Cypress Hill with the London Symphony Orchestra: high time The Simpsons prediction paid off
It was a match first dreamt up in an episode of the cartoon series, The Simpsons, 28 years ago.
Back then, Cypress Hill were the emerging stars of West Coast gangsta rap, thanks to a chart-topping album in the US, Black Sunday, which ultimately sold 3.4 million copies in that territory alone, its edgy, bass-heavy sound overlaid with rhymes about compulsive marijuana smoking and shooting people.
The joke in The Simpsons centred on the chaotic Mexican-Cuban LA hip hop crew having hired the London Symphony Orchestra for a gig at “Homerpalooza”, only to get so stoned that they forgot all about it.
Just as that brilliantly scripted cartoon famously ‘predicted’ Donald Trump’s presidency, so the preposterous performative classical/rap alliance actually came to pass after rapper Louis Freese, aka B-Real, now 54 and ever with a giggly sense of humour behind tales of street violence, approached the LSO and after months of logistical back-and-forth succeeded in making the concept a reality.
As Freese led out CH’s six-man contemporary incarnation to join the 70-strong orchestra onstage in the illustrious Royal Albert Hall, it was hard to know what to expect. After all, the group’s original music featured only the occasional screeching violin sample.
When he kicked off a complete run-through of Black Sunday by yowling the title of its unequivocal opener, I Wanna Get High, it was obviously possible, on many counts, that this collision of cultures might turn out a terrible car-crash.
Freese and co, however, fully rose to the occasion, quickly lifting the excitable sell-out crowd from their seats with the loping groove of I Ain’t Going Out Like That. The various wind and string players simply added long sustained notes to beef up the ruckus.
“Y’all feeling crazy?” Freese wondered as flagship hit Insane In The Brain launched off on stabs of brass, and prompted delirium right up into the gods. Alongside co-rapper Sen Dog, their live combo (upright bassist, drummer, percussionist and turntablist) had the band’s trademark head-nodding funk consummately down.
They’ve used a brass section before (see last year’s NPR Tiny Desk concert), and this was like a supersized version, each track topped and tailed with a flourish, and accented throughout by an army of sawing bows and parping horns.
On Cock The Hammer, the orchestration only amped up the music’s inherent cinematic qualities, often summoning the sophisticated oomph of a Quincy Jones score; thereafter, a butler brought the two rappers a tequila shot each, to toast a job well done.
There was limitless good-natured fun here: announcing Hits From The Bong, Freese shared a conspiratorial grin with conductor Troy Miller, and after completing Black Sunday’s tracklist, bade the house to “give it the f*** up for Troy – that’s a baaad man right there!”
On it went, with a further selection of classics, including the trafficker’s anthem Dr Greenthumb, and breakout hit How I Could Just Kill A Man, rendered with a cacophonous blast.
“Destiny fulfilled,” beamed the shades-wearing B-Real at the last. In extraordinary circumstances, to be sure.
Solve the daily Crossword
