The song this week is a hit cut from Cypress Hill’s 1993 album Black Sunday. This song was big business for the California rap outfit, as it hit number 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was a number 1 on the rap chart. It also was certified 3 times platinum as a single, and Black Sunday was the group’s second multi-platinum album in a row, it going 4 times platinum. Cypress Hill had already gained a following, but this song would blow them up.

Insane In The Brain is a song with a very, very familiar beat – if you think it sounds a lot like House Of Pain’s 1992 hit Jump Around, that’s because it does on purpose. This 2019 interview with The Guardian lays out the song’s background – DJ Muggs of Cypress Hill was the producer for the House Of Pain song. He originally tried getting Cypress Hill to use the beat but they didn’t want to record at the time, so he worked it into the HoP song. He liked the foundation a lot so he worked it up again for the next CH album. So no one was ripping anyone off on this one, except DJ Muggs ripping himself off.

Also there is a bit of the song’s lyrical background in the interview, courtesy of Sen Dog. He says the inspiration behind the title was a phrase that the hardest gangsters would use when talking to each other. If one walked up and said “I’m insane, got no brain,” that meant some crazy shit was about to go off. Even in gang culture, it was something reserved for the real heavy stuff.

As it turns out, the actual verses themselves are diss tracks, or Cypress Hill’s responses to being dissed. B-Real’s first verse is a response to a rapper named Chubb Rock, who apparently did a whole song mocking B-Real. And Sen Dog’s verse is aimed at Kid Frost, someone Sen had been close to but who changed and talked some smack about Cypress Hill.

What I’ll say is this – I’d never heard the names Chubb Rock or Kid Frost before looking into this song for this post. I’ve “heard of” Cypress Hill for over 30 years now, so I think the diss winner is pretty evident.

For all of the background that might not be evident on listen, the simple distillation here is that this is a slamming track. It is slight bits creepy and goofy, just enough of both to lend shades to the song without coloring it too much. B-Real’s vocal delivery on the chorus lends a twisted atmosphere to things, and everything comes together with the already familiar beat template to put together a total banger. No one really needed to know what the song was about, just that it was nuts and was a great time.

This song was all the rage back in 1993, when I turned 16 and was happy to enjoy these different sorts of things presented on MTV and through the alt-culture that sprung up around then. Cypress Hill had a ton of crossover appeal and it wasn’t hard for them to get heads bobbing to their songs.

I do have one funny little story, borrowed from an old friend from around that time. He had a PA system and would often DJ high school dances. I myself did not attend these but he did relay this really funny bit about this song. He had this on at one dance and B-Real’s famous line came up “Cops – come and try to snatch my crops.” The teacher who was supervising the dance came over and told him “there will be no crop snatching here!” and demanded the song be stopped. This was the life of small town high school dances in the early ’90’s, in case you were wondering. These days there will be no crop snatching because hey, it’s legal, but this was a long time ago.

That’s about all that needs to be said about this Cypress Hill blockbuster. It was fun, hard and drove everyone wild and it’s still great fun all these years later. It’s probably even more fitting now since just about everyone seems to be ate up, it’s kind of a theme song for these crazy times.