- You know, it doesn't matter if you're 14
or if you're 64, "Insane In The Brain" is undeniable.
When we're on stage and that song comes on,
the beat starts and then you hear that squeal,
(squeals) right?
And then B-Real says, "insane in the membrane",
and I don't gotta do nothing,
just look at the crowd yell that out.
I mean, just thinking about it right now, I got goosebumps.
- "Insane In The Brain" serves as,
I think our biggest song, like the biggest impact we had
was with that one.
And we didn't expect that
because it was initially a diss song.
- It just sounded fun.
The beat was very catchy and infectious
and it just had the bounce to it.
The people that heard it all over the world,
you know, they they felt that too
because it was just like sounded like a fun song.
I think that was the key
because had people thought of it as a diss song,
maybe it would've been interpreted a little different.
- It was just to make a statement
to like whoever was coming at us, you know.
(chuckles)
Be careful what you, what you asked for, you know,
because we are those guys and we're letting everybody know,
if you're coming at us, you're dealing with something else.
I took what Chub Brock was calling himself at the time,
and he was calling himself the Flamboyant One,
so I picked that and tossed it into that first line.
It's important to give background
on what inspired that whole shit
was, he did a song called "Yabadabadoo"
and there was a part in the middle of the song somewhere
where he emulates our part where we say,
"time for some action, just a fraction of friction," right?
of "Kill a Man."
And he says, "time for some lyrics,
"check, there's something, you hear it."
And that was telling me, oh (chuckles)
he's just trying to say I can't get down, right?
Like I don't have lyrics or whatever.
That's the way I took the line, it may not have been that.
That right there, is something that I try to do
on every song, not that particular flow, but the adjustment,
I call it the shift, if you will.
Like the style might start off this way,
but then when I get halfway in,
I'm flipping it to something else,
sort of like a ramp-up, you know?
That inspired every other song I wrote after that,
like to make sure that I put a shift in it
somewhere to elevate the verse from one point to another.
I had a few experiences when we drank and we were on tour
and we tried to go on stage and it would just fuck me all up
in terms of remembering the songs.
Smoke weed all day, I don't forget any fucking verses,
any other words, but a couple drinks,
I'm forgetting the first word and I can't, I can't do it.
So I sort of just referenced that, you know?
Let folks know, "hey, I am a stoner."
- We would listen to, you know, jams in the car
and we would always, you know, rap along to certain songs.
And I remember there was a Public Enemy song that was on
and B-Real would rap Chuck D's parts,
and I would do the Flavor Flav parts,
but my Flavor Flav always sounded like, "huh", lower, right?
- You know, it's basically Public Enemy in reverse.
We were big fans of them,
and when I developed the high pitch style
that I rock with, you know,
Sen Dog to compliment that stout
came up with that psycho beta "huh" thing
to layer on top of it.
- B-Real, he showed up one of the days in the studio
and he had this whole song written out, all three verses.
And he gave me the option to,
either I could write my own verse
or do the verse that he wrote,
which I still think he was going for Chubb Rock's head
on that second verse, you know.
B-Real, like he says, he's the captain of the pirate ship,
and if you ever diss us,
he's gonna come with every weapon he has.
And I was one of those weapons.
It says do low, and do low is basically
from the blood neighborhood
from when we hung out on 89th street with the family gang,
and that was one of the words
that was popularly used around that area.
And that's when you do somebody low,
or you've done me low, you know, you did a do low,
and that's one of like the most scandalous things
you could do to another human being.
Back in the days, it was very, you know, look at me,
you know, my chains, my gold chains, my brand new shoes
and you know, around the album cover
doing all this and that.
And that's happy rap to me, man, you know what I mean?
So, you know, when we came out, especially our first album,
you can't see anybody's face,
you don't see anybody smiling or easing up on the camera.
And we thought all that was cheese ball shit.
We wanted to take those chances and risk
and see what happened if we went out there
on our little island by ourselves.
And you know, the shit paid off.
Well, at first, that line, you know, "a nigga like me
"is going insane," at the end of that verse,
it didn't mean anything to me
because I hadn't gone crazy yet.
And so it was like more of like a depression and anxiety
like really heavy type of thing, you know what I mean?
It didn't mean nothing when we made the song,
put the record out,
and then as we started touring,
and then I started feeling, you know,
the anxiety coming on and I didn't know what that was.
Every time I did that song, you know, I was like,
"man, was this song like forecasting me,
"what was gonna happen to me?"
Like, 'cause I felt weird, you know what I mean?
And then through, you know, years of you know,
touring and going to the same places
over and over and over again, you know, I conquered that.
Now I look back on it like just as a, you know
like a young vato trying to learn his way through the world
and having to be in places where, you know,
they don't sell tacos and burritos and shit like that.
- We're being advocates and activists
and running the flag up for legalization.
And what a lot of people don't know,
is Louis Armstrong also smoked cannabis.
A lot of the jazz artists in his time and before him
like Cab Calloway and all those guys,
they were talking about cannabis in jazz.
So they were one of the ones to carry the torch too.
So I thought it would be cool to reference Louis Armstrong
in the line.
- Law enforcement, we've always had issues with, you know,
as kids living in places that we come up from
where you got songs like fuck the police, and pigs,
and cop killer, and all that stuff.
There's a deep resentment intention that one might have.
And as Cypress Hill, we know there may be gun in for us,
but we're gonna be sliding out no matter what,
and standing tall in the end.
We looked at ourselves like, you know,
in hip hop, we are the pirates, we don't give a fuck.
We will come and snatch your shit up and take over the spot,
that was our mentality, you know what I mean?
Being doubted and being the underdog
is what sort of drove us, quote, unquote, insane.
Some people loved us, some people thought that you know,
they're not gonna last long.
And you know, that was always fuel to us,
we were always out to prove them wrong.
That gave us all the fuel to keep pushing
and get better at the craft and evolve
as a group and as men.
I mean, I got a DM from Chubb Rock like two months ago.
He goes, "bro, I didn't even know."
I'm like, "hey man, we were young and emotional then,
"water under the bridge."