Making You Juana Listen, Hill Prove That Sunday Is A Day Of Sess.. (Black Sunday - Cypress Hill)

Member Name: Sugar Matty O

Product:	Black Sunday - Cypress Hill
Date:	10/09/01 (33 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Steaming with attitude and yet somehow laid back with it, Use of drums and bass mastered wickedly on every track, B Real continues to engage

Disadvantages: Slightly samey for the sceptics, Not for the anti-drug hoardes

Cypress Hill’s hardcore hip hop sound on their sophmore long player was a style far removed from the NWA-themed verbal battering lamenting the state of the United States policing system. While CH’s own take wasn’t adverse to putting punks in their place, there was something about the incessant rhyme schemes of how many joints you could light in succession and B Real’s semi-surreal mixture of sucking in balloons and then pinching his nose, to create an idiosyncratic pattern of hip hop toked up to its eyeballs while whining like some kind of manic cartoon creation. Black Sunday probably gave a lease of life to those wanting to access music that while primarily harder pitched than its rivals, didn’t possess overly hostile attitudes honed on the West Coast, being more intent on wrapping bass-drowned chuggers around the Hill’s foliage of choice.

While the breaks on Black Sunday distinctly stay on the midrange, there’s no doubting the ferocity, provocation and at times genuine unease being exhaled onto the masses. I Wanna Get High for example, sounds exactly like it’s been on the receiving end of a heavy session with its slouching, disinterested drums pierced by a tribal, almost alien loop hypnotically spinning off Real’s claims that he ‘wrote sh*t for the blunted ones to approach it.’ The menacing, car-chase basslines of the oddly similar I Ain’t Going Out Like That and Cock The Hammer up the urgency with moody, suspicious ruggedness; the former is certainly not a ditty to be messed with as that bass could knock fakes out at twenty paces, the latter equally unconvinced of proceedings on a faster paced pursuit through the back streets. The Hill’s singalong capability in producing memorable hooks is another unlikely string to add to their bow; rather than completely concentrating on verse content, B Real always seems to produce a line to lodge long in the memory, with naturally the eardr
um-damaging drum slaps of Insane In The Brain still sounding fresh as it ever has, particularly with Sen Dog’s more comfortable flow echoing the choruses of a semi-constipated husk. As the police-as-pigs theories insist on interrupting this joint effort, What Go Around Come Around Kid repeats the dosage of wide-ended snares and an intense bass offering no room for cheeriness.

Black Sunday also offers a maturer, ‘classier’ approach from its stringently stoned rantings, proven by the sheer class from the unsubtle Hits From The Bong that boasts a quality re-use of the Son Of A Preacher Man guitar riff on an ultra funky head nodder. Cock The Hammer, with more bass working overtime and eerie atmospherics strains colliding to produce a bad trip to the dark side and the snare-roll-exclusive 3 Lil Putos, plus the ever-present angst of A To The K with more lo-fi frequencies riding tandem with snarling drums, all demonstrate an unfeasible amount of funk unearthed from beyond the clouds of weed smoke. There are no indications of the rock ventures Cypress Hill would eventually pursue and have more success with, being that each track is a dense, vehement display of friction between drummer and bass player, with DJ Muggs, by far one of the most underrated producers on hip hop turf, throwing in the occasional dabbling of cut ups but more often than not letting the trunk rattlers take precedence. Hand On The Glock and the particularly nippy Break Em Off Some in concluding the Hill’s opening showcase conjure images of rolling heavy handed through the city in a bruiser of an automobile letting know passers-by just who is in the neighbourhood.

The structure to this album is actually surprisingly rigid, a cornerstone of their future success that ensures production sounds bleary-eyed when it doesn’t decide to go wielding the axes. Sceptics would say that there’s only so much you can do with stronger-than-most drum patterns and the sn
aking basslines Cypress Hill have made their trademark, but each cut stands out as being lively and volatile. B Real’s different delivery also contributes significantly; if his chosen tones were amongst those of the ordinary, who’s to say what path they would have taken? B Real is one of the rare examples of being able to hold an audience’s attention in spite of a concentrated subject matter because of that twang that warns as much as it makes you want to crack up with laughter. Think Joe Pasquale in a gangster flick and you're half way there.

A lot of albums are labelled under the banner of classic nowadays and yet somehow never quite reach that status when it comes to dusting them off years down the line. Black Sunday though is a worthy recipient given its stamping of Latino authority onto the game. While the singles will spring to the minds of most trying to detail Cypress Hill’s high points, this album in its entirety is well deserving of its place in hip hop toke-lore…

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