STRING THEORY

Cypress Hill’s Sen Dog and B-Real tell Stevie Chick about surviving gang life, being big stoners and imitating life from art with that Simpsons’ episode and an orchestral album

- Stevie Chick

They say life imitates art - though it doesn't usually take three decades to get around to it. But things sometimes move slow in the world of perma-stoned Los Angeleno hip-hop phenomenon Cypress Hill. Almost 30 years ago, they starred in The Simpsons episode "Homerpalooza", which saw Homer hop aboard Hullabalooza, a fictitious stand-in of alternative rock festival Lollapalooza, befriending Gen X faves The Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth and, yes, Cypress Hill. Mid-episode, a baffled London Symphony Orchestra arrives, and a similarly befuddled tour manager must figure out who hired them, “possibly while high... Cypress Hill, I’m looking in your direction...”

Meanwhile, the Simpsons-ised version of the Hill’s DJ/producer, Lawrence “Muggs” Muggerud, asks the orchestra: “Do you know ‘Insane in the Brain?’” The conductor replies: “We mostly know classical... but we could give it a shot!”

Cue: the animated LSO translating that low-slung rap classic into something symphonic, a culture-clash that charms even Marge Simpson (“Now this, I like”). And the blue-haired matriarch wasn’t alone. “After it aired, Muggs said, ‘Hey, we should do that’, so we tried to make it happen,” remembers Louis “B-Real” Freese, backstage at Portland, Maine’s State Theatre, where the current Cypress Hill tour alights tonight.

However, the stars wouldn’t begin to align until the group tweeted the clip in 2017, prompting the LSO to reply: “We mostly play classical... but we’ll give it a shot!” Seven years of negotiations and orchestrations later, Cypress Hill finally walked onstage at the Royal Albert Hall in July 2024, Muggs’ dark, psychedelic productions reconfigured for strings, woodwind and brass. The triumphant performance is about to be released on vinyl.