Twenty-Eight Years After ‘The Simpsons’ Did It, Cypress Hill Are Finally Collaborating With London Symphony Orchestra for A Real ‘Homerpalooza’

Now this, I like.

Back in 1996, a special episode of The Simpsons aired in which Homer grappled with the fact that he used to be “with it,” before they changed what “it was.” Then, what Homer was “with” wasn’t “it,” and what’s “it” was weird and scary to him. With the Season Seven episode “Homerpalooza,” the makers of The Simpsons showed Generation X that they still knew how to rock out to the sounds of an all-star special guest lineup that included the actual voices of Peter Frampton, Sonic Youth, The Smashing Pumpkins and Cypress Hill, who have spent the last three decades working to bring a beloved bit to life.

Late last week, Cypress Hill and the London Symphony Orchestra announced that, nearly 28 years after The Simpsons joked about the two very disparate groups performing together at a music festival, they will join together for a one-night-only concert this July 10th at the historic Royal Albert Hall in London. This Wednesday, fans of classical music, classic West Coast hip-hop and classic Simpsons episodes will have their first chance to order tickets to the event, possibly while high.

“We are thrilled to be performing with the London Symphony Orchestra in such a prestigious venue as the Royal Albert Hall,” Cypress Hill told Rolling Stone in a statement. “It’s a dream come true, a collaboration only The Simpsons could have predicted.” Cypress Hill had been teasing and testing the real-life Simpsons bit for much of the last decade, booking numerous performances of their classic songs with orchestral accompaniment from the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, the Oregon Symphony and the San Diego Symphony since 2017.

London Symphony Orchestra Managing Director Kathryn McDowell said of the combination that David Cohen and Brent Forrester dreamed up back in the mid-Clinton administration, “After years of social media teasing it, many fans may have started to believe it would only be a pipe dream — but the LSO is delighted to finally be joining Cypress Hill on stage and in person, and look forward to creating an unforgettable musical moment!” 

Of course, just as the case was in “Homerpalooza,” there does run a risk that the headliners for this concert will alienate an older crowd who doesn’t understand why a hip-hop group and an orchestra will be sharing a stage built by Queen Victoria back in 1871 that has hosted meetings, lectures and prize fights from the likes of Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein and Muhammad Ali during its illustrious century-and-a-half of operation. The dusty British aristocracy may feel that the Cypress Hill x LSO concert is beneath such a venue’s nobility, but they should learn to lighten up. Give us one of those big British smiles, won’t you, gov’na?