Los Angeles rock band The Record Company shared a cover of Cypress Hill’s Black Sunday opener “I Wanna Get High.” It’s the third single they’ve released from their covers EP Side Project, which is due in full on May 9 via Concord.
The cover takes the original and rearranges it into a pop song structure. On Cypress Hill’s 1993 classic, there’s a long buildup as B-Real sings the refrain, followed by a single verse and an outro mirroring the intro. On The Record Company’s rendition, there’s a brief intro that foreshadows the refrain, but the verse comes in much more quickly and they repeat the verse a second time after using “I wanna get high/So high” as more of a hook than a refrain.
Instrumentally, it’s a more cinematic cover of the track, with an effect-laden electric guitar playing the main riff alongside rising synths and steady drums. Frontman Chris Vos also sounds nothing like B-Real, since Vos’ vocals are much more clearly enunciated in his somewhat-rootsy style. An accompanying video for the track uses a mashup of retro internet aesthetics and quirky greenscreen editing to show the band performing the recording.
“The mighty Cypress Hill’s records are always under the turntable at our pad, because their albums raise the party vibes,” The Record Company stated. “Last year we posted a video on our Instagram of us doing this tune live in our living room and Cypress Hill reposted it. We were f*cking so honored that we decided we’d do a proper take on it on Side Project. It’s high time we all elevate and start to come back together.”
The original Instagram video had featured acoustic guitar instead of electric, and was generally much more faithful to the original. Vos sang the refrain in a lower register than the falsetto he did for the studio recording, and Alex Stiff played the iconic bass riff from the song instead of synths.
The first cover that The Record Company shared from the EP was a version of Big Mama Thornton’s “Ball and Chain,” 1968 sleeper hit that was later popularized by Janis Joplin. The Record Company followed it up with a slower rendition of INXS’ “Devil Inside.” The band commented on the full EP, “Side Project is what happens when three guys who have always been in bands finish their record, are locked away from each other, and are told they need to make more ‘content.’ So, we took songs we love, fucked them up, cut them up and twisted them around, until we loved it and felt like a band again.”
Following the release of The Side Project this May, The Record Company plans to drop their third full-length album at some point later in the year. Their previous albums Give It Back to You (2016) and All of This Life (2018) produced several successful blues-rock songs including “Off The Ground,” “Rita Mae Young” and “Life to Fix.”
Leave a Comment