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Album Review
by SashaS
19-12-2001
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| 'Stoned Raiders' |
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Cypress Hill: 'Stoned Raiders'
(Epic)
Cypress Hill is probably the most important hip-hop crew dropping the most bootylicious sonic dope
It’s been a rather miserable old time for record companies so they’ve been bringing out the record number of compilations and claiming that’s what people want. Perhaps, but thankfully rap artists keep our interest and entertainment up with some new goodies. In a next few short weeks (of shopping) Wu-Tang Clan will release their ‘Iron Flag’ album and De La Soul’s new album, ‘AOI: Bionix’, appears on the same day as the Cypress Hill’s latest.
‘Stoned Raiders’ sounds like a time-defining album, which might come as a surprise as the previous one, ‘Skull And Bones’, tried a bit too hard to compete with Fred Dursts of this world and half-succeeded. ‘Stoned Raiders’ is the real dope, an album that infuses the stale with a new transfusion and transform it into something else that is truly – untaggable.
The LA quartet sound too vital for a crew that’s been on this trip for a decade. It actually sounds like the journey is only beginning, and it is obvious from the monster-metallist introductory noise that segues into the opening ‘Trouble’. The song quakes with drum’n’bass and grunge guitars, sounding so unified as if destined to be canned this way.
All this is down to DJ Muggs, one of the most innovative producers around. His colleagues are no less prolific and when B-Real drops ‘Bitter’, it is an acid-story of a misspent youth; Sen Dog larges it in a brutalicious ‘Catastrophe’… But, it is not all violence of words, or imagery of urban menace, Cypress Hill also have a sense of humour that the current single ‘Lowrider’ proves with its nonsensical rhyming.
There is a fair list of guests, from NWA’s MC Ren and King Tee on ‘Southland Killers’, Redman and Method Man (of Wu-Tang Clan) on ‘Red Meth And Bee’ while Snoop’s protégé Kurupt helps on the closing ‘Here Is Something You Can’t Understand’, that is reworking and revitalising of their first hit ‘Kill A Man’. There is also Fear Factory as B-Real is in cahoots with the band’s bassist and drummer, plus a guitarist from The Deftones, in a rock-rap-fusionistic Kush.
It is an interesting question whether the future will ‘award’ Cypress Hill or Wu-Tang Clan as the rap-colossus; my sixpence is in the LA-la lot’s pan.
8.8/10
SashaS
19-12-2001
Cypress Hill’s album ’Stoned Raiders’ is released 03 December 2001 on Columbia
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