Live Review: Cypress Hill, Coin Banks, Ivan Ooze

“Yo, what the fuck up Melbourne?” says hometown hip hop-dawg Ivan Ooze as he paces back and forth across the Forum stage with bro DJ Junior. New track Trippin’ goes down well with the dude-heavy early crowd waving their hands in the air.

Coin Banks turns up next with his DJ scratching out some impressively funky beats on Superman. Banks does a decent job of getting some call-and-response happening when asking the crowd to help rap out, “When I say Cypress, you say Hill.” A sweet, poetic a cappella intro on Focus creates a touchingly quiet moment, prompting Banks to acknowledge that the track’s “a bit of a downer” but he hopes we can relate. No problem, the slick Thomas Lawrence brings the peppy bounce right back next.

Earthy wafts of weed drift through the now-packed Forum as baseball-capped, baggy-jeaned punters wait for the real deal. Cypress Hill announce themselves bang on 10.30pm with a loud “Are you ready??!” The whole dancefloor erupts like crazy on first track I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That. B-Real and Sen Dog immediately demonstrate the reasons why they’ve been at the top of their game for 20 years as they pace, rap and gesture like the old-skool pros they are.

“How the fuck you been, Melbourne?” asks one, before leading punters into some “la-la-la-la”s on the chorus of Hand On The Pump. Sen Dog asks all the motherfucker crazy Australians to provide some “Oh shit” lyrics on How I Could Just Kill A Man and the crowd enthusiastically complies. B-Real and Sen Dog then play off the ‘drunk’ and ‘high’ sides of the crowd to see who’s partying the hardest, before saying, “You know what to do right now,” as the opening riff of Insane In The Brain rings out for a minute before stopping. An adoring fan throws weed at B-Real who shouts, “Thank you for throwing weed at me! Rain it down!” before the iconic hip hop track plays out fully, inciting mass crowd euphoria. B-Real lights up a joint onstage for Roll It Up, Light It Up, Smoke It Up sending more earthy wafts of smoke across the noses of very happy punters.

Finishing with (Rock) Superstar, Sen Dog requests an “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!/Oi-Oi-Oi!” from the crowd before this incredible show sadly comes to end. Stoner hip hop legends Cypress Hill still got it, y’all.