, what
You better get out of our way, because you're not strong enough to handle us.
You want this joint, suck it inhale nut
If you want to try and take us on, go ahead, but it won't end well for you.
Niggas are feelin' this track in Braille, huh
People are loving this song so much they can feel it through their senses.
We're grade A while you motherfuckers fail, what
We're succeeding while you're failing.
You understand, imitators gotta bail up
If you're copying us, you better back off.
To all the males and females gangin' up
Don't try to come at us in a group, we'll still come out on top.
All on my cell phone talkin' shit, hangin' up
Stop calling me with nonsense, I don't have time for that.
I gotta show you how a nigga bang it up
I'll demonstrate how it's done.
Slangin' cuts
We're delivering our bars with style and finesse.
Your squad against mine
It's your team versus ours.
You're minor leagues with major
You're outmatched and outclassed.
Detail the plans like verse
We have detailed plans and strategies like a well-written verse.
Hit hard, catch you off guard
We'll come at you aggressively and unexpectedly.
Another Victory
We're celebrating another win.
I slay rappers with precision
I'm an expert at lyrically destroying other rappers.
I got vision like Anakin
I have an ability to see things before they happen, like the Star Wars character Anakin Skywalker.
You panicin' I'm leaving you stiffer than a mannequin
If you're panicking, I'm going to make you even more tense and immobile.
My high lyrics constantly brain damagin'
My lyrics are so good they can damage your brain.
Brandishin' a fire arm, still managin'
I can handle a gun and still perform well.
Hurt niggas, bandagin' who give my lyrics
My lyrics can harm people, but I'll fix them up if they get hurt.
That play like a mandalin
My lyrics are so good, they sound beautiful like a mandolin.
I hold my mic like my dick, but you handlin'
I'm in control of the mic like I'm in control of my own body.
I kill flows on tracks who abandonin'
I'll destroy weak attempts at rapping.
I eat you like pussy, then take a sample,
I'll devour you and still have enough left over to use as evidence of defeat.
Then spit fire in the places you standin' in
I'll metaphorically burn you in the spot where you're standing.
I take a fool to the Hill
I'll take a weak-minded person to Cypress Hill.
Light a candle then you in the dark stuck part in the scandalin'
Once you're with us, you'll be stuck in the dark and maybe even involved in some scandalous activity.
Now I see your whole brain's scramblin'
You're becoming overwhelmed and confused by my skills.
Don't like what you hear, change the channel then nigga
If you don't like what we're doing, don't listen or watch.
I spark cells of a rhythm
I'm able to ignite strong emotions with my music.
You best listen, get it over with
You need to pay attention and understand it quickly.
Stolen shit, rolling it, Cypress ownin' it
We're making other artists' work our own and owning our sound.
Bitin' niggas clonin it,
We're tired of other artists copying our style and claiming it as their own.
I got a dog got a bone to pick, you holdin' it
I have a problem with you, and I'm going to confront you about it.
Suck it hard swallow easy, put a soul in it
We're delivering our verses with gusto and feeling.
Your body's on the floor, head got a hole in it
We've metaphorically knocked you down and left you hurt.
The weed master, rhyme killer, mic controllin' it
We're in control of everything, even our drug use and ability to kill it on the mic.
You still fuckin' but your wack, ain't throwin' it
You're still trying to compete with us, but you're failing miserably.
Stepped in shit, now your chillin' all alone in it
You've made a mistake and now you're stuck dealing with the consequences by yourself.
Head full of hair, still ain't combin' it
You don't have everything together, even the little things like combing your hair.
Five child in the world who's ropin' it
We're the best and no one can challenge us.
Never know if I'm high or I'm throwin' shit
We're unpredictable and you never know what we're going to say or do next.
I got you stuck in the Twilight Zone on shit
You're confused and disoriented by our skills and approach.
I'm the owner of the fat joint you rollin' with, bitch
We're the ones who are leading the way and paving the road for others to follow.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: Larry Muggerud, Louis M. Freeze
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind