Cypress Hill set to make Simpsons joke a reality with orchestral concert

It’s a classic case of life imitating art.

Nearly 30 years after hip-hop group Cypress Hill agreed to appear in an episode of The Simpsons in which they performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, the group will make that unlikely fictional collaboration a reality on Wednesday when they perform their album Black Sunday in the British capital.

The Grammy-nominated artists will collaborate with the world-renowned orchestra at London’s Royal Albert Hall as they perform hits such as “Insane in the Brain,” also featured in the 1996 episode. Cypress Hill appears alongside The Smashing Pumpkins in “Homerpalooza,” in which Homer tries to impress his kids by getting involved in stunts as part of the music festival scene.

In recent years, The Simpsons have gained something of a reputation for predicting the future: they have rightly predicted the rise of video calls, the Nobel Prize winner in economics, and the presidency of Donald Trump. But calling the actual combination of the hip-hop group and the orchestra a coincidence might be a stretch.

For years, Cypress Hill has been under pressure from fans to make the show’s iconic music video, in which a crew member backstage at a festival exclaims, “Someone commissioned the London Symphony Orchestra. Probably on drugs.”

Although none of the band members seem to remember it, one eventually replies, “We think we did,” before the band play Insane in the Brain with British orchestral accompaniment.

For Louis Mario Freese, one of the two main rappers, whose stage name is B-Real, the performance is “one of those must-see moments.”

“It’s something we’ve been talking about since the first episode of The Simpsons aired,” Freese told the BBC. “We’ve played a lot of historic venues throughout our career, but nothing as prestigious as this.”

In 2017, the band reached out to the LSO on the social media platform now known as X saying “let’s make something happen for real”. The two bands announced a one-night joint performance at the iconic London venue in March.

On its ticketing website, the orchestra declared that “history will finally be written!”

Cypress Hill has sold more than 20 million albums worldwide and has sold more than 4 million copies of its album Black Sunday, according to BMG Records.

Rehearsals have already highlighted the cultural differences between the groups, with the BBC reporting that the band interpreted “glock” as a gun while the orchestra understood it to mean glockenspiel, the percussion instrument.