Black Sunday

Cypress Hill

album cover

The High Point of Stoner Rap

Recording artists dread the "sophomore slump." After having years to develop the songs (and the sonic identity) of their first efforts, many find themselves paralyzed as they attempt a worthy follow-up. Careers have been derailed, lives turned upside down, in pursuit of the second course to properly complement the first.

The Los Angeles rap outfit Cypress Hill seemed a likely candidate for the slump. The group's taut 1991 debut was instantly embraced by the hip-hop elite for its slowed-down beatbox funk and its multilingual discussions of the illuminating virtues of marijuana. When it came time to return to the studio, Cuban-born brothers Sen Dog and Mellow Man Ace, along with L.A. rappers B Real and DJ Muggs, radically altered the formula. They added repetitive acousticbass phrases that could have been lifted from jazz records, heavy metal guitars, and a touch of Public Enemy's sound-effects anarchy. What had been a typical boombap attack suddenly acquired a bongload of sonic possibility.

Atop this dark sound, the rappers of Cypress Hill dispense audacious rallying cries and cutting-contest taunts that are infintely more clever than typical hip-hop confrontations. No matter the subject, be it mental instability ("Insane in the Brain") or the laws of karma ("What Go Around, Come Around, Kid"), sooner or later these guys find their way back to rhapsodic discourse on the almighty buzz. The pot references grew tiresome on subsequent releases, but here they're part of the DNA, a point of commonality that, along with the whomping rhythm, helped make Black Sunday a crossover success. No surprise, really. After all, the good high is something that disaffected emo-obsessives, snarling metalheads, and hip-hop kids—all members of the Cypress tribe thanks to this disc—can agree on.

Genre: Hip-Hop
Released: 1993, Ruffhouse
Key Tracks: "I Ain't Goin' Out like That," "Insane in the Brain," "Hits from the Bong"
Catalog Choice: Cypress Hill
Next Stop: Dr. Dre: The Chronic
After That: Ultramagnetic MCs: Critical Beatdown
Book Pages: 199–200