Cypress Hill’s B-Real has candidly recounted his days as a Bloods gang member before finding fame.
The rapper, whose real name is Louis Mario Freese, revealed the story behind his stage moniker and recalled the harrowing incident when he was shot in the lung with a .22 hollow point bullet by a rival gang member.
In a revealing chat on Steve-O’s Wild Ride! podcast, the Insane in the Brain artist admitted that while fellow band members Sen Dog and DJ Muggs were more committed to their music, he was deeply entrenched in the “gang bang life”.
B-Real reminisced: “We were running f***in’ wild. I mean, erm… I got the name B-Real through you know, the gang bang life.
“Erm, because before that, you know, Sen and I, we’ve known each other before that,” reports the Mirror.
He went on to say, “I mean, Sen sort of introduced me to the bangers that I eventually got down with, but I knew Sen Dog way before that because hip-hop was always a thing for us.”
During an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit, B-Real delved into how he earned his nickname: “Before the music, I was into the gang life. They called me Real Chill.
“We’d go line out rivals’ tags and tag a roll call. One of my 1st missions was to go and do this. As a blood, you don’t write C, so Real Chill was turned into B-Real.”
B-Real acknowledged that he drifted towards gang activities while Sen Dog, his brother, Mellow Man Ace, and DJ Muggs pursued their musical passion with greater intensity.
B-Real revealed he was “out there f***in, you know, running really wild” and even “got shot”.
He detailed his experience of being part of a group of “maybe five or six” gang members who were in another Blood neighbourhood that was “constantly at war” with some rivals.
They had been “going from one house to grab some weed” to come back and party at another house when a car pulled up in front of them, and the occupants were wearing “blue hats”.
B-Real recalled: “We’re wearing red and s*** and so, as you can imagine, all the s*** talking starts and none of us are pulling anything out, and I, you know, I noticed that really quickly.”
He then saw a gun coming over the front seat and the passenger started firing at them, hitting one of his guys in the elbow.
The bullet travelled from the elbow and got stuck, leading the rivals to believe they had killed him due to his reaction.
However, the rivals then “switched the gun” and tried to shoot B-Real, firing four shots, with the fourth ricocheting off the wall before catching him in the side.
Despite being hit, he managed to stay on his feet until the rival gang members left the scene before collapsing on the ground because the bullet had pierced his lung (the fragments remain lodged in his body to this day).
B-Real has previously attributed his escape from the gangster lifestyle to his successful music career. The band shot to fame in the 1990s and has sold more than 20 million albums.
In a humorous twist, Cypress Hill featured in a 1996 episode of The Simpsons where they mistakenly booked the London Symphony Orchestra while under the influence.
Fast forward 28 years, the hip-hop icons are set to turn this joke into reality by performing with the orchestra at a one-off gig at the Royal Albert Hall this week.
The collaboration came about after Cypress Hill reached out to the orchestra via social media. They will be performing tracks from their critically acclaimed album, Black Sunday.