TEN OF THE CYPRESS HILL SOUNDMASTER’S BEST PRODUCTIONS…
Cypress Hill Hand On The Pump (from Cypress Hill, 1991)
Muggs’s discrete sonic world in microcosm. An intricate chop-up of Gene Chandler’s Duke Of Earl vocal looped into a hypnotic bassline. A squeak of Albert King’s Cold Feet adds a phantasmal atmosphere as B-Real and Sen Dog hunt down foes. Beastie Boys So What’cha Want (Soul Assassin Remix)
Muggs does away with the industrial heaviness of the Check Your Head original for a summer block party groove predicated on Joe Tex’s laid-back drums from Papa Was Too. House Of Pain Jump Around
An indomitable riff on Chubby Checker’s Popeye (The Hitchhiker) made rapper Everlast – once of Ice-T’s Rhyme Syndicate – a star. His HOP bandmate Danny Boy labelled it “our generation’s Louie Louie”. Ice Cube We Had To Tear This Mothafucka Up
Muggs’s jarring inversion of the beat from The Emotions’ Blind Alley forcefully matched the twitching paranoia of Cube’s take on 1992’s Los Angeles riots. Cypress Hill Insane In The Brain (single, 1993)
A Chubb Rock dis after the Brooklyn rapper pastiched their style on Yabadabadoo, Muggs’s whinnying horse refrain and Sen Dog’s threat to “jack yo’ ass like a looter in a riot” provided a career-defining hit. U2 Numb (The Soul Assassins Mix) (From Melon – Remixes For Propaganda, 1995)
The Dubliners’ VHS-only first single from Zooropa is remodelled. Muggs cuts up breaks from Bronx rapper
Grand Wizard Theodore with drums from Lonnie Smith’s Spinning Wheel below The Edge’s deadpan vocal. Ingrid Schroeder Bee Charmer
A smudged, dubby bassline and subtle atmospherics underscore the sometime Fun Boy 3/Dream Academy backing singer’s prayer for rain. Similarly spacious trip-hop moves dominate Muggs’s work on Tricky’s 1999 LP Juxtapose. DJ Muggs Vs GZA Smothered Mate (from Grandmasters, 2005) Grandmasters, a duet LP with WuTang Clan’s GZA, exploded chess’s allegorical possibilities as Muggs matched storytelling vim with combative beats and heaving bass. Cypress Hill Stairway To Heaven
(from Elephants On Acid, 2018)
Not that one. A moody mellotron and singer Brevi’s distorted refrain lead us gently into Elephants On
Acid’s denouement, with B-Real at the pearly gates, lamenting,“No singing no sad songs.” DJ Muggs The Black Goat Nigrum Mortem
(from Dies Occidendum, 2021)
With its cavernous drums, distorted guitars and screeching synths, this slasher film highlight from Dies
Occidendum is a swirl of disorientating, psychedelic menace.