See, back then, there was no such thing as "this particular album" of an artist. It was whatever you could get your hands on. There was a good selection available, don't get me wrong, but there were varying degrees of availability depending on how mainstream pop you were. Further you were, the less chances you had of finding something. On the flipside of this, there was a growing underground market for CDs gradually spreading, which I'd later benefit greatly from, but that is a story for a later time.
In either case, fortunately for me, Stoned Raiders was waiting for me in one of the stores I frequented. I grabbed it. It was to be another case of "first halfway run-through in the car." On a sunny day, headed out to an engagement party where the bride, I was informed, was getting married to a well-known mob boss' son. The bride was a close friend of a friend of my mothers, whose son I had a sort of distant friendship with. It was to be us, my sister's friends, and them.
Well, us, and Cypress Hill.
Trouble, I already knew, and was a pretty good opening track. After all, it's blend of rap and metal was what had drawn me in, and B-Real's singing voice, the chorus of "Trouble's not my goal" was striking. But when the next song, Kronologik came on, it started to dawn on me that I wasn't actually listening to a rap metal record like I had previously surmised.
Plus, Kronologik is exactly says on the tin - it's B-Real outlining the history of Cypress Hill, by then roughly a decade's worth (1991-2001.) It was a crash course for me then, to be introduced (again) to this crew and hear all about what happened, full of in-house references I wouldn't understand until I had gone through their entire discography. It was followed by the gangsta tune with the brilliant sampled piano of Southland Killers. I was pretty much interrupted then, as we had arrived.
The rest of the day went by with a preternatural awareness of the cassette in my walkman, the album that was still incomplete and waiting for me there. Between games with my lil' sister and her friends, and discussing the finer points of shooting pigeons with air rifles with my own friends, I always kept the fact that I had Stoned Raiders by Cypress Hill waiting for me, in the back of my head.
Stoned Raiders is actually a pretty diverse album that blends together some of the crew's earlier material, lyrically and otherwise. It plays to their strengths. From the understandably bitter, well-worn tracks of Bitter and the rockin' It Ain't Easy; to the bittersweet, fun but still a bit blue Memories and L.I.F.E.; to the rock-like sound of Amplified and Catastrophe, neither of which had the punch of Trouble it offers many flavors. There are also the gangsta tracks, such as Southland Killers, Here Is Something You Can't Understand* and to a lesser degree, Lowrider (this one also qualifies to be in the same mood as L.I.F.E. with the amusing vocals in the chorus) it's a Cypress Hill-fest. Thing is, this album is easy to get into even without a firm grasp on all the references thrown out there. Oh, and of course, coming from the lifelong advocates for the recreational use and legalization of marijuana, there is the bonus track, Weed Man. Cypress Hill isn't Cypress Hill without weed.
Stylistically, what also drew me to this album at the time was that what I would later term as my anti-classicist side*. The only rapper I had been able to enjoy the stylings of had been Eminem and, to a lesser degree, D12. To suddenly face the interesting, unique blend of Cypress Hill, with their own, distinctive style of rhyming (that I hadn't heard anywhere else), with B-Real's nasal voice* and tighter flow complemented by Sen Dog's more abrasive, basic and infinitely more posturing style, I was blown away. To this day, I'm glad I picked up that album.
With good reason.
See, Cypress Hill had lightened up somewhat. I didn't know this at the time, of course, but ten years into the game, without a hint of shame for being largely known by and still for a single they released in 1993, they had come to a point in their career where things were comfortable. But even in this comfort, Cypress Hill had that little, very specific sort of darkness in them. Moody tracks like Bitter and It Ain't Easy were both odes to betrayal, struggle and the white-knuckle-tight force needed to sustain it, to come out on top. Even when mellow, they brought this feeling forward. Lowrider may be fun, but the music behind the lyricism and the fun is decidedly a summer depression vibe. Further, there were Memories and L.I.F.E., both decidedly bittersweet, both decidedly a bit more bitter than sweet, both mellow but at the same time, incredibly blue.
Thing is, Cypress Hill, I would learn, is about certain things. It's about being a Latino in the slums. It's about growing up a gangster. It's about weed and smoking up. It's about overcoming obstacles and getting revenge. But more than any of those things, Cypress Hill is about the kind of darkness only 90's hip hop was capable of delivering, which they delivered in spades. Cypress Hill didn't need to go full-on horrorcore* or posture to create that, even in 2001, it was still a part of them - which is why I loved them.
Stoned Raiders was my first time getting into an artist (in this case a crew) that had an extensive back catalogue. The album I had was the latest in a long line, and if Kronologik was to be believed, I had to go back. This started a trend in my musical discoveries that, if I happened to catch someone a lot of albums into their career, I gradually worked my way backwards.
So naturally, the next album should be the legendary 2000 effort, Skull & Bones, and though it was, a little interlude is necessary to set the stage for when music became everything.
*Footnote: 1- Here's where lack of knowledge becomes a handicap in an involved record like Stoned Raiders. See, their 1991, self-titled debut had a song called How I Can Just Kill A Man, which is what this song references. If you take the titles in reverse chronological order, you get the chorus of the first song.
2- It's just a fancy term I made up. It just means that while I always have respected the pioneers and legends of any kind of music, I often do not enjoy listening to them all that much. I have too many examples in that regard, so much so that in conversations, I tend to use the line "Just doesn't mesh with me" when people get offended.
3- In an interview, B-Real apparently said that he did that to make his voice more distinct, to make people recognize him whenever he came on.
4- A style of rap I had tried my hand in, which specializes in graphic depictions of violence often so over-the-top that it's fuckin' funny... if you have a sick sense of humor, that is.
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