Elephants on Acid (2LP)

Ever-blunted hip-hop pioneers Cypress Hill will return with 'Elephants on Acid', their ninth album and first in eight years. The dank, fuzz-infused, acid-rock-inspired album will be the first produced entirely by Muggs, the sonic architect behind landmarks like 1991’s 'Cypress Hill' and 1993’s 'Black Sunday', since 2001. “Psychedelic rock and stuff has been a big influence on me,” Muggs says. "I had the idea what the name of this record was going to be and then I just started building the whole sound around it. Just a whole sound like feeling like you’re high on hallucinogenic drugs – but you’re not on no drugs.” Full of sitars, guitars, organs, Nuggets-rhythms and vinyl crackle, Elephants is a bad trip of 1967-72 imagery; a hip-hop blunt rolled on vintage rock’s gatefold vinyl sleeves. Muggs says there’s only one sample on the record – courtesy of Japanese smooth jazz group Hiroshima – and the rest was played by musicians and the producer himself.