Cypress HIll Talks To Complex About Most Influential Records

by Salima Koroma

With over 20 years in Rap's consciousness, Cypress Hill is still going strong, just releasing their eighth studio album Rise Up. In an extended interview with Complex Magazine this week, members B-Real and Sen Dog spoke on the inspiration for ten of their most influential records. They explained that little of their music was recorded in-studio, rather their songs were created in group member DJ Muggs' home.

"All of our shit started in Muggs’ bedroom man," said B-Real. "There was probably one song that was created outside of that environment once we got our record deal. Maybe it was “Hole In The Head” and “Latin Lingo.” Those were the two last songs that we recorded for that first album. And those were the only two that were created in a studio and not in Muggs’ bedroom. We were pretty much all together all the time. He’d either be saying, 'Hey you should fuck with this.' Or we’d hear something where we’d be like, 'Hey let’s fuck with that.' We always threw ideas at each other. Really, he was the one for the vision for the music and how he wanted those tracks to sound. We’d just pick the ones we liked."

Sen Dog explained that B-Real's motivation for writing the 1991 record "Pigs," stemmed from a tense run-in with their neighborhood police officers.

"[After the confrontation] B-Real was pretty pissed," explained Sen Dog. "When I rolled up to my house, he was sitting in front of my mom’s house in his car. I rolled up in my driveway and I walked up to him and I was like, 'Hey what are you doing?' And he goes, 'I’m writing a song about the pigs!' He had this look on his face. When I came back outside the house, he was like, 'Listen to this!' That was actually one of the later songs that we recorded during the first album because either Muggs or I reminded him about the poem he wrote about the pigs."

The group members also shared the inspiration for their video "How I Could Just Kill A Man," and explained how they teamed up with Ice Cube for the Friday soundtrack.

hiphopdx.com