When Cypress Hill members B-Real, Muggs and Sen Dog banned together in 1988 (and later Eric Bobo), they didn’t know they were creating a legacy. They thought-at most-they might make one or two albums and get some quick cash for the short term. Turns out the pro-marijuana, Spanglish slang spitting rappers from the West Coast would not only be successful but impact the culture of hip-hop for years to come. They would go on to break all sorts of records most notably being the first Latino American rap group to go platinum selling over 20 million albums worldwide.
July 20, 2018 marks the 25th anniversary of Cypress Hill’s groundbreaking second album, Black Sunday. The album rebuked any notion of the sophomore slump when it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 in 1993, solidifying the band as a hip-hop mainstay. With their debut album still in the charts too, they became the first rap group to have two albums in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 simultaneously. Black Sunday was also notable for the crossover hit “Insane in the Brain,” which led the album to go triple platinum in the U.S. and sold about 3.25 million copies. On the eve of its 25th Anniversary ‘LLERO caught up with Sen Dog in between tour dates to reminisce on what made Black Sunday so different, the creative process behind it and the Cypress Hill legacy that lives on 30 years later.
On the direction and recording process…
Sen Dog:
“I think we didn’t have a direction. We just wanted to do something completely different from the first album. That’s the only direction we knew we wanted to not go in. Therefore, we had a wide open mentality for sounds and concepts of what could be. The field was wide open so we weren’t really trying to hold anybody back, or hold each other back in any way. We were just trying to be a little more different, maybe a little more weird, from our first album, so that was the mentality. It was just a free-flowing type of thing – we’d do songs and keep them, do some songs and get rid of them. It wasn’t a stressful session at all. It was a lot of marijuana and a lot of mushrooms during the recording of that record as I recall [laughs]. It was just a good time, we were like ‘wow we’re here, we made it, we had a good first album and now we’re making another one.’ We couldn’t believe we were making another album! So it was like a celebration kind of vibe. Just a bunch of friends coming by the studio and hang out, cheef out. All the Naughty [by Nature] dudes would come by, House of Pain, it was like a family kind of thing, great vibes. And we were all young, experiencing life so it was a great time to be in Cypress Hill.”
On the Creative Process for the hit single “Insane in the Brain”…
“Muggs had pre-made tracks he had been writing from when he was on break. So, when we got in the studio he already had that song, the music had already been recorded for it. I think B came up with the whole insane in the membrane thing, and I backed him up on it. So it was kind of a natural way for a hit song to come together. There’s not too many moving parts in that song, so everybody just did their role and did songs.”
On the Success of “Insane in the Brain”…
“We thought “Insane in the Brain” was going to be a great album track. Then we turned the record in and like a week later we got the managers and the label calling us up saying we want to go with this song first. And we’re like, ‘You mean the Insane song? That one? Really?’ And they were like ‘Yeah, that song is going to be big, you just don’t know.’ We thought we had stronger stuff, we thought our go to song on that album was going to be “Ain’t Going Out Like That.” As a band we thought that was our strongest song. But I guess the label and the guys that pick the songs to be singles heard something special in “Insane in the Brain” that not even the band heard. So, it turned out to be a monster, people still go crazy for that song today.”
Sen Dog drops some info on that infamous cannabis album sleeve, some behind the scenes moments and the critics after the jump…
On making the cannabis factoid pamphlet included in the album…
“Well that was an idea we all started thinking about it. We got it from High Times Magazine. There were two magazines that we bought religiously whenever it came out and that was The Source Magazine and the High Times Magazine. We were always reading one or the other from front to back. We were learning all this culture. In the High Times there was always lists of the best strains, sometimes it was the history and positive attributes. That’s where we learned farmers were made to raise hemp, along with tobacco and everything else. We learned all that from High Times. So we thought it would be a cool feature to have inside the sleeve of Black Sunday, 19 facts or however many about – not our opinion, this is actual facts – on cannabis, hemp and the whole marijuana culture. And it blew people’s minds when they got that record and opened it up [laughs]. I know a lot of kids couldn’t take that record home.”
On how many songs recorded actually made it…
“I think there were about 14 that made it on the album and we probably recorded about 25 songs. Some of the stuff did surface later on John Madden Football games and stuff like that. Some of the stuff has never seen the light of day. I know there’s a vault somewhere where Muggs has at least a couple hundred Cypress Hill songs that never came out.”
Some magic moments you may not know about…
“I just remember the last day when the record was done and all that, we decided we were gonna fry on mushrooms that day real heavy and then we just listened to the album. We hadn’t listened to the record as a whole yet, we just listened to it in songs. And the first couple times we played it, I dunno if it was because I was on mushrooms or whatever, but there was just this special feeling like ‘Oh my God, this record is incredible’. The next day we flew home and I had a cassette tape of the album and I put it in my car and it didn’t have that same feeling. I don’t know if it was because I wasn’t stoned anymore or not. But then the record came out and I think people got that initial feeling that we got that day when we first heard the record together. That feeling was on that record, it wasn’t just because we were stoned out of our minds. That record was just it’s own thing, it did its own thing.”
On the critical response Black Sunday received…
“You know we broke some records with Black Sunday – we made some noise and we charted and we were number one in the world. Just saying that now, it still feels special to me. I feel like I’ve been to the top of the mountain so to speak. I was numb, it was an overwhelming feeling like ‘is this really happening?’ It was a great feeling and I’m glad we were able to accomplish that at one point in our careers.”
You can keep up with Sen Dog and Cypress Hill on Instagram and Twitter @sendog and @cypresshill. Follow the latest Cypress Hill news on their website. And for the visuals on that timeless track, check out the video below.
