Tag: hip hop

Cypress Hill – Insane In The Brain (Song of the Week)

On By bigbadburchIn Song Of The Week5 Comments

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.

Beastie Boys – Sabotage (Song of the Week)

On By bigbadburchIn Song Of The Week12 Comments

The song pick this week is one of the more iconic audio and video clips from the early ’90’s. The song is fantastic and the video is totally unforgettable.

Sabotage was the first singe from the Beasties’ fourth album Ill Communication. The single was released in January of 1994, while the album was a few months behind in May. The single had a rather light performance conventionally, landing at 18 on the US Alternative Airplay chart and 19 on the UK Singles chart. The album was a smash success, claiming a Billboard number 1 and hitting 3 times platinum in the US.

The Beastie Boys were always a genre-bending outfit, combining elements of hip-hop, rock, metal, punk and whatever else around the house wasn’t bolted down. In the music environment of 1994, Sabotage simply qualified as a rap-rock song, nothing unusual to find on the radio or MTV at the time. Of course, the Beastie Boys were also one of the primary influences on the fusion of rap and rock, so no great surprise that another single of theirs would be right at home among a host of music they helped influence.

Lyrically, Sabotage is a venomous rant against the music industry and specifically a producer that had screwed the band over – except that nothing of the sort really happened. Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz relayed in the 2020 Beastie Boys Story documentary that they were simply spewing a fictional rant at Mario Caldato, the song and album’s producer. Caldato was not truly doing anything untoward, it was just a way that the Beasties came up with lyric ideas.

Sabotage is inseparable from its music video, which was what truly launched the song into immortality. The clip was helmed by director Spike Jonze and was styled as the opening credits to a 1970’s-era cop show. Each member of the band played a member of the police force, with Adam “MCA” Yauch getting two roles in the video.

The video is simply amazing. It does truly look like a cop show from the time period it represents and could easily be mistaken for a trailer to a real show. Just ask Beavis, who is probably still wondering where the real Sabotage show is. All of the Beasties look the part and the high-flying action is captured perfectly. MTV did originally censor portions of the video, including the parts with bodies flying out of a car and off of a bridge, though it was abundantly clear that dummies were used in the “stunts.” The YouTube clip above features the full uncensored video.

The video was in constant rotation on MTV and was the catalyst to the song being played over and over again for anyone tuning in throughout 1994. The video was nominated for five awards at the 1994 VMA’s but was infamously shut out, mostly losing to Aerosmith’s Cryin’ video. That should be considered a crime, honesty. In 2009 MTV created a new award centering around videos that should have previously won awards and Sabotage was the winner.

Sabotage and Ill Communication would help turn the Beastie Boys into total household names, something they had been well on their way toward anyway, but the ever-present MTV video and success of the album would be the point of no return. No doubt that Sabotage is one of the defining songs and videos of the time period.