Words by Zoe Zorka
One of the staples of hip-hop music has always been the ability to reflect current cultural and societal dynamics. The vast majority of artists (especially today’s artists) do so by referencing specific people, places, things, and events – and do it well. Yet few groups have managed to make music with such longevity that it would be even more relevant 25 years later than it was the day their album dropped.
Listening to Cypress Hill, it feels like their music, which emphasizes the normalization of marijuana, criticizes police brutality, and decries racism, was written just this year.
During rap’s “golden age” in the mid-to-late 80’s, many rappers lightly alluded to marijuana in their songs (LL Cool J touched on the subject by mentioning a blunt, which wasn’t exactly referencing weed) or outright denied using it. After all, this was during Ronald Regan’s infamous War on Drugs, which classified marijuana as a Class I drug. Yet, all of that changed in 1991 with Cypress Hill’s self-titled debut album, in which they not only openly admitted using the drug, but unabashedly glorified it. Mike “DJ” Pizzo of Cuepoint writes, “They were the first group blunt enough — no pun intended — to openly embrace cannabis culture on a mainstream platform, making it okay for every rapper thereafter to do so.”
Soon after, rappers such as Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre would also come out of the figurative weed closet- and in a big way. The Chronic to this day remains one of Dr. Dre’s bestselling albums of all times.
Cypress Hill was also one of the more vocal artists calling out police brutality. In their song, not subtly titled “Pigs,” they rap: This pig harassed the whole neighborhood/Well this pig worked at the station/This pig he killed my homeboy /So that fuckin’ pig went on a vacation.
The group was also one of the first major mainstream interracial groups, an uncommonality for the early 90’s. Tricia and Andrew Rose, authors of the book Microphone Fiends: Youth Music and Youth Culture, point out that “intercultural rap music, built on a base of “prestige from below,” was one of the factors that allowed groups such as Cypress Hill to attract a broad-based audience, united by symbols of urban alienation.”
Aside from these reasons, the group’s beats, lyrical structures, and innovative sound also make them a group worth revisiting.
Ironically however, their most famous song “Insane in the Brain,” wasn’t one of their most woke. It’s largely been reported that it was written as a diss track towards Chubb Rock.
Some things really do never change.
