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.
No Rest For The Wicked
Cypress Hill Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Let's talk about the one who had my back!
Down in the west coast, so lemme kick it
To the motherfucker who calls himself "wicked"
No rest, no peace, no sleep
Doughboy rolling down the hill cause it's so steep
Jackson, lemme figure out the name
Jack cause you be stealing other niggas' game!
On my dick so hard, now ya wanna suck it!
Go on the head, gobble up the nuts
Get your lips ready & tear this motherfucker up!
Talk about Eazy, correct yourself
Cube, better step back & check yourself!
Hmmm let's talk about this
First solo album on the east coast dick
The east coast niggas all showed ya love
Especially the one known as King Sun
He tried to warn us niggas about 'cha
But nobody would listen
Even began dissin'
Two albums later, you callin' my crew
All because ya wannabe Cypress Cube (No way, motherfucker!)
Shoulda known you couldn't hang in the alley
Good boy went to school out in the valley
Fuck it, lemme make this understood
Speakin' on mama's little Boy N the Hood
No Vaseline
Just a rope and a chair and gasoline (burning your ass up!)
Lynch Mob is a friend of mine
But you talk about them niggas from behind
"You know what a chazzer is, O'Shea?
A motherfucking pig that don't fly straight"
Where ya gonna run to? Where ya gonna hide?
Tadow! Look at who's running outside!
Natural Born Bullshitta
Lemme hit ya with a dose of reality when I get wit' ya
Your homie came knockin', he had to chain my suit
You put a pipe on your cover, even though you don't smoke Buddha
Let me take you down under on a plane
Where everybody was going insane
Took a look at the Real one: afro gone
The next morning, you didn't have yours on
How many ways will you bite my shit?
Would ya wet me or start throwing up a set?
Caution, when you enter the zone
Never used to bang 'til you heard the microphone
I got Cube melting in a Tray
Pulling up his card and fucking up his "good day"
Unoriginal rap veteran
The nigga who say he don't steal from his friends
Don't trust that nigga named O'Shea
Fuck him, and send him on his way!
The song 'No Rest For The Wicked' by Cypress Hill is a diss track aimed at Ice Cube. The song speaks about how Cube changed after he made it big in the music industry, with him now being arrogant and starting to diss Cypress Hill. The lyrics are a direct attack on Cube, with the words portraying him as a thief who stole everything from others, including their rhymes, style, and beats. The lyricist is trying to show Cube that he can't mess with Cypress Hill as they are the wrong people to mess with. They assert this warning through the lyrics, which express they are ready for a fight.
The song's title, 'No Rest For The Wicked,' denotes the negative energy that surrounds them due to Cube's actions, and it's not letting them rest. The lyrics of the song are aggressive and straightforward with dissing words against Cube. It conveys their anger and frustration about the situation, and how they've been put on the spot, making a point to warn Cube to stay away from them. The track is powerful and intense, with the rapping given in a fast-paced manner, which adds to the overall vibe of the song.
Line by Line Meaning
So many fools swingin' from my sack
I have a lot of followers and admirers who constantly seek my attention and support.
Let's talk about the one who had my back!
I want to acknowledge and praise the person who has always supported and protected me.
Down in the west coast, so lemme kick it
I want to share my experiences and thoughts about the west coast so let me express myself.
To the motherfucker who calls himself 'wicked'
I want to address the individual who refers to themselves as 'wicked' in a confrontational manner.
No rest, no peace, no sleep
I'm constantly busy and have no time to rest or relax.
Doughboy rolling down the hill cause it's so steep
I'm facing many obstacles and challenges that seem insurmountable.
Jackson, lemme figure out the name
I need to remember the name of a person or place.
Jack cause you be stealing other niggas' game!
Your actions show that you're copying and stealing from others, which is not acceptable.
But I'm the wrong nigga you wanna fuck with
You don't want to mess with me because I won't tolerate any disrespect or mistreatment.
On my dick so hard, now ya wanna suck it!
You used to hate me but now you're trying to be my friend and gain my favor.
Go on the head, gobble up the nuts
You can try to gain my favor or approval all you want, but I won't be influenced so easily.
Get your lips ready & tear this motherfucker up!
You should be prepared to face the consequences of your actions and words.
Talk about Eazy, correct yourself
You need to be factual and accurate when talking about important figures in the industry.
Cube, better step back & check yourself!
You need to think twice and reconsider your position or actions before you face the consequences.
Hmmm let's talk about this
I want to discuss a topic or issue that's been on my mind.
First solo album on the east coast dick
You're bragging about your album release, but it's not as impressive as you think it is.
The east coast niggas all showed ya love
You received a lot of support and love from people on the east coast, but that doesn't make you invincible.
Especially the one known as King Sun
King Sun is a notable figure who was vocal about his doubts and criticism of you.
He tried to warn us niggas about 'cha
King Sun warned us about your questionable character and actions.
But nobody would listen, even began dissin'
People refused to believe King Sun's warnings and even started attacking him for it.
Two albums later, you callin' my crew
After a few albums, you suddenly decide to reach out to me and my group.
All because ya wannabe Cypress Cube
You're trying to mimic and copy our style and image, which is not original or respected.
Shoulda known you couldn't hang in the alley
You're not capable of handling rough or challenging situations.
Good boy went to school out in the valley
You grew up in a privileged and safe environment, which is reflected in your actions and behavior.
Fuck it, lemme make this understood
I'm done trying to be polite and civil, so I'm going to speak my mind and express myself clearly.
Speakin' on mama's little Boy N the Hood
You're trying to imitate the character and experiences of a famous movie character, which is disrespectful and unauthentic.
No Vaseline
I'm going to destroy you and expose your true nature and intentions.
Just a rope and a chair and gasoline (burning your ass up!)
I'm going to torture and humiliate you until you regret your actions and words.
Lynch Mob is a friend of mine
I have allies and supporters who are willing to help me confront and defeat you.
But you talk about them niggas from behind
You're trying to create divisions and conflicts between me and my allies by spreading rumors and lies.
"You know what a chazzer is, O'Shea?
I want to question and challenge your knowledge and intelligence.
A motherfucking pig that don't fly straight"
You're a deceitful and manipulative person who can't be trusted.
Where ya gonna run to? Where ya gonna hide?
You're going to face the consequences and punishments for your actions and words, and there's no escape.
Tadow! Look at who's running outside!
You're trying to flee or escape, but I've caught up with you and you're running for your life.
Natural Born Bullshitta
You're a liar and faker who can't be trusted.
Lemme hit ya with a dose of reality when I get wit' ya
I'm going to expose you and reveal the truth about your character and intentions when I confront you.
Your homie came knockin', he had to chain my suit
Your associate or friend tried to intimidate or challenge me but I wasn't afraid or intimidated.
You put a pipe on your cover, even though you don't smoke Buddha
You're pretending to be someone you're not and using fake props to seem cool or edgy.
Let me take you down under on a plane
I want to take you on a journey or experience that will shock or surprise you.
Where everybody was going insane
The situation or environment was crazy and unpredictable.
Took a look at the Real one: afro gone
I faced a real and unexpected change or challenge that made me lose my confidence or self-assurance.
The next morning, you didn't have yours on
You're pretending to be someone you're not and using fake props, which is foolish and embarrassing.
How many ways will you bite my shit?
You're copying and stealing from me in many ways and that's not acceptable or respectful.
Would ya wet me or start throwing up a set?
Are you going to attack or challenge me physically, or try to intimidate me with your group or gang?
Caution, when you enter the zone
Be aware and alert when you're in my territory or area of influence.
Never used to bang 'til you heard the microphone
You're pretending to be a tough or aggressive person only when you have an audience or people to impress.
I got Cube melting in a Tray
I'm exposing and humiliating Ice Cube and making him regret his actions and words.
Pulling up his card and fucking up his 'good day'
I'm revealing the truth about Ice Cube's character and mocking him for his arrogance and self-importance.
Unoriginal rap veteran
You're an experienced but uncreative and uninspired rapper.
The nigga who say he don't steal from his friends
You claim to be a loyal and honest person who doesn't betray or steal from your friends, but that's not true.
Don't trust that nigga named O'Shea
Ice Cube is not a trustworthy or reliable person and you should be cautious when dealing with him.
Fuck him, and send him on his way!
I'm done dealing with Ice Cube and want to distance myself from him and his negative influence.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: Larry Muggerud, Louis M. Freeze
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind