Cypress Hill
Album: Elephants on Acid
Label: BMG
Release Date: September 28, 2018
On the Hill
Written by Silas Valentino
So you like drugs, do ya?! Well put this album in your pipe and hit play. Iconic hip-hop veterans Cypress Hill, an LA group that’s done more for promoting medicinal marijuana than the entire vicinity of Venice Beach, have returned after an 8-year hiatus with a simple concept for their ninth album Elephants on Acid:
“I wanted to create a record that gives you the experience of tripping without doing any drugs. I want to open the mind. You need a touch of madness to create a masterpiece and you can’t have a masterpiece without the madness,” Lawrence “DJ Muggs” Muggerud, Twitter, June 2018.
Two minutes into the album and you know exactly what he means. Following the cinematic instrumental and album opener “Tusko” the drugs take ahold and kick in with “Band of Gypsies.” The fun-yet-disconcerting feeling of drug abuse is augmented with a beat that’s part Sgt. Pepper, part hookah lounge. A reverberating guitar hook screeches to the crescendo of Middle Eastern melodies while lead MC Louis “B-Real” Freese manages to make, “You paranoid in the paragraph when I paraphrase” while name dropping Don Cheadle.
The track is supported by Egyptian duo Sadat & Alaa Fifty Cent who provide blazing versus sung entirely in Arabic. It’s a refreshing addition to Cypress Hill’s already-global influence.
Later is the downbeat “Jesus Was a Stoner” which is perhaps the most controversial song title on the album (although there is another entitled “Stairway to Heaven”). Deploying studio tricks like heavy echo and sounds in reverse, Cypress Hill craft a slow-moving religious referendum: “Jesus was a stoner/Born in southern California/ Lying out on the corner/ While they’re tryna stone us.” The audacity in claiming the son of God rolled blunts teeters the line of mockery but this is Cypress Hill’s trip and we’re just the guest. Hold the comments until the end of the tour.
Not to be confused with Rihanna’s “What’s My Name?” is the buoyant, bubblegum pop number “Oh Na Na” which – hold your horses – begins by rhyming “na na” with “marijuana” and “smoke the ganja.” Banalities aside, “Oh Na Na” is an album highlight where New Orleans horns flutter to the rhythmic pulse of a simple piano lead. B-Real reminds us of Cypress Hill’s motto: “I make shit simple/We smoked all the most potent weed for the temple/There ain’t no example/Here we cultivate for the mind and the mental/Just breathe that in.”
Whereas other artists might hide their drug influences in their songs (ever noticed what the first letter of each major word in “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” spells?) Cypress Hill is for the layman, everyman and the you and me, man. It’s just weed and psychedelics – keep it simple! We push play on Cypress Hill for a reprieve from the world’s complications.
The second act in Elephants on Acid dips into “bad trip” territory with more abrasive beats and subject matters. “Falling Down”, “Insane OG” and “Warlord” are a few tracks where the sunny side of a high falls into the depths of insecurity or paranoia. But the album’s narrative is guided through the interludes and after “Thru the Rabbit Hole” things start to look up. “Crazy” ensues with a Tom Waits-worthy beat as brazen horns complement B-Real while he grapples with a potential tombstone inscription: “‘He’s so insane,’ that’s what they say ‘He hit that bong too hard one day.’”
Elephants on Acid concludes with “Stairway to Heaven” which manages to pull off a delicious trick of sampling (or at least replicating expertly) the melody of Led Zeppelin’s iconic rock classic without paying a single writing credit for the Englishmen. But trivia nerds will know that Zeppelin themselves were accused of ripping off “Stairway to Heaven” from an obscure, forgotten group.
Like an anonymous joint passing by you in a crowded concert, this “Stairway to Heaven” melody has no beginning nor end and might burn on in eternity.