The Secret to B-Real's Distinct Voice | Joe Rogan

Did you always have that style? No, I didn't. When did you develop that? Once we started working on our Cypress Hill demos, Muggs came to me and said, hey man, you gotta do something. You gotta do something different. Otherwise, you're gonna write for Sen. Because Sen had a good voice. His shit was locked in. And my voice, I was rapping in a voice similar to the one I talk in. And although the rhymes were good, it didn't cut through on the style like on the beats. It just sounded like some regular shit. So I didn't want to be someone's writer. I wanted to write for myself. So there was a guy that we used to listen to coming up, his name was Ram Elzy. He was on this record called Wild Style and he was in the movie. He was this rapper who was very obscure, but he was an artist too. Like a graffiti artist, but then also an artist artist. But he was also a rapper. And what he would do is he'd rap in a regular style like his talking voice. This is the brother they call the Ram El. He had a deep voice like that. And then he would flip right in the middle. Take it uptown to Cypress Hill with the shotgun, blah blah blah, like that. We were always freaking out on that he had two styles. So I tried throwing my voice in that sort of similar style and it ended up sticking. I didn't really like, I didn't think anybody was going to like it. I thought they were going to be like, get the fuck out of here with that. But they ended up liking it. And I think the first song that came about in that style was the song Real Estate off our first album. That was where I tried it the first time they liked it. So then Kill a Man came next and I tried that song in that style and then Hand on the Pump. It just became a flow after that. And I really did not feel it at first. I was like, fuck, I can't believe they got me rapping in this voice. And it took a minute to get used to that. You know, like doing it live. Because I had a tendency as rappers that don't know, because there's no school for this unless you have somebody who's done it and they teach you, okay, this is what the get down is. And we didn't have that really. It was all hands on learning. For the first few years, man, I was trying to do the voice and I'd end up getting over hyped because the crowd is hyped and I'd start yelling the verses instead of like rapping them like on the record. I'd throw my voice out. My voice would get scratchy. I'd be sounding like Busta Rhymes and shit. It took me five years to actually harness how to actually do the shows with this voice. And I had to go to this opera singer coach. Really? Her name was something, Elizabeth Sabine or something like that. She trained a lot of folks. But her shit was like to teach you the operatic way of singing, which is from the diaphragm. Tighten the stomach, take little breaths, but those little breaths make your lungs expand a lot. And it's less projection from your throat and more from the bottom. And she taught me that technique. And I never went horse again after that. People often compliment me on sounding so close to how the records are. There's once in a while where I might get excited and start saying it louder than it might be, but I'm always sort of right there. And I got to give all props to her because if she hadn't showed me that technique, I'd probably still be yelling and screaming my shit out, fucking up my voice. That brings up an interesting point. Is this her? She's teaching somebody how to sing heavy metal right here. No way. Let me hear some. We can't play this on YouTube. We'll get kicked off YouTube. And she was an opera singer at one time. Wow. But she went on to teach people the technique. No kidding, man. That is wild. See because if you try to keep your breath and sustain a long note like that from your chest, you won't sustain that note long enough. But if you tighten it from your diaphragm. Yeah. If you tighten up almost. It's almost like if you're going to take a shit. Instead of from the throat. That makes sense. Yeah. It allows your lungs to expand while you're breathing from your diaphragm. So that's what she taught a lot of singers. Another method is to cheat the word. Like pronounce it. It's like what these mumble rappers do when they pronounce the word and they kind of mumble it and they sort of cheat it. You know what the word is, but they didn't pronounce it all the way. So in other words, if you were going to sing the line, come with me, so it sounds a little bit cleaner, you'd say gum with me. But in the way you would say it, it's more with a G. But it's so tucked in that you hear come with me. And it's just a cheating way of saying it to get the line a little bit cleaner and fucking in the breath. And she taught me all that shit and it worked for rap. I didn't know if it would because I mean it was, she primarily taught singers. I was probably the first rapper that she taught this technique to and it stuck. How'd you find her? One of my friends had heard of her, you know, because I mean in the industry, you know, become friends with other, you know, your peers and stuff like that. You know, I knew a couple singers and they were, you know, noting my problem is just, you know, screaming my verses and coming back with the raspy voice. So they were like, here, why don't you try this person right here? This person taught or gave this technique to so and so. And it was another singer I can't remember. But I thought, well, you know, what have I got to lose? I mean, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but maybe I learned something from it that I could use somewhere else. Right. And fuck, she taught me the warm up. She taught me, you know, the certain words that you can cheat to, you know, for certain breath control purposes because the way you pronounce certain things, you know, sort of add to that and just the tightening of the diaphragm. Man, like if I hadn't learned that, it would have took me a lot longer to do the shows the way that I can do them now. So do you warm up before shows? I don't necessarily need to. Like from the first song on my voice like gets in like the first few bars, it warms up right then and there. And it's not really like singing where I got to sustain notes and stuff like that. So I don't have to do those same kind of warm ups. If I was going to sing some shit, yes, I would definitely have to get my, you know, get the pitch right and the throat warmed up to to do those different, you know, melodies or whatever the hell. Fortunately, I don't sing.