For our first Crate Digging as part of our month-long Hip-Hop 50 celebration, Cypress Hill’s Sen Dog talked about his 10 favorite hip-hop albums and the personal stories attached to each. Check it out below, and be sure to see our exclusive merch featuring our Hip-Hop 50 design at the Consequence Shop.
You can also listen to this interview on the Consequence UNCUT podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.
According to Sen Dog, the first words he heard Tupac Shakur say were, “Hey, baby, I gotta call you back. The weed just got here.”
Smoking out Pac is a typical story from the Cypress Hill MC. As he dives into 10 favored albums over Zoom, the music brings back memories of hotel hangouts and backyard barbecues with legends. His anecdotes reveal a tightly-knit early hip-hop scene, and while he is quick to note when artists hailed from the East Coast or “around our way,” to hear him tell it, everyone was friends.
At 57 years old, he’s grown up alongside hip-hop, which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary. Or at least, the 50th anniversary of DJ Kool Herc’s “Back to School Jam,” which has been pegged as a first-of-its-kind concert. Sen Dog seems to view the whole thing as a somewhat arbitrary framing of a broader story. “It’s been achieving more significance as the years have gone by,” he says. “I don’t remember, but at some point I started hearing about Kool Herc being the first guy to start this movement, and then it actually having a year that went along with it. So now we have a character and a year. You know what I mean?”
For him, hip-hop began when one of his friends played Malcolm McLaren’s “Buffalo Gals” at baseball practice. “Three buffalo gals go ’round the outside,” Sen Dog raps. “That was the first hip-hop culture song that I heard. And then I saw a video for it” with the Rock Steady Crew. “I saw my buddy and a bunch of his friends were doing this crazy dancing shit on the floor. And I asked him what kind of style of dancing it is. ‘It’s called breakdancing bro. You know, hip-hop.’ From that point on I started getting into it more, more, more.”
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And he never stopped. A few weeks ago, Cypress Hill celebrated the 30th anniversary of their seminal album Black Sunday (pre-orders of the deluxe vinyl are ongoing), and last month they played some special concerts (tickets to their upcoming UK/EU shows can be found here, with a handful of US dates on sale here). These shows are another The Simpsons prediction that came true, though this one was a self-fulfilling prophecy: In 1996, Cypress Hill lent their voices to the “Homerpalooza” episode in which their band may or may not have ordered an orchestra while high. Now, it’s become a reality.
“I don’t think there’s any hip-hop artists that have done a concert with a symphony orchestra,” he says. “You can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it’s the first of its kind. There’s a lot of things have been done. So let me not speak out of turn. But it’s definitely from, you know, the ‘Homerpalooza’ episode that the idea comes from.”
Today, Cypress Hill continue to find inspiration in pop culture, and Sen Dog still relishes the feeling of falling in love with a hip-hop album. As he dived into his 10 essential hip-hop albums, he almost never stopped smiling, as one memory led to another. As for his picks, the records are evenly split between East and West Coasts, but for his own neck of the woods, he chose to celebrate some less-heralded gems: pioneers of “Cholo rap” and latino hip-hop culture, a nearly forgotten Dr. Dre collaborator, and more. And each essential record came with an essential story.
Check out Cypress Hill’s Sen Dog’s list of 10 hip-hop records every music fan should own ahead, and you can also listen to the complete interview featuring all his incredible tales via the podcast episode below. In addition, be sure to check out the exclusive Hip-Hop 50 merch available now at the Consequence Shop.
