DJ Muggs has claimed that Cypress Hill was the first group to include lyrics about marijuana in Hip Hop — but history proves otherwise.
In an interview with AllHipHop that dropped on Sunday (October 22), the notable producer claimed that rap music was completely devoid of 420 references prior to the West Coast group’s arrival.
“Back then, everybody was smoking weed, but nobody was talking about in their lyrics,” he claimed. “We were the first ones who started mentioning weed in our lyrics, now everybody does it. Even if you want to go back to the first Source Awards, we were rocking tattoos before anybody. I like to go away from the norm, myself. If nobody’s doing that, then I’m doing that. If everybody’s doing it, then I’m doing something else.”
While Muggs’ claims about tattoos appears to be true, as tattoos didn’t become popular in Hip Hop until the early 2000s thanks to Mike Tyson’s face tattoo, his claims about weed lyrics in Hip Hop are refuted by such songs as 1983’s “Here We Go (Live At The Funhouse)” by Run-DMC (with the lyric “I keep a bag of cheeba in my locker,” and 1986’s License to Ill by The Beastie Boys (where they talked about “rolling up a wolly” on “The New Style”), and of course, “Express Yourself” by NWA, which was released in 1989 and contained lyrics like “I still express, yo I don’t smoke weed or sess/ ‘cause it’s not known to give a brother brain damage/ and brain damage on the mic don’t manage nothing.”
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In any event, over the summer, Muggs connected with Ghostface Killah, Scarface, and a number of other high-profile artists for his first Soul Assassins album in 14 years.
The Cypress Hill producer announced on August 25 that Soul Assassins 3: Death Valley is now available to purchase and download. The album itself has a slew of features from other top-tier lyricists including Freddie Gibbs, Westside Gunn, Ice Cube, Method Man, Slick Rick and Boldy James, to name a few.
“You know you cannot escape death, but immortality can be attained,” DJ Muggs said in a statement about his latest offering.
Alongside the album, DJ Muggs also released the trailer to his movie for Soul Assassins 3: Death Valley which was filmed in Death Valley, California. The movie was released on September 13.
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