Hasta La Muerte
WORDS Abel Salas
PHOTOGRAPHY www.estevanoriol.com
Cypress Hill reenergizes its fans and reaffirms its musical genius

The phone calls fly. Estevan Oriol, ace image conjurer and Joker Brand co-proprietor, is the go-to hombre. He’s wrangling Sen Dog, B-Real and DJ Muggs—the blood and guts of Cypress Hill from the beginning—for a series of CD jacket photos that will grace a new release. But it’s nearly impossible to catch the rap-rock superstars together in one place. They’re gearing up for a tour Down Under. They have deep roots and separate lives in Southern California. And 15 years after a storied debut with the self-titled record Cypress Hill, the band is knee-deep in preparations for its tenth album release and seventh studio recording.

This magazine’s publisher is doing his best to facilitate the long sought-after interview. Oriol is busy shooting. When it’s all said and done, he will have unloaded 80 rolls of film, a few of which will be earmarked for this story. Finally, hours before the band has to check in at LAX, it’s Oriol’s voice on the other end of an answered ring. Cypress Hill will be able to squeeze our interview into its pre-flight departure scramble.

Decked out in Joker Brand “black on black” duds, Muggs has just come in from outside the downtown industrial warehouse alleyways and loading docks where Oriol likes to shoot. From tours with House of Pain, one of several offspring groups Muggs has nurtured and produced, to a semi-permanent place as in-house art director for Cypress Hill, Oriol has become the adjunct band ambassador, as much family as he is crew leader and permanent band staff.

“I put him on the road as [House of Pain’s] road manager,” Muggs says of the long-standing relationship with Oriol. About the new record, titled ‘Til Death Do Us Part, he is effusive. Muggs is excited about the upcoming disc. According to Muggs, the as yet unheard CD features guest appearances by, and collaborations with, Bob Marley scion Damian Marley and Tim Armstrong of Rancid, among many others. More than a simple “reinvention,” he continues, the album is a tribute, a love letter of sorts, to the fan base that has given the band cult status world wide.

“It comes from the fact that we ain’t going nowhere as a band,” says Muggs. The group, he notes, is here to stay. The Cypress web-site offers a comment on the band’s commitment to the creation of a sound and identity that combines “the longevity of the Grateful Dead and the power of Led Zeppelin.”

Stylistically, the new album will fuse the heavy rap-rock elements pioneered by Cypress long before the current crop of Linkin Park clones with the progressive musings of a pan-Latin, reggae-ska inflected ensemble for all time, Muggs offers. From his brief description, the record will remain consistent with the trajectory that has kept them at the forefront, a leading force in what has become an international urban hip-hop revolution.

“It’s nothing trendy, nothing that anybody else is doing right now,” explains Muggs. “We don’t just want to make hits. We want to make records that stand the test of time.”

A Queens, New York transplant to Bell Gardens, a suburb in southeast L.A. that sits next to the mean streets of South Central, Muggs (Lawrence Muggerud) met Cuban-born Senen Reyes (Sen Dog) and Mexi-cuban Louis Freese (B-Real) while still in high school. The latter two had been bred in South Gate, an industrial suburb bordering Bell Gardens.

Influenced by the scratch house-party turntablism of the early hip-hop pioneer he’d witnessed firsthand on the East Coast—groups like Africa Bambaataa and Kool DJ Herc—Muggs organized an outfit that featured B-Real, Sen Dog and Mellow Man Ace (Sen’s younger brother Ulpiano Sergio). Formed in 1988, DVX (Devastating Vocal Xcellence) morphed into Cypress Hill after Sen’s brother left to pursue a solo career as Mellow Man Ace behind the hit song “Mentirosa.”

Bowing on the Ruffhouse label in 1991 with the eponymous Cypress Hill, they hit the big-time like a meteor with early hits such as “I Wanna Get High,” “Latin Lingo” and the classic gangsta anthem “How I Could Just Kill a Man.” The final tally for the Cypress debut: 2 million units stateside.

The rest is…so obvious it needn’t be said. A second release, Black Sunday, debuted at #1 on Billboard in 1993, racking up sales of 2 million and 3.5 million in the U.S. and around the world, respectively. Collaborations with Pearl Jam and Sonic Youth were evidence of an appeal to hardcore rap fans and grunge-goth-alternative rockers alike. In 1994, Rolling Stone critics and readers named Cypress Hill “Best Rap Group” in a national poll. Muggs was already producing for House of Pain, Funkdoobiest and the Beastie Boys.

A show at Woodstock for 500,000 people, Lollapalooza headliner status, world tours and a third CD titled III (Temples of Boom) were proof the band had arrived.

Woodstock, says Muggs, “was a memorable show.” And 15 world tours later, including the recent European romp this summer with Eminem, an album of Cypress hits in Spanish (1999’s Los Grandes Éxitos en Español), he is still happy to call Los Angeles home. “The fuckin’ weather, the beaches, the restaurants, the Lakers, the music… L.A.’s a great city.”

Several days later, Sen Dog is on the horn from Adelaide, Australia. Oriol patches him through.

“So far so good,” Sen says of the current tour. According to Oriol, all the “broads are walking around in their th-th-th-thong-thong-thongs.” The band has a day off, he explains, and their checking out the beach in Adelaide during a tour that will take them to Melbourne, Sydney and elsewhere in Crocodile Dundee country. He also concedes that the band is not giving interviews this go-round, that they’ve made an exception for Open Your Eyes.

With respect to the new album, Sen Dog echoes DJ Muggs. “It’s off the hook. Everyone’s really happy with it… the band, the label,” he says from the other side of the planet. “I’m just glad that my bandmates share a vision.”

Referring to the period after the release of the band’s third record when he took time to pursue an independent metal-punk project, he gives props to his bandmates. “They never hated when I stepped away from the band to do my own thing. When I was trying to feed my kids and shit, they were right there for me, so I don’t trip,”

After releasing a CD titled Get Wood Sampler on the Flip label with his new group SX-10, Sen came home to Cypress Hill for the band’s fourth release, IV. B-Real and Muggs had also released well-received independent and collaborative efforts outside the Cypress fold. But the chemistry that brought them together originally was also the bond that kept them from straying too far apart.

The new album title, according to Sen Dog, is a reflection of their commitment to the die-hard fans from L.A. to Tokyo who have stood by the group. It addresses the new fans who were all of five years old when the band was launched and the tried and true loyalists who make up the hip-hop, metal, goth-punk, alterna-rap church of Cypress Hill.

“‘Til Death Do Us Part is for our fans, for our audience [because they’ve] been with us,” Sen says. “I mean, we could be around for 150 years, but we’re still gonna be married to our audience. We’re a familia.”