Saturday, January 17, 2004

#100) Cypress Hill - Cypress Hill (released in 1991, I bought a used CD of it at City Lights, a local record store, sometime in college)

Consistently great beats, novel samples (my favorite is either the flatulent trumpet on "Stoned Is The Way Of The Walk" or Muggs putting the Duke Of Earl to good use on "Hand On The Pump"), a bizarre mix of playground chanting and verbal violence and most importantly, the revelation that college students and gangstas share some things in common: a dislike of authority figures and a deep appreciation for marijuana. Cheech And Chong's Up In Smoke meets Tougher Than Leather for the ultimate in midnight madness. B-Real, whose nasal glee was the bridge between Eazy-E and Snoop Dogg, was easily the best scatter in hip-hop ("A scooby doo, y'all, a scooby dooby doo!") till Nelly. Muggs' percolating percussive funk is what makes the album a true classic, adding a wallop of humor and perversity to the Bomb Squad sample-layering blueprint without losing an inch of thug authority. I like badass fun.

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