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WEED TALK
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ATN: How important is smoking pot to the creative process for Cypress Hill?
B-Real: I would say it does play a large role in the studio. I mean, we smoke every day. Creatively, it helps
me a lot of times, and at other times, it cuts my whole shit off. I can't think of nothin'. It's like if I wasn't
smoking weed. It all depends on the state of mind I'm in. Sometimes it'll help me be creative and sometimes
it won't. But even if I wasn't smoking, I think it would be like that. Because that's the way the mind works.
ATN: Has your identification with the hemp movement taken the attention away from the music?
B-Real: Yeah, people focus on that shit too much with us. We're pro-marijuana... for the legalization,
decriminalization... and we'll always stand behind that. We'll always do rallies, fund-raisers, benefits, whatever. Because
we feel strongly about it. Even if I didn't smoke it, I'd still be a pro-cannabis activist.
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JOINT IN PUBLIC
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ATN: Didn't you light up a joint on national TV during Saturday Night Live?
DJ Muggs: They'll never let us back on that show again. I just wanted to light a joint when I
got on TV. Fuck it... What are they gonna do to me?
ATN: What did they do to you?
DJ Muggs: They got mad and said, "We told you not to do that.. You guys are banned from the show." And we were like,
"OK... We didn't even care about coming on in the first place. It was our management and record company which said to do
it." We turned down so much TV shit because we intentionally didn't want to overexpose ourselves. We intentionally try not
to play ourselves out. But we did every small fuckin' underground hip-hop club you could imagine. And then we did bigger
clubs, then arenas and finally, this Lollapalooza thing. Because if it weren't us, it'd be someone else. I think Coolio's doing
Lollapalooza next year. But we ain't ever had a single which really blew up, except for "Insane In the Brain" and that's just
the same basic concept and formula as "I Could Just Kill A Man," if you listen to it. But it blew up, so we're happy with it.
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CHILLIN'
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ATN: It's also a manifestation of the L.A.-N.Y. rap rivalry. Though you guys are one of the few that get props from both
sides.
B-Real: Individual competition is good, because that's how rap started back in the day. Showing your skills. As an
alternative to violence. The East Coast-West Coast shit can only take away from rap because that's what a lot of these
muthafuckers want us to do... destroy ourselves. Blacks, Mexicans and even whites on the street fighting each other. Just like
in gangs. They're fighting their own people. If we're going to battle for little stupid shit, we're killing our own culture off by
even submitting to this type of fight that other muthafuckers are instigating. They love to see us going at it like this. We have
to stick together.
For a while, the East looked down at us, like we weren't real rappers. And we came up and started saying, hey, look, we're
here. And then they began respecting us. Ice Cube started that when he did his record on the East Coast with the Bomb
Squad. That automatically opened the door for us. And then East and West was down... we could do shows over there and
they could do shows over here. And it was all good. But then Common Sense came up with that one song where they dissed
the West Coast and certain artists over here didn't take too well to that, especially Ice Cube. Which kinda fucked him up in a
way, because he had a lot of love from the East Coast people.
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