B-Real talks cannabis and Cypress Hill ahead of this week’s show at the Uptown

Thirty years ago, B-Real was one half of the hip-hop group Cypress Hill and — if the group’s lyrical content is to be trusted — a weed dealer. Today, B-Real is a globetrotting stoner rap icon with many irons in many fires. Cypress Hill is about to head out on a co-headlining tour of America with Hollywood Undead on the heels of an ultra-psychedelic new album, Elephants On Acid. Back at home, B-Real has his own network of web shows hosted on BReal.TV and a brand new cannabis dispensary called Dr. Greenthumb (named for one of his group’s biggest hits). I caught up with the man over the phone last month to talk about this empire he’s grown (perhaps via hydroponics?) as he prepared for a show in Bogota, Colombia. (The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.) Cypress Hill will be at the Uptown on March 15. 

What made you guys want to work on the new album in Egypt? Had you visited before?

Muggs, the producer — he had the idea to go capture some of that sound. There was a feel he was going for, so he decided to take off out there while we were on tour. I don’t know if we were on a U.S. or European tour, but while we were out there he went to Egypt and captured some of those sounds, and actually some video footage as well that went into our “Band Of Gypsies” video.

You’d think that more artists would try to travel the world and find new inspiration once they have the resources instead of just hanging out in the States.

Other producers are a little more complacent, I guess, where they’ll do the sound that they know, that they’ve developed and they don’t really go outside of it, but Muggs isn’t one of those guys. He’s always been a little bit ahead of the curve in terms of production. Not too many do what he does, man. He’s very unique in that way; I think he’s underrated, actually, because he’s one of those producers who’s not afraid to take a chance on it and I’ve got nothing but respect for that. We’ve been boys since we were kids, but to take myself outside of that, he’s one of the best to ever do it. He doesn’t get that credit, but to go into another country and get those dynamics and make them work for what we’re doing, that’s genius.

The track “Insane O.G.” stuck out to me when I was listening to the new album. You kind of reflect on the impact Cypress Hill has made on hip-hop culture and how the group is one of a kind. I was wondering what some of the inspiration behind that was.

The way we wanted to write this was different in terms of the way you hear a lot of rap songs these days about materialism or how many chicks they’ve got. We wanted to do something different and put down what would be some of our life experiences, some of our inner battles we went through in terms of being in this industry for so long and dealing with the ups and downs, and the obstacles that were placed before us because of the type of content we were putting out. A lot of it was taboo in the beginning; it was just a reflection of our stuff that we’ve been through and how we had to be in terms of our psyche. Our mindset had to be a certain way. And with that comes sacrifices, bumps and bruises and growing pains and all that stuff, so I think this album, in terms of lyrical content, reflects on that. But we sorta wanted it to be vague, like you didn’t know where it was going. 

For me, when I had a musical piece like that from DJ Muggs, the music takes me a certain place, and no matter what kind of idea we had at the beginning, it morphs into something different depending on the vibe of the beat, and I thought, let me tell this story this way, slightly aggressive, but that’s how we’ve always been, aggressive, and sometimes with a psychedelic vibe. And this is definitely that: one of our more dark, psychedelic type of albums.

You’re bringing Xzibit and Demrick on the tour, as well, who make up the rest of your group Serial Killers. What’s the chemistry like between you three?

I had a studio for some time out in Chatsworth, that Xzibit eventually took over once I got my spot downtown, but while I was up there I was doing a lot of work, a lot of mixtape work and producing beats at the time. I got into it real heavy, and as we were doing stuff I was also working on a solo album, and then the Cypress Hill Rise Up record, so Xzibit lives sort of close, he knew we were working, he came down and got on one of my solo album songs and Demrick was on that song, too, and we felt like we had a chemistry and the dynamic of our voices being so different, it felt like it worked. 

We put out the first album, toured Europe, and people went fuckin’ crazy for it. We got back home, recorded another one just because we wanted to keep on the momentum, and we’d had this chemistry live as well, so we made the second album. And then I got really busy with Cypress Hill and a bunch of other projects, so obviously Xzibit got up on Empire and a number of different projects — film, TV, all that stuff — and Demrick was out there touring a lot of the time, and collaborating with other artists, so there was a little time off for Serial Killers. 

We just put an EP out this year to reacquaint people with that brand and style of hip-hop. We feel really strongly about it ‘cause it’s that raw shit, that raw underground style that isn’t meant to be on the radio or sell a million records. It’s three emcees flexing hard. The original name of the group was Serial Rhyme Killers — we just took the “Rhyme” out, but that was the original name. The significance of the name was basically that here’s three well-skilled emcees and we’re just killing all the beats and that was the concept of it.

To have them on this tour, I think it’s a plus ‘cause people get to see something that maybe they hadn’t recognized, because not every Cypress Hill fan knows about Serial Killers and stuff like that, so this would be a proper introduction of that fanbase to that music, and they love that raw, gritty hip-hop shit.

I was curious if you picked up (or dished out) any interesting political or historical knowledge to Chuck D or any of the Rage Against The Machine guys in your time playing with Prophets Of Rage over the last couple years.

You know, we just sort of hang. We know all the issues and stuff like that and we don’t throw none of that around. We pretty much know, and we let the vibe of the music take us to where we’re going and the message, and there’s a lot to talk about. Everybody’s well-versed in what’s going on. It’s not like a conversation you might have where [people] are blowing each other’s minds. We’re all on the same page and that’s why we came together.

More so, the conversation is sports and shit [laughs]. Tom Morello and Chuck D are a wealth of information when it comes to baseball, football, basketball and all other sports. The conversations are pretty great, they’re pretty much like trivia, so everyone gets tested on their sports trivia [laughs].

But I’ll say this: the most profound thing that I’ve seen in this group is that when we go play, people react like it’s the fuckin’ nineties. Mosh pits, stage diving — well not necessarily stage diving, since they’re sort of far away for that — but a lot of mosh pits and a lot of crowdsurfing. That vibe’s just been there the whole time and it’s great to see people embrace the old songs in Public Enemy and Cypress Hill and Rage Against The Machine, and also the new music where we’re putting down new messages. So, it’s great to see the reaction. That’s probably the biggest surprise to me.

I think it’s cool that you beat a lot of other entertainers to having your own webshow and online video presence with your BReal TV. Do you have a favorite segment or interview you’ve got to do on there?

The most recent one with Mike Tyson. We had Mike Tyson in our Smokebox. It’s an interview I do in a car, we’re smoking casually and having a conversation. I’ve had a lot of great people in there, a lot, we’ve done over 200 of them, but I gotta say Mike Tyson’s Smokebox was my favorite one. One, because I knew Mike a little bit from back in the day, we’ve smoked each other out before and we’re mutual fans of each other, but people didn’t know that he was getting into the cannabis lane, that he was an avid cannabis smoker and that he, lowkey, was like an advocate. 

He couldn’t really speak on it because boxing is very strict in terms of what they have on their ban list, marijuana is one of them, so he couldn’t be outright and upfront like a lot of the hip-hop artists were coming up, but his boxing career is over now and he’s going full-blown, letting people know that he’s got the Tyson Ranch, that he is a stoner, he’s got the podcast called [Hotboxin’] and it was a great interview because it was just some homies talking about his experience with cannabis, as opposed to the pharmaceutical drugs and all that, and his state of being. It was a great interview and conversation, so that was definitely my favorite one.

You opened up your own Dr. Greenthumb dispensary last year in Sylmar, California. What do you think has been the biggest challenge in doing that?

More than anything it was getting it open. Getting all the licensing and the permits and all that, and the marketing. Fortunately, we had a head start in terms of marketing and branding with the Greenthumb brand, Cypress Hill has been holding that for a long time, so it just made sense for me to take that character and create a brand with it and get into the cannabis lane. Fortunately, I was able to partner up with the right team and make sure we were compliant with everything to get it open when we wanted.

I guess the most challenging thing is the ever-changing rules that are happening in the cannabis industry in California, ‘cause every month there is a new set of laws and regulations and shit like that, so I guess the difficult part is adapting and implementing the new shit every time they come up with new rules, and just adapting to that and staying ahead and keeping the quality up, which is what we do. Right now we’re planning on opening two more, one in Cathedral City, and the other one, we don’t wanna jinx it, but yeah. It’s the ever-changing rules and regulations that come through.

But once we get all that set and everyone has their business model down, their momentum going, I don’t think a lot of those things are gonna happen in the future and the business will just be seamless at that point.

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Cypress Hill plays Uptown Theater (3700 Broadway Blvd. KCMO) on March 15, 2019 with Hollywood Undead, Xzibit and Demrick. Tickets are available here.