Now do you believe in the unseen?

Cypress Hill’s Black Sunday turns 30

Last night I went to see Cypress Hill perform with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra at the Rady Shell in Jacobs Park down along the embarcadero on the San Diego Bay.

If that sounds like a joke cooked up after a marathon bong session you’re more right than you know.

That bit aired on The Simpsons three years after Cypress Hill dropped its second album Black Sunday on July 20, 1993, cementing its reputation as hardcore West Coast rap artists.

You could say something was in the air. The album emerged between Dr. Dre’s The Chronic in December 1992 and Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle in November 1993, forming a trilogy of sorts dedicated to extolling life on the streets of South LA under an every-present cloud of marijuana smoke.

Songs like “I Wanna Get High,” “Hits from the Bong” and “Insane in the Brain” led the way to the album going platinum many times over. B-Real delivered his lyrics with a cartoonishly nasal twang that was balanced by Sen Dog’s gruff counterpoint, rapping as if he’s holding in a lungful of smoke. That combination became instantly recognizable to fans around the world embracing hip-hop’s rising popularity. Cypress Hill could sing “Wheels on the Bus” and you’d know it was Cypress Hill.

Cypress Hill sang about street violence and marijuana in a way that glorified both and Black Sunday is at its darkest when the lyrics explore what it feels like to smoke crippling amounts of weed while your enemies are gunning for you and death lies around every corner.

In these paranoid anthems fatalistic humor is the only defense against certain death. This is the stuff of film noir where the shadows only get darker and the walls never stop closing in.

Had a bad dream
Woke up in a casket
Now I can’t even
Get back in the basket.

In the summer of 1993 I moved from LA to Flagstaff, Arizona, where I lived in a shitty student housing complex on Blackbird Roost. Within my first few weeks of living there I was traumatized by Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” when the couple who lived upstairs got into an argument and they cranked the song to drown out their violent altercation. (She left his ass that night and he sheepishly apologized to me the next day while sporting a massive shiner.)

Not long after that the next-door neighbor with whom I shared a wall decided to leave the house with The Scorpions “Winds of Change” playing on repeat all fucking day. The guy who lived across the way also shared a wall with these assholes and we commiserated together, which is how we got to know each other. OJ was a tall, good-looking black dude from Phoenix who was always getting mistaken for Michael Jordan, which was both a blessing and a curse in a college town made up of mostly white kids.

When our neighbor decided to blast the Scorpions again, OJ took all the picture frames off his wall and blasted the gnarliest drum and bass track I’d ever heard until the walls vibrated. Our neighbor got the message and turned the music down. OJ and I became fast friends.

OJ drove a black pick-up truck and always carried a gun with him, which struck me as odd because he was so disarmingly handsome and charismatic that strangers opened up to him immediately. OJ was my introduction to “Black Sunday.” It was all we listened to when we cruised around Flagstaff in his truck, looking for the parties that he was always getting invited to.

Cypress Hill came into my life at a time when I was writing my first novel, a Tarrantino-esque ultra-violent caper that borrowed heavily from the tropes of pulp fiction. The protagonist was a bagman for a mysterious outfit who suffers from auditory hallucinations.

OJ didn’t smoke weed but I did and Cypress Hill’s lyrics settled over my novel like a fog. I was intoxicated by the wordplay, especially since it was so deliriously dark, and Black Sunday’s psychological dimension animated my writing. The lyrics don’t tell a story so much as they drop the listener into scenes that flip from dream to nightmare.

Bam, I feel numb
Where did the shotgun blast come from?

I finished the novel that winter. Is it a good novel? No, but it was my first and if someone every digs it up the first thing they’ll see is an epilogue lifted from Cypress Hill’s Black Sunday.

This is a long-winded way of saying that Nuvia was very surprised when she asked me if I wanted to go see Cypress Hill and that when we went I knew almost all the words. Because we’re ten years apart, it’s surprising when our musical tastes overlap because most of the time they don’t but when it comes to Cypress Hill we’re in sync.

For me, listening to Cypress Hill was an experiment with language and story and sound. For Nuvia, Cypress Hill was the crew from South Gate, the neighborhood a few miles north of where she grew up in Paramount, who somehow became the first Latino hip-hop group to achieve mainstream success. (In the early aughts I briefly taught at the East Los Angeles Community College campus at South Gate, but that’s a story for another day.)

The concert opened up with the clip from The Simpsons and the orchestra launched into “I Wanna Get High.” It being the 30th anniversary of Black Sunday, they played the album from start to finish. I haven’t been to a ton of hip-hop shows but I’ve never been to one with better sound. Even with seats near the back of the venue the lyrics came through loud and clear.

I’d never been to the Rady Shell before but it’s a gorgeous space, perfect for a midsummer night concert, west of the stadium where the Padres play (sort of) and the Convention Center that played host to Comic Con last week. Sailboats and tankers made their way up and down the bay. One of those nights where I’m reminded of my Navy days and how miserable I was as a San Diego squid and the idea of attending a concert at a place like this seemed like some kind of dream. Of course, downtown San Diego was a very different place back then…

Cypress Hill will be doing a few more shows with orchestras around the country, but you can check out their appearance on NPR’s Tiny Desk last week.

Razorcake #135

The new issue of Razorcake is out and as always has a fascinating mix of interviews from artists that are mostly new to me and columns from people I love. In this issue I wrote about my book tour and this review of Daniel Weizmann’s The Last Songbird. Yes, that Daniel Weizmann.

This will be the last time I mention it because the offer expires soon but my novel Make It Stop is available as an ebook for just $1.99.

Also on Amazon, Corporate Rock Sucks is going for $3.99 (and is currently the #1 bestseller in Punk Music). Do What You Want is also on sale.

All my blood, sweat, and tears for the last five years for $10 bucks.

Stay cool and see you next Wednesday when I’ll have something to say about Lydia Lunch.