When Cypress Hill went on Saturday Night Live back in 1993, it accomplished two distinctly different but equally important outcomes. One, it cemented their lingering status as a “weed” hip-hop group when DJ Muggs lit up a joint on the stage before performing “I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That.” As a result of Muggs sparking up, Cypress Hill also got banned from SNL for life.
Today none of this would be seen as a big deal, but smoking marijuana during a live television broadcast was enough to draw the overwhelming ire of good-natured, conservative America back in the 90s. But Cypress Hill was countercultural back when such an attitude could still exist.
“Hey New York City,” Muggs said. “They said I couldn’t light my joint, you know what I’m saying. But we ain’t going out like that.”
Muggs’s remarks were enough to earn Cypress Hill a legacy that would last a lifetime. But according to B-Real, what Muggs did wasn’t the plan at all. On a recent episode of Talib Kweli’s “People’s Party” podcast, B-Real explained how the group meant for it all to go down.
“What was supposed to happen was in the last verse, when we were getting close to the chorus, the DJ was supposed to start smashing the turn tables,” B-Real explained. “Kind of like The Who used to smash their equipment at the end of a set. We were doing that for a time and lighting our shit on fire. So we wanted to do something like that on Saturday Night Live.”
But the DJ chocked up. He panicked and wouldn’t do it, messing up the original plan of Cypress Hill lighting up their joints amidst the ruins of the smashed set. They wanted to look anarchic and rad, but instead Muggs had to improvise.
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“Because dude was kind of nervous up there, Mugs said fuck it and pulled out the joint first,” B-Real said. “Later on, the DJ doesn’t smash anything, so Mugs pushed over Bobo’s percussions and stuff so it looks like we were starting to smash stuff up.”
“It was a total fuck-up on what we were trying to do,” B-Real continued. “Mugs lighting that joint got us banned forever. But it also added to our legend.”
On the podcast, B-Real also discussed his All-Star team of who he’s smoked weed with and how he went from just smoking weed to becoming the marijuana activist he is today. You can watch the full interview below.
