Cypress Hill make 28-year-old Simpsons joke a actuality

A joke made on The Simpsons 28 years ago is set to become reality tonight when as the worlds of hip-hop and classical music collide at the Royal Albert Hall.

Rap legends Cypress Hill were lampooned in an episode of the hit show, with writers making fun of their marijuana-loving lyrics by suggesting they booked the London Symphony Orchestra for a gig while high.

It has sparked years of calls from fans of the band, who have sold 20million albums worldwide, to turn the light-hearted jab into the most unlikely of collaborations.

Now the trio appear to have got the last laugh after fulfilling their ‘destiny’ by booking the LSO for their one-night only show at the Royal Albert Hall tonight.

It is the latest in a list of ‘predictions’ made by the long-running animated series to have come true, with previous bouts of foresight including Donald Trump becoming president of the United States of America.

Cypress Hill (pictured) say they are fulfilling their ‘destiny’ by performing with the London Symphony Orchestra

The band, made up of B-Real, Sen Dog and Eric Bobo, had been ‘blown away’ to be invited to appear on penultimate episode The Simpsons’s seventh season in 1996.

In the episode, Homerpalooza, Homer takes his family to rock festival Hullabalooza, a play on Lollapalooza, in a bid to prove his street cred to them.

The family is allowed backstage by security where they witness a magical collaboration start between Cypress Hill and the London Symphony Orchestra. 

During the episode of The Simpsons, a puzzled coordinator backstage asked: ‘Hello bands, who is playing with the London Symphony Orchestra?’

Nobody responded, much to his annoyance and he continued: ‘Come on people, somebody ordered the London Symphony Orchestra, possibly while high!’

He then accused the hip hop group of ordering the musicians to play with them, saying: ‘Cypress Hill, I’m looking in your direction’.

The panicked California collective then whispered to each other: ‘Hey man did we order an orchestra? What’s up with this orchestra, where’d this orchestra come from?’

A member of the trio continued: ‘No one told me about this man. We gotta do something,’ before replying to the coordinator: ‘Yeah, yeah, we think we did.’

Turning to the orchestra, who were all suited and booted in black tuxedos he asked: ‘Do you know Insane in the Brain?’

The orchestra’s violinist admitted: ‘We mostly know classical…but we could give it a shot.’

The orchestra then begins taking part in a rendition of the song, impressing Marge who beamed: ‘Now this, I like’.

The episode would later reveal that the orchestra had actually been booked for Peter Frampton, the British-born guitarist and singer who performed in The Herd.

Cypress Hill will perform with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall (pictured) tonight

In the episode of The Simpsons the band perform an impromptu collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra

The writers of the show joked that the weed-loving trio had accidentally booked the London Symphony Orchestra while high

The joked proved so popular that decades later people still rib Cypress Hill about the potential collaboration between the two very different band. 

B-Real said: ‘We were blown away by it, so when it comes out finally, it’s like when your album comes out.

‘It was like, what’s it going to do? How are people going to react?

‘We got a great reaction from it, and it was a hilarious episode.

‘It just sort of lived on from there, throughout our career people have been like, ‘hey, did you really steal Peter Frampton’s symphony’.’

The former The Herd singer and guitarist is on the guestlist for the show, although the band are unsure if he will take up their offer after he didn’t respond to their invitations.

But despite the jokes, B-Real said the idea was something that ‘always followed us’, and added the episode was ‘inspiration’ for the band as far back as 1996, when it first come out.

He added: ‘After the episode came out, our producer DJ Muggs was like, ‘that might actually be a cool idea, we should probably do that’.

‘He was talking about it with management and our agents for quite some time, then his schedule got demanding, and we all sort of forgot about it, and before you know it, Wu-Tang was doing a symphony show.

‘And we thought, well f***, that’s our destiny, we should be doing this, because we’re with the Simpsons, and that’s where the idea spawned for a hip-hop group to do an orchestra or a symphony in the first place.’

The idea returned to the band when they put out a tweet to commemorate the moment in 2017, which was then quoted by the LSO, which said: ‘We mostly play classical, but we’ll give it a shot.’

Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink gestures to the London Symphony Orchestra during a performance at The Barbican in 2019

The band have already played two US shows with the Colorado Symphony, which wrote the original orchestrations, which have now been adapted by the LSO, adding a ‘darkness’, according to B-Real.

He said: ‘Colorado Symphony wrote the first charts for us.

‘What we did was we just gave them the music and said we don’t want you to play over our track, because a lot of the time that’s what a band will assume we want.

‘In this case we said no, we’re going to do everything organic, we’re not going to play any of our track, we’re going to do it all from the instruments, no samples, no existing tracks.

‘We said, we would like it if you recreated the track.

‘When we heard them back we were like ‘oh my God this s***, this is happening, and it sounds amazing’.

‘We were hoping the LSO would be open to the idea that they looked at the charts that had already been written, and maybe they wanted to rearrange it, or change some bits, or add to it.

‘Fortunately, they did, they actually made it much darker than the previous ones, which we loved.

‘Colorado did an excellent job of translating the music, but we felt like it could be darker, and we knew the LSO could definitely do that, and fortunately they did an amazing job.’

During the concert, the band will play Black Sunday in full, as it was the album which was out at the time of the Simpsons episode, as well as other fan favourites.

B-Real added: ‘People that have come to our symphony shows, they were very surprised on some of the songs we played outside of Black Sunday.

‘We can’t wait to see what the reaction is here.’

It means that once more something mentioned on The Simpsons has become reality, further bolstering the ranks of the shows Nostradamus-like powers of prediction.

In March 2000 the show prophetically joked about Donald Trump – that that point best known as a real estate magnate – becoming president of the United States.

In the episode Bart has a vision of the future where his sister Lisa become president where she states: ‘We’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump.’ 

Trump would be elected president 16 years later, beating Hilary Clinton in the 2016 election.

In one episode of The Simpsons Bart is shown a vision of the future which includes Donald Trump becoming president of the United States 

Images of Sir Richard Branson enjoying a spaceflight went viral in 2021 after the businessman, 73, launched himself towards the stars, in a bizarre case of real life imitating art 

The show also appeared to predict the United States beating Sweden in the final of the Winter Olympics to win gold in the Curling

Moving away from politics, the show also portrayed Sir Richard Branson going into space in 2014, a full seven years before the British businessman managed the feat with Virgin Galactic.

The show also poked fun at magicians Siegfried and Roy, famous for their glitzy shows in Las Vegas involving live animals including tigers.

In a 1993 episode of The Simpsons, a pair of magicians called Gunter and Ernst were introduced who bore a striking resemblance to the pair. 

The episode showed the duo being attacked by the white tiger which was involved in their act – almost a decade before Roy Horn was attacked one of his own white tigers during a show at the Mirage casino.

And in one of the shows more inspired pieces of foresight, The Simpsons appeared to predict the United States winning a gold medal in the Winter Olympics.

In a 2010 episode Homer and Marge were selected for the US Curling team at the Winter Olympics, with the pair helping their country win a gold medal in the final over Sweden.

Remarkably this storyline was repeated almost beat for beat – without Homer and Marge of course – at the 2008 Winter Olympics in South Korea when the United States won gold in the Curling, triumphing against none other than Sweden in the final.

12 TIMES THE SIMPSONS CORRECTLY PREDICTED THE FUTURE

The iconic animated TV show has been known to foresee major world events – from Donald Trump’s presidency to the discovery of a three-eyed mutant fish to the erection of London skyscraper The Shard.

Here are some of the original predictions from across the four-decade-long run of The Simpsons – and the real-life events that transpired years later…

Mystic Marge… Maggie, Homer, Lisa and Bart: The iconic animated TV show has been known to foresee major world events

1: FAULTY VOTING

PREDICTED IN: Treehouse of Horror XIX – 2008

CAME TRUE IN: Pennsylvania, USA – 2012 

In 2008, Homer was seen attempting to vote for Barack Obama in the US general election, only for the machine to keep switching his vote to Republican John McCain.

Four years later, a voting machine in Pennsylvania was discovered to be changing people’s votes from Obama, who was running for a second term, to Republican rival Mitt Romney.

Rigged? Homer could not vote for Obama in 2008

2: OSAKA FLU AKA CORONAVIRUS

PREDICTED IN: Marge In Chains – 1993

CAME TRUE IN: Wuhan, China – 2019

The episode featured a far-eastern virus called the Osaka Flu being transported across the globe and infecting the residents of Springfield, who were ordering Japanese juicing machines that had been coughed all over by infected factory workers.

COVID-19 was first reported in China in December 2019. By March 2020 it was declared a global pandemic.  

Aye Corona! The show foreshadowed coronavirus with its fictitious Osaka Flu

3: TOM HANKS HAS TO SELF-ISOLATE

PREDICTED IN: The Simpsons Movie – 2007

CAME TRUE IN: Gold Coast, Australia – 2020

The Hollywood actor and his wife, Rita Wilson, caught COVID-19 while filming Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Presley biopic on location in Australia in March 2020.

As a result, he and Rita had to go into isolation. 

In 2007’s The Simpsons Movie – the big screen version of the TV show – Hanks makes a cameo appearance, in which he says: ‘This is Tom Hanks saying if you see me in person, please, leave me be.’

(Out)Cast Away: Tom Hanks warned viewers to ‘leave me be’ in 2007

4: THE ERECTION OF THE SHARD

PREDICTED IN: Lisa’s Wedding – 1995

CAME TRUE IN: London, UK – 2009

When Lisa visited a fortune teller, she foresaw that she would one day marry a British man.

In the episode, she flies to London – where the skyline features a tall, pointed building.

Fans have branded this a prediction that The Shard would one day be a fixture of London’s architecture – eventually being built in 2009 and opening in 2013. 

Up The Shard: Did Lisa’s premonition foretell the London landmark

5: DONALD TRUMP BECOMES PRESIDENT

PREDICTED IN: Bart To The Future – 2000

CAME TRUE IN: USA – 2016

In another flash-forward episode, Lisa is the president of the United States, having succeeded Donald Trump.

She is seen lamenting the financial slump that Trump has left the country in, following his exit from office. 

This episode aired 16 years before even the idea of Trump taking over The White House was a possibility. He was elected as the 45th president of the United States on November 9, 2016.

President Lisa: A flash-forward saw Lisa pick up the slack from an ex-president Trump

6: BLINKY THE THREE-EYED MUTANT FISH

PREDICTED IN: Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes On Every Fish – 1990

CAME TRUE IN: Córdoba, Argentina – 2011

Blinky, the three-eyed fish from The Simpsons first appeared in the second season of the show, when Bart caught it while fishing in the river by Springfield’s nuclear power plant.

In 2011, a fisherman in Argentina caught a three-eyed wolf fish, similarly in waters outside a power station.

In both cases, the power plants were blamed for dumping toxic waste into the waters, thus affecting the wildlife.

Perfect catch? Bart caught a fish – and a glimpse of the future 

7: KING’S LANDING IS DESTROYED BY DRAGONS

PREDICTED IN: The Serfsons – 2017

CAME TRUE IN: Game Of Thrones – 2019

The Simpsons parodied Game Of Thrones in 2017, with the episode ending with the family watching their village obliterated by fire-breathing dragons.

When the Game Of Thrones penultimate episode aired in 2019, King’s Landing suffered the same fate when Daenerys Targaryen ordered Drogon to burn the town to a crisp.

Winter came early: The Simpsons foretold the fate of King’s Landing in 2017

8: BABY TRANSLATOR

PREDICTED IN: Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes? – 1992

CAME TRUE IN: Twain, East Asia – 2015

When Homer is awarded $2,000 in compensation for being exposed to nuclear radiation, making him infertile, his long-lost half-brother Herb shows up, looking for investment in an invention that translates ‘baby babble’ – using Maggie as a guinea pig.

In 2016, app developers unveiled their Infant Cries Translator, which claimed to be able to decipher what a baby’s sobs were trying to convey.

Baby babble: Did Homer’s long-lost brother invent the Infant Cries Translator?

9: CENSORING MICHELANGELO’S DAVID

PREDICTED IN: Itchy & Scratchy & Marge – 1990

CAME TRUE IN: Saint Petersburg, Russia – 2016

Marge became outraged by the violence in Bart and Lisa’s favourite cartoon, The Itchy & Scratchy Show – and penned a letter of concern to the broadcasting network. This escalated into a full-blown protest which saw the cat and mouse cartoon toned down; instead of blowing each other up, they were seen sharing lemonade in harmony.

When the famous sculpture Michelangelo’s David was then due to stop on a tour in Springfield, Marge refused to join in with a local protest led by the likes of pious Maud Flanders, who claimed the statue was gratuitous. She was then accused of being a hypocrite.

The precise same scenario cropped up in Russia 26 years later [minus the Itchy & Scratchy part], when residents of Saint Petersburg protested a replica of the naked sculpture which was due to be erected in the city.

Censored! Marge’s Itchy & Scratchy tirade foreshadowed a real-life protest against fine art

10: ALL YOU CAN EAT LAW SUIT

PREDICTED IN: New Kid On The Block – 1992

CAME TRUE IN: Massachusetts, USA – 2017

Homer was kicked out of an All You Can Eat venue for eating too much – causing the restaurant to run dry. He then became obsessed with fighting the case legally.

A real-life case took place at the Golden Corral in 2017, when a man ate 50lbs of food, getting kicked out.

He then sued the eatery for $2 million.

All you can’t eat! Homer’s fish food binge ended up happening in real-life

11: TIERED LOCKDOWNS IN THE UK 

PREDICTED IN: The Simpsons Movie – 2007

CAME TRUE IN: The UK – 2020 

Homer disposes his pet pig’s excrement in the Springfield lake and causes an environmental crisis.

The EPA then place a dome over the town, quarantining the residents and disallowing them to leave.

In December 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson placed the UK into a tiered system, in which the nation was segregated into different segments, with some tiers ordered not to travel out of town. 

Locked down: Fans likened the dome placed over Springfield by the government to the tiered restrictions Boris Johnson imposed upon the UK in 2020

12: REPORTING FROM HOME AND CURFEWS 

PREDICTED IN: Wild Barts Can’t Be Broken – 1999

CAME TRUE IN: Globally – 2020

When Homer, Barney, Lenny, and Carl drunkenly vandalize Springfield Elementary School, it is blamed on the children of Springfield, prompting Chief Wiggum to impose a curfew.

Kent Brockman is forced to present the news from home.

In a strikingly similar situation, Channel 4 newsreader Krishnan Guru-Murthy had to present from home in the UK as he went into self-isolation.

The country also implemented a strict curfew shortly after this, where restaurants and bars were re-opened but had to close by 10PM every night.

Eagle-eyed: One Simpsons viewer noticed that a 1999 episode drew parallels with the coronavirus pandemic’s working from home policies and curfew orders