Cypress Hill

Japanese edition of 2004 album features 18 tracks including 2 bonus tracks, 'Ready To Die' & 'Roll It Up Again'. CBS.

Truth be told, since the blunted triumphs of their eponymous debut and 1993's Black Sunday, Cypress Hill have been in a steady creative tailspin. Tellingly, on this live disc, recorded at the legendary San Francisco venue, it's the trio's genuinely entertaining performances of early material such as "Real Estate" and "How I Could Just Kill a Man" that stand out. But the percussive accompaniment and fuzzy guitars the group draft to dress up the rest of their material simply make the proceedings repetitive and tiresome and obscure B-Real's distinctive whine and Muggs's production--the group's two greatest assets. Thankfully, there is a return to their most potent material toward the end, but it doesn't save this release from being a cursory footnote in their discography. For completists only. --Del F. Cowie

Japanese version featuring a bonus track

Cypress Hill is either hip-hop's most secretly talented band or its luckiest. How else do you explain four albums--Cypress Hill, Black Sunday, III (Temple of Boom), and now IV--over seven years that all use the same rote formula? DJ Muggs hooks up the dusty dungeon beats, filled with slow, rolling bass lines and dirtied drum breaks. B-Real revs up his nasal flow and spins yarns about (a) why police suck, (b) why Cypress can't be screwed with, and (c) marijuana, marijuana, marijuana. Did we mention that they talk a lot about weed? IV offers no new surprises, but Cypress faithful won't be disappointed. --Oliver Wang

Dutch edition of 2000 release from the superstar rap group.Includes a 6 track bonus disc featuring 'Valley Of Chrome','Get Out Of My Head', 'Can't Get The Best Of Me', 'A Man', 'Dust' & '(Rock) Superstar'. Slimline double jewel case.

Greatest Hits From The Bong features the hits 'Insane In The Brain', 'Dr. Greenthumb', '(Rock) Superstar' and 'Latin Thugs'. Columbia. 2005.

Four years since the L.A. group's first pro-pot anthem, "Stoned Is the Way of the Walk," Cypress Hill is still telling us they love to smoke ganja. How B-Real and Sen Dog waste their days is their business, but it makes you wonder: What's wrong with their personal lives that they need to be stoned all the time? And how can they be so enthusiastic about it? III (Temples of Boom) exhales the same clouded sentiments of past albums, but offers no answers.

Herb is never far from the conversation on Cypress Hill records--how they smoke more than anyone, how they were rapping about it before anyone--but they never explain why, never suggest they derive something positive (or negative) from pot. Though III's "Illusions" begins with an Indian sitar, presumably a reference to '60s drug culture's Eastern influence, there's no expanded consciousness in the accompanying raps. Cypress Hill champion drug use, it seems, to bolster their outlaw image; they place pot smoke alongside beat-downs, just another illegal activity to prove they're bad dudes. --Roni Sarig

Led by the deep-toned Sen Dog and the deliciously adenoidal whine of B-Real and backed by DJ Muggs's beats--as thick as the smoke they inhaled--Cypress Hill spun dope-fueled tales of revenge, revolution, recreational drug use, gangbanging, and cultural pride. Like R. Crumb's Mr. Natural, but with a hardened voice and a B-boy attitude, Cypress Hill slow-walked their funk-flavored way through a minefield of anthems (the still sizzling "How I Could Just Kill a Man") and comic manifestos ("Stoned Is the Way of the Walk"). Heavy on the bass line and punctuated by flashes of wit and rage, Cypress Hill's joint was definitely one to draw deep on. --Amy Linden

Vinyl Classics reissue of the group's 1993 album comes as a vinyl look-a-like CD that's packaged in a die-cut see-through slipcase. Sony. 2006.