Armada Latina Hand On The Pump How Could I Just Kill A Man No Rest For The Wicked Cypress Hill

Armada Latina Album: Rise Up (2010)
Hand On The Pump Album: Cypress Hill (1991)
How Could I Just Kill A Man Album: Cypress Hill (1991)
No Rest For The Wicked Album: Cypress Hill III: Temples of Boom (1995)
by Cypress Hill

Armada Latina is a single from Latino rap group Cypress Hill's eighth studio album, Rise Up. The song features Cuban-American rapper Pitbull and Latin singer-songwriter Marc Anthony on the hook. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Marc Anthony is the top selling tropical salsa artist of all time.

Armada Latina's music video was filmed at the famous Mariachi Plaza in the heart of Boyle Heights, California on March 19, 2010. On director duties was Matt Alonzo, who is best known for his work with Soulja Boy, New Boyz, The Game, B Real amongst others.

Armada Latina was produced by Jim Jonsin (T.I.'s "Whatever You Like," Lil Wayne's "Lollipop"), and samples Crosby, Stills and Nash's "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes." "That was all Jim," Cypress Hill member Sen-Dog said to Rolling Stone of borrowing from the classic late '60s number. "But we definitely had to put our own mentality on it. It had to be something about the whole Latino culture."

Cypress Hill's lead rapper B-Real told the Canadian QMI newspaper Agency that it was Jonsin who suggested Pitbull and Marc Anthony also appear on the track. However, Anthony's involvement seemed unlikely. "I didn't believe that Marc Anthony would get on the track with us; that's a little to the left," said B-Real. "But he ended up being a fan and he ended up coming to the studio and taking the track over the top. It far exceeded what my expectations of it were and now there's a big buzz on it so you can't complain about that. It's something you can't anticipate and sometimes those are the best things. Our sound is usually really dark and gritty and underground. This particular track is not that. We take chances and sometimes we win."

Crosby Stills & Nash's Stephen Stills, whom Cypress Hill originally met at the 1994 Woodstock festival, played guitar on the song's music video. B-Real explained to the QMI Agency: "He was talking to Sen Dog and myself and telling us how he was influenced in writing that original song (about his then longtime girlfriend Judy Collins). And that he loved the song so much and he was glad that somebody finally actually came and used it in the way that we used it. When you grow up listening to all these different types of genres of music, and you meet one of the people you hold in high regard, and he likes your s--t, that's the craziest thing ever."

Doo-wop and gangsta rap come together in "Hand On The Pump," where Cypress Hill threaten to blast you with a shotgun while rapping over a sample built on Gene Chandler's 1962 hit "Duke Of Earl." These guys were legit gangstas, associated with the Latino Bloods of Los Angeles, but they put some levity into their music that gave it a different spin and made it stand out from the pack. Their DJ was also their producer: DJ Muggs, who had a talent for finding unexpected samples. He also produced House Of Pain, who had a hit the following year with "Jump Around."

The rappers in Cypress Hill are B-Real and Sen Dog, who have very different styles. B-Real has a high-pitched voice that can wrap around lines with surprising dexterity. Sen Dog has an intimidating growl. "Hand On The Pump" follows their familiar formula where for the hook, B-Real delivers a line ("Sawed off shotgun, hand on the pump, left hand on a 40") and Sen Dog answers ("puffin on a blunt!").

Cypress Hill loaded their songs with violent imagery and inevitably made references to smoking weed. Their first single was a fitting introduction: "How I Could Just Kill A Man." They followed it with "The Phuncky Feel One," then came "Hand On The Pump." All three songs were part of their self-titled 1991 debut album. Most radio stations wouldn't play these tunes, but that worked in their favor in a way because word got out anyway, and you had to buy the music to hear it. The album ended up selling over 2 million copies.

After jumping on the Lollapalooza and opening some shows for Beastie Boys, they released their next album, Black Sunday, in 1993. The lead single, "Insane In The Brain," was a little more accessible and became a big hit.
Note the line, "shotgun go boo-yaa!"

Thanks to Stuart Scott of ESPN, "boo-yaa" became a popular catch phrase to signify an accomplishment like scoring a touchdown or finding a parking space. But it started as West Coast slang for a gunshot, as used by the group Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.

Cypress Hill is from South Gate, California, which was a rough area just outside of South Central Los Angeles. Their lead rapper, B-Real, was in a gang called the Latino Bloods and was shot when he was 17, and incident he details in their 1993 song "Lick A Shot."

"How I Could Just Kill A Man" is about life in South Gate, where gang banging could lead to murder. B-Real had to be ready to kill a man if he had to, or else he could be killed himself. They sum up the sentiment in the chorus:

Here is something you can't understand
How I could just kill a man
"How I Could Just Kill A Man" was Cypress Hill's first single. It was a #1 hit on the Rap chart and helped their self-titled debut album sell over 2 million copies, making them the first big-time Latino rap group. Their next album, Black Sunday, was released in 1993 and was even bigger, selling over 4 million and crossing them over to a wider audience with the hit "Insane In The Brain."
Cypress Hill was a trio at this time comprised of rappers B-Real and Sen Dog along with DJ Muggs. They followed West Coast gangsta rappers like N.W.A and Ice-T, but with a very distinctive sound. B-Real has a high-pitched, nasally voice that sounds almost comical, and Sen Dog provides the harsh growl - he's the one who does the line, "How I could just kill a man!" Their DJ/producer, DJ Muggs, was a chemist on the turntables, working in lots of samples and grooves into distinctive sonic collages.

"How I Could Just Kill A Man" hit in 1991 while gangsta rap was trending upward. A year later, Dr. Dre released The Chronic, which brought the genre to the forefront.

How I Could Just Kill A Man is chock full of samples, most prominently a looped guitar lick from the 1967 Jimi Hendrix song "Are You Experienced?" There are also some bass beats pulled from "Tramp" by Lowell Fulson (1966), and some vocal interjections, including the New York politician Fiorello La Guardia saying "What does it all mean?"

The "All I wanted was a Pepsi" line comes from the 1983 hardcore classic by Suicidal Tendencies, "Institutionalized."

The music video was directed by David Perez Shadi and shot in New York City, far from the group's West Coast stomping grounds. It features Ice Cube and A Tribe Called Quest rapper Q-Tip. It was the first video directed by Shadi, a photographer who did a lot of work for The Source magazine. He later directed the video for "Jump Around" by House Of Pain.

How I Could Just Kill A Man found a new audience when it was included in the soundtrack to the 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Rage Against The Machine included their version of "How I Could Just Kill A Man" on their 2001 covers album Renegades. They released it as the second single from the album, following "Renegades Of Funk" (originally by Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force).

In 2016, B-Real joined members of Rage Against The Machine in the supergroup Prophets Of Rage, which also included Chuck D from Public Enemy. That group lasted until 2019.

Ice Cube, an early supporter of Cypress Hill, shows up in the video, but their bonhomie turned sour a few years later when Cypress Hill claimed they played him an unreleased song called "Throw Your Set In The Air" that Cube then pilfered for the hook to his song "Friday," which was released first.
These lines:

How do ya know where I'm at
When you haven't been where I've been?
Understand where I'm comin' from?

Are quoted from a 1974 episode of the TV series Good Times.
In Cypress Hill's 1993 track "When The Ship Goes Down," they call back to this song with the lines:

I think I got one to the chest hot damn
I didn't want to kill a man

On the group's 2001 track "Here Is Something You Can't Understand" by use many elements from "How I Could Just Kill A Man."

No Rest For The Wicked is about an argument Cypress Hill had with another gansta rapper, Ice Cube, originating when Cube allegedly stole the hook to Cypress Hill's song "Throw Your Set In The Air."

According to an interview given by Cypress Hill rapper B-Real, Ice Cube was allowed to hear "Throw Your Set In The Air" when it was in the mixing process. Cypress Hill were producing a song for Ice Cube's movie Friday called "Roll It Up, Light It Up, Smoke It Up" (you can guess what that one's about). After playing him that song, they let Cube listen to some other tracks they were working on for their upcoming album, Cypress Hill III: Temples of Boom, including "Throw Your Set in the Air."

After listening to No Rest For The Wicked, Ice Cube asked B-Real if he could use it in the film. B-Real refused because he wanted to use it on their album. Ice Cube asked to listen to the track once again, which he was allowed to, and then he went home.

When the Friday movie came out, the soundtrack included an Ice Cube song called "Friday" with a hook that closely resembles "Throw Your Set In The Air," which Cypress Hill had yet to release. In "Friday," the chorus is, "Throw your neighborhood in the air." That's when the problems began and Cypress Hill decided to write "No Rest For The Wicked," which they included on the album along with "Throw Your Set In The Air."

No Rest For The Wicked is full of references and insults to Ice Cube. For example, it makes fun of Ice Cube's real name, O'Shea Jackson. In one verse it claims: "Jackson, lemme figure out the name - Jack 'cause you be stealing other n-gg-z game." In this context, "Jack" means "to steal."

At the end of the first part of the song we can hear: "Cube, better sit back and check yourself." That's a reference to one of Ice Cube's songs, "Check Yo Self," included on his 1993 album The Predator. Curiously, this album was produced - among others - by DJ Muggs from Cypress Hill.

In one part of the song the story about this argument is told to the listener, yet very briefly and very Cypress Hill-styled. We can hear DJ Muggs stating: "Yeah n-gga, my homie thought he had a homie in you. He let you listen to our mutha--ckin' cut, and you turned around and put some old variety s--t out. What kind of s--t is that? Hmmm..."