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.
Everybody Must Get Stoned
Cypress Hill Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
I got that-a old crazy shit from round the corner you know
The homeboys and the brothers be slangin' this shit
But anyway, (everybody must get stoned)
You over there singin' some shit, talkin' 'bout
Everybody must get stoned
I don't know but that shit sounds good to me
Till you just can't get enough of the skunk
A punk nigga named Doe wanna take control
But to free
My soul, puff on the endo (keep puffin')
Let me take it in then I let it out (let it out)
One of you motherfuckers pass the barred owl
Peace to the niggas in all the Buddha spots
Slangin' fat bags o' weed and runnin' from the cops
(Runnin' from them fools)
I hit the leno then pass it on
To the cypha' of dreadlocks gettin' stoned
(All the dreadlocks lya')
Roll a fat joint, twist it at the end
'Cos I get high with a little help from my friends (from my friends)
Everybody must get stoned, I said
Hit the blunt or the bong, take a toke
Now my head's in a cloud of smoke and no joke
Caught the up-tight motherfuckers puttin' me down
'Cos I talk about the green shit in every town (everywhere I go)
You right in front of me, I can't see ya
I'm blind and faded and I got the cheeba
And everything's gonna be alright
When I pass that kush up on the left-hand side
Niggas is havin' a good time tonight
Roll it up, hold it up, pass me the fucking light
(Gimme that lighter)
Indo or the home-grown
Light it up, everybody must get stoned (gotta get stoned)
Everybody must get stoned, I said
You know how we talk the talk
We say, stoned is the way of the walk
Everybody must get stoned, I said
The lyrics to Cypress Hill's song "Everybody Must Get Stoned" depict the culture of marijuana usage and the vibe associated with it. The song starts with a reference to the singer's acquaintance with the sellers of marijuana in the neighborhood. The lyrics emphasize the singer's relationship with marijuana and how it is an essential part of his soul. The singer is high on marijuana and encourages everyone to smoke it too, indicating that "everybody must get stoned." The lyrics suggest that marijuana acts as a stress reliever and bring people together. The song also highlights how marijuana is associated with a particular culture - the dreadlocks, the Buddha Spots, and running from the cops - and how marijuana has a bonding effect on the community that shares the same interests.
Overall, the song's theme is about how marijuana brings people together and promotes a care-free attitude towards life. The song portrays marijuana as a way of life and how it can lift your spirits when nothing else can.
Line by Line Meaning
This sure is
Acknowledging the music being played.
I got that-a old crazy shit from round the corner you know
Referring to the marijuana that was obtained from a local corner store.
The homeboys and the brothers be slangin' this shit
The local dealers in the area are selling this particular strain of marijuana.
But anyway, (everybody must get stoned)
Regardless of what's being sung, everyone should partake in smoking marijuana.
You over there singin' some shit, talkin' 'bout
The singer acknowledges someone singing about getting stoned.
Everybody must get stoned
An affirmation that everyone should smoke marijuana.
I don't know but that shit sounds good to me
The singer is considering the idea of smoking because it sounds appealing.
Hit the joint, up the bomb, take a puff
Instructions on how to inhale marijuana smoke from either a joint or bong.
Till you just can't get enough of the skunk
Smoke marijuana until it becomes too intoxicating.
A punk nigga named Doe wanna take control
An individual named Doe is attempting to influence or control the situation.
But to free
The singer desires to be liberated from this negative influence or control.
My soul, puff on the endo (keep puffin')
The singer wants to continue smoking marijuana to experience its benefits.
Let me take it in then I let it out (let it out)
Inhaling smoke then exhaling it after smoking marijuana.
One of you motherfuckers pass the barred owl
Asking someone to pass the marijuana they are holding.
Peace to the niggas in all the Buddha spots
Acknowledging marijuana-selling establishments commonly referred to as Buddha spots.
Slangin' fat bags o' weed and runnin' from the cops
Dealers selling large quantities of marijuana while trying to avoid law enforcement.
(Runnin' from them fools)
The fear and danger of being caught by law enforcement while selling marijuana.
I hit the leno then pass it on
The singer smokes marijuana then shares it with others.
To the cypha' of dreadlocks gettin' stoned
A group of individuals with dreadlocks smoking marijuana together.
(All the dreadlocks lya')
Acknowledging the presence of individuals with dreadlocks who are smoking marijuana.
Roll a fat joint, twist it at the end
Rolling a large marijuana joint and twisting the end to keep the contents secure.
'Cos I get high with a little help from my friends (from my friends)
The singer enjoys smoking marijuana with friends and needs their help to do so.
Hit the blunt or the bong, take a toke
Similar to earlier instructions, telling someone how to inhale marijuana smoke from either a blunt or bong.
Now my head's in a cloud of smoke and no joke
After inhaling marijuana smoke, the singer feels its effects and is generally enjoying the experience.
Caught the up-tight motherfuckers puttin' me down
The singer is being criticized by individuals who frown upon smoking marijuana.
'Cos I talk about the green shit in every town (everywhere I go)
The singer discusses marijuana wherever they go, possibly due to the benefits they receive from smoking it.
You right in front of me, I can't see ya
The singer's vision is impaired by the effects of the marijuana they smoked.
I'm blind and faded and I got the cheeba
The singer is heavily under the influence of marijuana and is enjoying it.
And everything's gonna be alright
The singer believes that smoking marijuana will make everything alright.
When I pass that kush up on the left-hand side
Asking someone to pass the high-quality marijuana they are holding.
Niggas is havin' a good time tonight
Everyone is enjoying themselves and having a good time, likely due to the effects of smoking marijuana.
Roll it up, hold it up, pass me the fucking light
Preparing to roll a marijuana joint, requesting someone to light it, and then requesting the joint be passed to them.
(Gimme that lighter)
Requesting someone to pass the lighter to them so they can light the joint.
Indo or the home-grown
Referring to two different strains of marijuana, one high-quality (indo) and one grown at home.
Light it up, everybody must get stoned (gotta get stoned)
Encouraging everyone to smoke marijuana until they are fully under its influence.
You know how we talk the talk
Acknowledging the common language and vocabulary used when discussing smoking marijuana.
We say, stoned is the way of the walk
Referring to the belief that smoking marijuana is a way of life and essential to their daily routine.
Everybody must get stoned, I said
A final affirmation that everyone should smoke marijuana fully and without restraint.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: Larry Muggerud, Louis M. Freeze
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind