2Mex

Alejandro Ocana, better known by his stage name 2Mex, is a rapper from Los Angeles, California. He is a member of The Visionaries and Of Mexican Descent. He has collaborated with underground hip hop artists such as Jel, Omid, Thavius Beck, Factor, Radioinactive and Isaiah "Ikey" Owens. He is a member of the Project Blowed crew, and he is affiliated with Shape Shifters.

History

2Mex attended the Good Life Cafe open mic nights in 1993. Around that time, he founded Of Mexican Descent with Xololanxinxo.

In 1998, he released his first album with The Visionaries as well as the first Of Mexican Descent album, and he was featured on the OD (Omid) compilation album Beneath the Surface. In 1999, he was featured (with Xololanxinxo as Of Mexican Descent) on the Fat Jack compilation album Cater to the DJ, and he released his first solo album Fake It Till You Make It as The Mind Clouders with producer Mums the Word. In 2000, he was featured (as a member of the Afterlife Crew) on the Afterlife Records compilation Declaration of an Independent. He then released B-Boys in Occupied Mexico on Mean Street in 2001.Sweat Lodge Infinite was released on Temporary Whatever in 2003. The self-titled album, 2Mex, was released in 2004. He released My Fanbase Will Destroy You on Strange Famous Records in 2010. It features guest appearances from Murs, Prince Po, Busdriver and Nobody.

B-Real

Louis Freese (born June 2, 1970), better known by his stage name B-Real, is an American rapper and actor. He is best known for being the lead rapper in the hip hop group Cypress Hill.

Early life and career

Born in L.A. to a Mexican father and a Cuban mother, B-Real moved with his sister and mother out of his father's home to South Gate at the age of five. He later ended up in South Central Los Angeles. Before dropping out of Bell High School, he befriended future Cypress Hill members Sen Dog and Mellow Man Ace (who forwent staying with the group to go solo). He has claimed gang membership.

After being introduced to DJ Muggs by Julio G the KDAY Mixmaster, B-Real and Sen gained interest in Muggs's concept of an album based on experiences from Cypress Ave in South Gate. The group was signed with Ruffhouse/Columbia records in 1991, and made their influential debut that year. B-Real would use his life-threatening experiences as material for the group's self-titled debut album, and subsequent releases.

Cypress Hill

Cypress Hill is an American hip hop group from South Gate, California. Cypress Hill was the first Latino-American hip hop group to have platinum and multi-platinum albums, selling over 18 million albums worldwide. They are considered to be amongst the main progenitors of West Coast rap and Hip hop in the early 1990s, being critically acclaimed for their first three albums. The band has also been important for the advocacy of medical and recreational use of cannabis in the United States.

History

Formation (1988)

Senen Reyes (also known as Sen Dog) and Ulpiano Sergio Reyes (also known as Mellow Man Ace) are brothers born in Pinar del Río, Cuba. In 1971, their family immigrated to the United States from Cuba. They initially lived in South Gate, California. In 1988, the two brothers teamed up with Lawrence Muggerud (also known as DJ Muggs) and Louis Freese (also known as B-Real) to form a hip-hop group named DVX (Devastating Vocal Excellence). The band soon lost Mellow Man Ace to a solo career, and changed their name to Cypress Hill, after a street in South Gate.

Psycho Realm

The Psycho Realm is an American hip hop group started in 1989 by brothers Sick Jacken (Jack Gonzalez) and Big Duke (Gustavo Gonzalez) from the Downtown, Pico-Union area of Los Angeles. The first recorded Psycho Realm song, "Scandalous", was released on the soundtrack of the film Mi Vida Loca in 1994. That same year B-Real of the rap group Cypress Hill saw Psycho Realm performing at Olvera Street for an End Barrio Warfare concert. Their performance inspired B-Real to the point that he wanted to join the group. With this time period being the height of Cypress Hill’s career anything Cypress Hill related would get major publicity.

In 1997 Sony released the first Psycho Realm album, labeled as an addition to the Cypress Hill Family by the sticker placed on the CD case. Due to conflicts with the record label the Gonzalez brothers were dropped from Sony as Jacken explains, "the machine was just trying to censor me / Didn't do it for Sony so they ended up releasing me / Independent, no longer locked down for an infinity / So my vicinity stays true to my identity." The brothers then went on to form Sick Symphonies, their own record label, which lacked the big budget for promotion and distribution in chain stores along with group member B-Real, who was stuck on his contract with Sony for Cypress Hill.

The Historian

The Historian is the 2005 debut novel of American author Elizabeth Kostova. The plot blends the history and folklore of Vlad Țepeș and his fictional equivalent Count Dracula. Kostova's father told her stories about Dracula when she was a child, and later in life she was inspired to turn the experience into a novel. She worked on the book for ten years and then sold it within a few months to Little, Brown and Company, which bought it for US$2 million.

The Historian has been described as a combination of genres, including Gothic novel, adventure novel, detective fiction, travelogue, postmodern historical novel, epistolary epic, and historical thriller. Kostova was intent on writing a serious work of literature and saw herself as an inheritor of the Victorian style. Although based in part on Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Historian is not a horror novel, but rather an eerie tale. It is concerned with history's role in society and representation in books, as well as the nature of good and evil. As Kostova explains, "Dracula is a metaphor for the evil that is so hard to undo in history." The evils brought about by religious conflict are a particular theme, and the novel explores the relationship between the Christian West and the Islamic East.