Really interesting interview with Cypress Hill frontman B-Real. He talks about a new Cypress album, working with Psycho Realm and being a Babalawo for the past eight years or so. That basically means he’s a priest. Go figure. More power to him though. Link
I have a relative that’s a priest of Santeria, I remember reading an article on you in the 90’s that said you were considering to become a Babalawo.
Oh no, I am. It probably said that I considered, but I was already a Babalawo when that came out.
Is that still an active part of your lifestyle?
Yeah, pretty much. When you get involved in that, it’s the responsibility you take on. It’s hard, especially when you’re an entertainer or in this business, you don’t have a lot of time to do a lot of the practices. But yeah, I’ve been a priest for eight years now, seven, eight years. Something like that. It’s a part of a culture as a Cuban, being a Cuban, my family in Cuba was into it. I wasn’t that into it coming up as a kid, I didn’t know that much about it as a kid, I would only see through other people what it was. When I got older and started seeing and hearing different things, people would pass on knowledge to me about things. Then eventually it called to me. When it called to me, I had a choice to either ignore it and keep doing what I was doing, or to embrace it and go forward. I decided to embrace it, and I’ve been practicing ever since.
So that’s from the Afro-Cubans in your family.
It’s from my mother’s side of the family, my father was Mexican. They weren’t…. (laughs) that side of the family wasn’t too into that kind of stuff. Mostly Catholic and some Christian. My mother didn’t even really get into it until after I did. One of those things.
Some people can’t get over that I have relatives who sacrifice animals.
Yeah, its something that not a lot of people would understand or get the gist of. Most religions, whether they’re organized or however they categorize it, they do some sort of sacrifice at some point in the year. That’s most religions, you just don’t hear about it because they don’t speak on it. Obviously there’s politics involved. But with the Yoruba, with Santeria or Ifa, however people are calling it because everyone has a different name for it, it’s not necessarily considered an organized religion. Its makeup, I don’t know if it offends people, but it scares people, they make a big deal more about what we do than what anyone else does. That’s kind of unfair, but it is what it is and you deal with it. But we have laws to protect us, because its not like no animal cruelty. The animals are being taken care of, the way they are sacrificed is in a humane way. Its for a spiritual purpose, people can think what they want. It took me a minute to get over that part of it. It’s just something that some people are gonna understand and some people will never understand because they don’t want to. We just gotta keep it moving and do what’s best for you.
