Another The Simpsons prediction is about to come true 28 years later - and this band are delighted

The Simpsons main cast
-Credit: (Image: Fox)


Hip hop legends Cypress Hill have said they will fulfil their “destiny” and bring to life a joke made about them on The Simpsons nearly 30 years ago.

The episode which aired 28 years ago joked about the band performing with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), which they will finally do tonight (Wednesday, July 10).

B-Real, real name Louis Mario Freese, said he and his bandmates were “blown away” when they first saw themselves portrayed on the long-running US cartoon. And he said they had been planning the performance, which will take place at the Royal Albert Hall, ever since.

B-Real of Cypress Hill performs "Black Sunday" with The Nashville Symphony at Ascend Amphitheater
B-Real of Cypress Hill -Credit:Mickey Bernal/Getty Images

Cypress Hill formed in 1988, and shot to worldwide fame with 1993’s Black Sunday, which featured singles such as Insane In The Brain and I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That. They have since sold 20 million albums. The band is made up of B-Real, Sen Dog and Eric Bobo.

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Speaking of first seeing the Simpsons episode, Homerpalooza, the 54-year-old rapper told the PA news agency: “When we got invited we were excited, just because it was the Simpsons and we were all fans of it. When it came out, all our friends that were Simpsons fans were elated, because it’s not something we’d ever thought about.

“We weren’t thinking about being on TV or any of that, we were just being musicians and doing our shows, that was the expectancy of it, let’s go out and play our music and represent. As our popularity is growing, we’d done Lollapalooza, and we’d done really well, so we started getting people’s attention, and then they invite us on the Simpsons.

“We were blown away by it, so when it comes out finally, it’s like when your album comes out. It was like, what’s it going to do? How are people going to react? We got a great reaction from it, and it was a hilarious episode." He continued: “It just sort of lived on from there, throughout our career people have been like, ‘hey, did you really steal Peter Frampton’s symphony’.”

B-Real, DJ Muggs and Sen Dog of Cypress Hill pictured in 1991
B-Real, DJ Muggs and Sen Dog of Cypress Hill pictured in 1991 -Credit: Al Pereira/Getty Images/Michael Ochs Archives

The former The Herd singer and guitarist is on the guestlist for the show, although the band are unsure if he will take up their offer. But despite the jokes, B-Real said the idea was something that “always followed us”, and added the episode was “inspiration” for the band as far back as 1996, when it first come out.

He added: “After the episode came out, our producer DJ Muggs was like, ‘that might actually be a cool idea, we should probably do that’. He was talking about it with management and our agents for quite some time, then his schedule got demanding, and we all sort of forgot about it, and before you know it, Wu-Tang was doing a symphony show.

“And we thought, well f***, that’s our destiny, we should be doing this, because we’re with the Simpsons, and that’s where the idea spawned for a hip-hop group to do an orchestra or a symphony in the first place.”

British conductor Simon Rattle conducts during a rehearsal of Tristan und Isolde by the London Symphony Orchestra at St Lukes Church in central London on June 10, 2021.
British conductor Simon Rattle with the London Symphony Orchestra in 2021 -Credit:TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images

The idea returned to the band when they put out a tweet to commemorate the moment in 2017, which was then quoted by the LSO, which said: “We mostly play classical, but we’ll give it a shot.” The band have already played two US shows with the Colorado Symphony, which wrote the original orchestrations, which have now been adapted by the LSO, adding a “darkness”, according to B-Real.

He said: “Colorado Symphony wrote the first charts for us. When we heard them back we were like, oh my god this s**t, this is happening, and it sounds amazing.

“We were hoping the LSO would be open to the idea that they looked at the charts that had already been written, and maybe they wanted to rearrange it, or change some bits, or add to it. Fortunately, they did, they actually made it much darker than the previous ones, which we loved."

During the concert, the band will play Black Sunday in full, as it was the album which was out at the time of the Simpsons episode, as well as other fan favourites. B-Real added: “People that have come to our symphony shows, they were very surprised on some of the songs we played outside of Black Sunday. We can’t wait to see what the reaction is here.”

Cypress Hill will play the Royal Albert Hall with the LSO on Wednesday, July 10. Tickets are available from the venue’s website.