American hip hop icons Cypress Hill have spoken about their upcoming collaboration with Tom Morello.
Emerging from the West Coast hip hop scene, Cypress Hill were always outcasts. The band were of Latino heritage, which marked them out in the almost exclusively African-American rap scene.
Forging a ferocious sound, Cypress Hill often shared bills with Rage Against The Machine. The rap metal titans even covered their Latino brethren on the album ‘Renegades’ giving a shot in the arm to ‘How I Could Just Kill A Man’.
Now guitarist Tom Morello is set to team up with Cypress Hill for their new album ‘Rise Up’. Digging out his axe for one track, Morello adds a ferocious edge to the group’s material which has been lacking in hip hop for some time.
Speaking exclusively to ClashMusic, Sen Dog revealed that the collaboration happened naturally. “We were friends a long time and it kinda came up in conversation. He was having some downtime with his stuff and we were doing nothing, so he asked, ‘What are you guys up to?’ and we told him about the new album and straight away he said he had a couple of tracks for us”.
“We thought it would be cool then got a hold of the tracks and were like, ‘Word!’ That’s Tom Morello. (Laughs). He’s got the magic.”
The rapper also revealed that Cypress Hill are not attempting to re-create their past endeavours. “We’re not trying to reflect on what we did a few years ago, we still think we compete and bring something new to now – where our creativity is now.”
“I suppose we could just fade away and tour forever doing ‘Insane In The Brain’ and ‘Rockstar’ and I suppose we would have an audience who would come out and watch, but it concerns us more to stay vital and come out with something which can survive in today’s music game. We still want to be talked about with anticipation in people’s voices.”
Read the entire interview HERE.
