WORDS Katherine Villarreal
PHOTOGRAPHY EstevanOriol.com

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Imported straight from Cuba, Senen “Sen Dog” Reyes, and his brother Ulpiano “Mellow Man Ace” Reyes are no strangers to success. Who can forget Mellow Man Ace’s groundbreaking hit of the early ‘90’s, Mentirosa? Then there’s the undeniable legacy of Sen Dog’s Cypress Hill. Together, Sen Dog and Mellow Man Ace are the Reyes Brothers. With bootie shaking rolas like “H.A.R.D.” and “Traffic” their album Ghetto Therapy is creating a stir and proving once again that the Reyes Brothers are two hermanos who pack a powerful musical punch.

Let’s start from the beginning. Is it true that the two of you, along with the rest of your family emigrated here from Cuba?
MELLOW MAN ACE: Yeah, it was in the early ‘70’s when we came here from Cuba. Pops got a job at the airport in Miami, so we were raised there for a bit.

I heard that you won a lottery, and that’s how you got out of Cuba.
MELLOW MAN ACE: Pretty much. At that time, to get on one of those flights of liberty, you had to have a certain number to get your family out. When I was born, that number came up, but it still took four or five years before they allowed us to leave. They tried to break my fathers will by putting him to work in the sugar cane fields and in the sewers. They told my father that these were the only types of jobs he would ever get in the United States, so why would he want to go? But my pops stepped true and knew that they were lying. So he stuck it out, and five years later they finally let us go.

Was it difficult adjusting to a brand new environment and culture as young Cuban immigrants?
SEN DOG: When I was little I didn’t really think about it, but as an adult I looked back and realized how difficult it really was. My sister and I were the only black kids in ESL at the school we went to in L.A. The other black kids thought we were from another planet. Not having our cousins and grandparents that we shared a tight bond with was also difficult. But after a few years people started to accept us and we made friends.

What first turned you on to hip hop?
SEN DOG: I didn’t want to actually rap until I saw Run DMC perform. The way they did their thing, the way they dressed, and their lyrical approach was raw and hard. I thought, “These dudes look like their packing guns underneath their jackets.” Also I remember seeing some dude named Porky rapping at a ditching party once. That was the first time I had seen someone actually, physically rap in front of me, and it just blew my mind. From that moment on I would write these little raps here and there, and Mellow and I started our first group while we were still in high school. We were also into breakdancing, which eventually gave way to just straight rapping and putting demos together with cats like Julio G from K-Day.

Is Reyes Brothers the first creative endeavor that you guys have embarked on together?
MELLOW MAN ACE: Not really. If you count the SX-10 album, Sen’s rock band, that was the first time we worked together as professionals, but The Reyes Brothers is the first time we got together and really made something that was ours alone, the entire body of work. This is the first one, but expect to see more in the future.

Mellow, is it true that you use to write all of the Spanish lyrics for Cypress Hill?
MELLOW MAN ACE: No, but we did work together from the beginning, and we wrote the lyrics for my first album. B-Real wrote two songs on that album. That’s just how we used to do it, as a crew. We would write for each other, just to get a different flow on a certain song. B-Real wrote “Talkapella” and “River Cubano,” on Escape from Havana, which is to date my biggest selling album.

What exactly does Ghetto Therapy mean?
SEN DOG: It means several things. It means that we’re trying to rehabilitate the streets…back to that raw, hard-knock Latin hip-hop sound. There’s a lot of cats on the radio singing love songs and we want to give therapy to counterattack that. The Reyes Brothers’ album sets a whole new standard that will get the streets to react the way they should. It’s an important album because it’s the ghetto that inspired it: that ghetto living, the ghettos of Cuba, and the ghettos we ended up living in Los Angeles. This record is just a way of bringing you back from the stuff that you’ve grown accustomed to and that’s gotten you soft.

What’s it like working with each other? Do you guys ever butt heads creatively or otherwise?
SEN DOG: No, that part was pretty easy. When you work with someone in your own family there are no reservations on expressing how you feel. Saying that you don’t like something or that you’re not really feeling a track is no big deal. There was really no conflict. If I came up with a track that Mellow happened not to dig, we would just squash it and go on to the next one.

At this stage of your careers, is it really that difficult to make friends who are not just trying to use you?
SEN DOG: Definitely. Through the years a lot of cats have come and gone that were basically just around for personal gain. Eventually though, they just end up playing themselves out and showing themselves for what they really are: a person with self-interest. To this day I still hang out with the cats I’ve known for 20 years or more. You know, kids that I went to elementary school and high school with, my Cypress Avenue homies. Some guys will just hang out with us to feel important. I realize that I’m not just Senen Reyes anymore, that I’m Sen Dog and that I’m a celebrity, and people want to gravitate towards that.

Can you elaborate a little bit more on I Lied?
MELLOW MAN ACE: I Lied is the same thing as You Don’t Know Me except that it’s geared toward the women, towards the girls that are looking for a paycheck or a come up, and want to have my baby. We made it a point to address that issue, because we don’t want any Kobe Bryant situations happening to us. We’re just letting them know off the top that if you think you’re gonna be able to scheme on us, just know that we’ve been around long enough to know what you look like.

Have either of you ever tried not letting a girl know who you are so you can weed out the fake ones?
SEN DOG: Yeah, but eventually they’re gonna find out. If I was to meet a female I would just introduce myself as Sen, not as Sen Dog. If the woman is cool, she’ll dig me for me, and not because of the fact that I have money or live in a mansion. Eventually she’s bound to ask me what I do for a living, and I’m not going to lie. What I do is something that I take in stride, and I try to be as humble as possible. I want a chick that handles it the same way.

Have you ever tried picking up a girl in a busted ranflita instead of a fancy car?
SEN DOG: Back in the days it was a lot simpler to figure out if a girl dug you, just by the way she looked at you. Nowadays, you spot a girl checking you out and you don’t know if she knows about you or not, wondering about your wallet.

With all the musical projects that you have going on, do you find enough time for your familia?
SEN DOG: That’s a good question right there. The fact is that as soon as you cut a record and you have some success with it, you know that it’s going to take you away from your family. You’re going to go on tour and you’re gonna miss your family, but if you let it affect you negatively you’re going to have a miserable time. I accept the fact that this is my job, and this is what it requires of me. If someone’s a musician and can’t accept that fact, then go flip some boxes around at UPS, or something like that.
MELLOW MAN ACE: I think the way I handled that was by bringing them with me to as many shows as could. I made my sisters my dancers, they were in the videos, and Sen would come along when he wasn’t working on Cypress Hill in the early days.

Mellow, you went through a bit of a rough patch during the ‘90’s. To what do you attribute being able to get back on the right track?
MELLOW MAN ACE: A lot of learning, sitting back and watching my brother, watching B-Real and Muggs, watching the correct way to be an artist and not being some guy who thinks he owns the world. And just learning how to properly handle my money. Every time I looked up they had a new car or a new house, and I knew I had to learn from them and not waste my money. Now when I make a little scratch I immediately invest it into something positive—whether it is a car, or a laptop, the point is that I immediately put it back into myself. I knew I was still in hip-hop 101. When I first came out, they learned what not to do from me. From watching them I’ve learned what I should have done and what to do now.

When you guys started out in the rap game, did you ever imagine that you would be this successful?
SEN DOG: No, not at all. When we first started Cypress Hill, we thought that we would only have an album or two, and maybe sell 100,000 copies of each. We figured that girls wouldn’t like it because it was too raw, and it would only be a three or four year thing. I thought I’d be back to work after three or four years, but it turned out to be something a lot bigger than we first anticipated, and my life hasn’t been the same since. It’s difficult to predict how your art will be received by the people. My music has taken me to the four corners of the world were I’ve encountered true fans who know my real name, my parents name, and know who my brother is. They even know about the first group I started with my brother back in high school, and that’s mind blowing! You know I’ve seen a lot of things and I never once thought that I would be doing any of it.

Mellow, your fans love this joint effort, but they’ve been waiting to hear from just Mellow Man Ace for a long time now.
MELLOW MAN ACE: Well they’ve been asking for this for a long time now [Reyes Brothers], and there’s a lot of stuff on the internet saying, “It’s about time.” So we’re real happy to put this album out, and that’s the focus right now.

And what about Cypress Hill? Can we look forward to any new stuff with them?
SEN DOG: Yes, Cypress is going through a whole new revamping, everything fresh, everything new—down to management, attorneys, and producers. We have a brand new Cypress Hill and we’re putting together a brand new record. We’ve already started on getting new music for it, and we’re looking to put that out sometime between October and December of this year.

As Reyes Brothers, can we look forward to more in the future?
SEN DOG: Definitely. Being able to accomplish what we have with just this release shows me that the public is receptive. So I’ve got bigger and better things in mind. I’d like to go to New York with my brother and work with some of the producers out there, and experiment on new sounds and approach music in different ways. I can’t say that we’ll have the same career that Cypress has had—you know, 10 releases—but I can for sure say that it’ll be three or four deep.

Any last words?
MELLOW MAN ACE: I just want to give everybody out there my phone number. That’s (425) 233-1870. That’s for the world. Use it. Holla at me!
SEN DOG: And I just wanna thank everyone who’s ever supported any of our acts off Cypress Avenue. We appreciate it very much—from buying a CD or t-shirt, to attending one of our concerts. We wouldn’t have been able to do what we do without the loyal fan support. First it was The Allman Brothers, then it was The Doobie Brothers, and now it’s all about The Reyes Brothers!

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