Cypress Hill 3: Temple of Boom

Heavyweight 180gm vinyl LP pressing of this 1995 Hip Hop classic. Music On Vinyl.

Four years since the L.A. group's first pro-pot anthem, "Stoned Is the Way of the Walk," Cypress Hill is still telling us they love to smoke ganja. How B-Real and Sen Dog waste their days is their business, but it makes you wonder: What's wrong with their personal lives that they need to be stoned all the time? And how can they be so enthusiastic about it? III (Temples of Boom) exhales the same clouded sentiments of past albums, but offers no answers.

Herb is never far from the conversation on Cypress Hill records--how they smoke more than anyone, how they were rapping about it before anyone--but they never explain why, never suggest they derive something positive (or negative) from pot. Though III's "Illusions" begins with an Indian sitar, presumably a reference to '60s drug culture's Eastern influence, there's no expanded consciousness in the accompanying raps. Cypress Hill champion drug use, it seems, to bolster their outlaw image; they place pot smoke alongside beat-downs, just another illegal activity to prove they're bad dudes. --Roni Sarig