After a lukewarm at best reception to their last album, Cypress Hill is back with a more diverse sound on Till Death Do Us Part. Guest spots, which include Tim Armstrong and Prodigy, help to provide varying sounds: rock, reggae, Latin, techno. But Cypress Hill does just fine on their own, delivering rap that ranges from heavy to haunting and other places in between.

They waste no time in pumping out a bada*s track with Another Body Drops. Now, I highly doubt that after over a decade of stardom, Cypress Hill are still living on the streets, selling drugs, and doing drive-bys. They really need to ease off this gangsta image, which has been going on way too long not only for them but also for mainstream rappers in general. Fortunately, they still know how to make a decent gangsta rap song, as shown through the seriously heavy Another Body Drops among others.

But amidst all that gangster rapping, they give us a breather with a fun song called What's Your Number?, a good example of why rock radio keeps playing this rap outfit. Rancid's Tim Armstrong helps out on this track, but the most outstanding part is the beat sampled from the Clash's Guns of Brixton, which provides the light, tropical atmosphere. Add in B-Real's raps about picking up a girl in a club, and you've got yourself a hit.

They bring back the Latin rap on Latin Thugs. I love this side of Cypress Hill, and Latin Thugs is no exception. The infectious, trumpet-based beat makes this song so fun that it matters not that I can barely understand the lyrics. The fun continues with Ganja Bus. Featuring Damian Marley on vocals, this dancehall-reggae track lends a new sound to Cypress Hill’s catalog of stoner rap. Busted In the Hood adds more fun to the album, mainly because it reworks the Beastie Boys’ Paul Revere, this time telling a tale of drug dealer getting busted: "Now I got your crack and most of your crew/ You got two choices of what you can do."

A style used quite a bit on Till Death Do Us Part is slow, dark rap, most effectively shown on Till Death Comes, which contains one of the most addictive choruses on the album. Never Know is another very strong one using haunting beats but fairly heavy delivery of ominous lyrics: "You never know/ We just might die tonight/ So let's get high tonight." The album gets darker and darker toward the end. One Last Cigarette is a little twisted - they direct their raps toward a man they're about to execute. Street Wars is very upbeat, but it uses hauntingly tolling bells to emphasize its seriousness. The title track and Eulogy continue the morose mood to close out the album. While it's the fun songs that get the most attention, this style definitely works well for them.

Another big strength this album has is its interludes. Sure, they're filler and nothing spectacular, but they are brief pieces of cool music. They don't waste our time with idiotic skits that bring down otherwise great rap albums (ya hear that, OutKast?). The interludes are meant to string the songs together and keep the album flowing.

So even though Cypress Hill is a bit too rich and famous to be singing about life in the hood, they still do it really well with good beats, delivery, and lyrics. Although this is an overall dark album, they manage to sneak in plenty of fun songs to lighten the mood and diversify their sound. Till Death Do Us Part shows that Cypress Hill can still successfully use different sounds to create a rap album with a distinctive sound.



Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Driving