In 1994, Estevan Oriol was riding in a helicopter above Woodstock on his way to work with Cypress Hill. The tour manager and photographer was so blown away by the crowd below — roughly 500,000 people gathered to see the band — that he pulled out his video camera and started shooting.
"You can’t get any more of a golden memory than that," says Oriol. "That feeling was next level; it hasn't been matched to that day."
After landing backstage, Oriol made sure the band’s microphones were set up, and all the mixers were working before they walked out onstage. "As soon as they started playing, it was like a storm," recalls Oriol. And he videotaped that, too.
Now, this very footage Oriol took has been compiled into a documentary called Cypress Hill: Insane In The Brain, which premieres on April 20 on Showtime. Oriol, best known as the director of the Netflix tattoo documentary, LA Originals, shares behind-the-scenes footage, old photos and intimate interviews with the band dating back to their origins.
Cypress Hill is a snapshot of West Coast culture: A rap group with Latin roots; cannabis activists long before it was trendy. Composed of beatmaker DJ Muggs, rappers B Real and Sen Dog, and drummer Eric "Bobo" Correa, the members of Cypress Hill are still together 30 years later, despite a few breaks in between.
Oriol first met the group just as they formed a band in the late '80s. As he recalls, he visited their namesake Cypress Avenue in South Gate, Calif. with his friends, where he met B Real and Sen Dog.
"We became friends," said Oriol, who started photographing the band in their early days. "The reception from the crowd was insane [at] their first debut show [in] 1991, and you can see it in the documentary, the crowd were singing along, right off the jump. Then we knew right off the bat, this is going to be what it is."
From South Gate To The Main Stage
Despite their humble beginnings on Cypress Avenue, the group quickly found their fanbase through their often raucous, punk and metal-influenced live shows.
Cypress Hill came up alongside other major purveyors of West Coast hip-hop in the early 1990s, yet they blazed a unique trail among their contemporaries. On hits like "Insane in the Brain" and "Hits from the Bong," they dared to step out of traditional boom-bap beats to actively pursue reggae and dubstep influences. They were also the first major rap group to fuse hip-hop with metal and Latin funk sensibilities.
According to Correa, a part of the group's unique sound comes from his upbringing as the son of Latin jazz musician Willie Bobo. "The most important lesson my father taught me was to keep your ears open, appreciate all different types of music," Correa says. “You can favor one type of music, but it's great to be well rounded, use elements from different types of music and use it for your style."
Cypress Hill's hybrid strain caught the ear of the heads at Ruffhouse Records — a Columbia venture that was, at various times, home to the Fugees, DMX and Nas — who signed the group in 1989, just a year after their formation. Their song "Shoot 'Em Up" was part of the soundtrack for the 1992 cult crime film Juice (starring fellow West Coast rapper Tupac Shakur), and they performed at Lollapalooza the same year. In 1993, their album Black Sunday debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart.
Lyrically, onstage and in interviews, the members of Cypress Hill have been outspoken advocates for the medical and recreational use of cannabis in the US. They often brought enormous bongs onstage and took hits in front of the audience. In 1993, DJ Muggs caused controversy after he sparked a joint on "Saturday Night Live." Cypress Hill have been banned from the show ever since.
"They’ve been promoting the legalization of marijuana for 20 years, consistently," notes Oriol. "They’ve been living this way long before Cypress Hill was a band and they’re going to be doing it way after, they are pushing the movement to legalization."
Cheech and Chong were some of the band’s first influences and friends, who encouraged them to advocate for cannabis. The comedians are featured in the documentary, too. "Without saying it, Cheech and Chong passed the torch to Cypress Hill, being the advocates for that movement in the late 1980s," adds Oriol.
Over the course of their 30-year career, Cypress Hill have sold more than 20 million multi-platinum albums and were nominated for three GRAMMYs. They collaborated with Pearl Jam and Sonic Youth. In 2019, they became the first hip-hop group to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and, this March, they released their tenth studio album, Back in Black.
"Thirty years is a long time; we bonded as brothers, we went through ups and downs together," says Correa.
Showcasing An Insider's POV
Oriol was hired by DJ Muggs to tour manage House of Pain, who were close friends with Cypress Hill, which eventually led him to working with the band in 1994. Oriol's first day on the job was Cypress Hill's Woodstock '94 performance, and he stayed with them until 2005, working a variety of roles — from merch guy to security, tour manager and DJ.
Behind the scenes, he shot footage and photos of the band as a hobby. Over three decades, he accumulated over 300 hours of footage, and three file cabinets full of Cypress Hill photos, contact sheets and negatives. Roughly 90 percent of the footage in Cypress Hill was taken by Oriol, making the documentary a true insider’s story.
"Telling this story from an insiders’ point of view was the only way this story could have been told," Oriol tells GRAMMY.com. "They deserve way more than what they have now, in terms of acknowledgements and credibility."
According to Correa, who joined the group after being the drummer for the Beastie Boys, watching the documentary brought him back to that first show he performed with the group in 1994.
"I loved how it showed us from our true beginnings until now," he tells GRAMMY.com. "A lot of it brought back memories because when you’re in the moment, you’re not thinking about anything else.
"Still A Force To Be Reckoned With"
As Cypress Hill begins their national tour this summer, the group feels like they still have work to do. They're as dedicated as ever to stumping for the national legalization of marijuana, and to have fans hear songs from their recently released Back in Black.
"We still have more to do, a message to get across," Correa says. "We can celebrate the strides we made with cannabis, but there’s more to do — [marijuana is] still illegal federally. We still got a lot more to say. We want to keep making music for our fans."
This long-awaited documentary will help tell Cypress Hill's story to a younger generation, some of whom became fans through their parents. Cypress Hill: Insane In The Brain will also highlight many key moments in the band's history that were made pre-internet and otherwise lost to time.
"We always kept our eye on the prize — to continuously make the best music we can, to perform at the highest level we can," Correa continues. "We’re still a force to be reckoned with, not just to be looked at in the rearview mirror."