In 1993, New York and Los Angeles ruled as hip-hop’s capital cities. The perfect group to seize the moment was Cypress Hill: two L.A. rappers, Louis “B-Real” Freese and Senen “Sen Dog” Reyes, and a producer, Lawrence “DJ Muggs” Muggerud, who’d grown up in NYC, fusing the gritty boom-bap of New York with the swaggering menace of SoCal gangsta rap. During the recording of its second album, Black Sunday, the group removed itself from the distractions of Los Angeles and stayed in an apartment in Muggs’s native Flushing, Queens, leading to a project that seemed to perfectly synthesize the sounds of both coasts and appeal to the entire hip-hop
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