On their first album in eight years, Cypress Hill still sound like no one else.
The hip hop pioneers have put DJ Muggs back in the producer’s seat on a record that was born from a dream where Muggs was a man with the head of an elephant. From there, he set out making beats to take the listener on a journey around the world, and into their own mind.
Elephants on Acid is a 21-track monster, loaded with twists and turns that take you as far as Egypt, where Muggs recorded much of “Band of Gypsies” – teaming up with artists on oud, sitar, keyboard and guitar, as well as some of its street musicians. Its lead hook harks back to the glitchy shrieks of “How I Could Just Kill a Man” from their eponymous 1991 debut.
There are plenty of brilliant skits: “LSD” stars an elephant’s insistent trumpeting and a soft, dignified piano hook circa Goodie Mob, 1995, while “Holy Mountain” features a sitar, strange chimes and crackles of vinyl. The psychedelic “Reefer Man” appears to sample the vocals of June Kuramoto from American-Japanese jazz fusion band Hiroshima.
There’s still that element of menace that takes them back to the hood. “Pass the Knife” is a classic warning while “Locos” – thriving off the fluid interaction between B-Real’s nasal delivery and Sen Dog’s grittier bark – documents a raid on someone else’s territory: “Don’t even think about the strap up in your backpack/Cooperating when I leave you’re still alive, in fact/ I only want your cash crop, not your life jack’,” B-Real spits. “Warlord” recalls the theatrical, spooky sounds that dominated 1995’s Temples of Boom.
Cypress Hill are the hippies of the hip hop world, making music surrounded by a green-tinged haze that takes more cues from classic Sixties and Seventies rock than anywhere else. Elephants on Acid is one hell of a trip.
