A vital part of the legendary Hip Hop group Cypress Hill since its inception in 1988, Sen Dog is a name fans know and love. Recognized for his many vocal performances, especially 1991’s “How I Could Just Kill a Man” and 1993’s “Insane in the Brain,” Sen Dog’s impact goes far and wide.
Showing different sides of his musicality, he formed a Rap Rock band back in 1996 called SX-10 and, in more recent times, put together the Heavy Metal-driven Powerflo. A passion project where Sen Dog expands his abilities beyond anything he has ever done, Powerflo is rounded out by Biohazard Guitarist Billy Graziadei, former Fear Factory Bassist Christian Olde Wolbers, and more recently, Drummer Fred Aching (currently a part of BulletBoys).
Coming together to create something they all believe in, Powerflow’s new album Gorilla Warfare arrived on November 1, 2024, as an essential listen.
Proud of the work put into Powerflo, Sen Dog has his sights set on continuing the band well into the future with new music, touring, etc. Excited about the possibilities, he recently sat down to talk about everything Powerflo, Cypress Hill, and much more.
Cryptic Rock – You have been involved in music for many years now. A key part of Cypress Hill, you have also been involved in other projects such as Powerflow. Always looking to diversify, how would you describe your musical journey to this point?
Sen Dog – That’s a good question. The only way I could answer that my musical journey has gone from not knowing anything about music, how to write it, or how to do it to where I feel now that I know what I’m doing. The only thing I was good at was performing.
Cryptic Rock – Very good, and you have had many decades of experience now to reach this point.
Sen Dog – Yeah. Continuing to work on it. It’s been a definite journey. Along the way, I found myself. I would say that when we first started Cypress Hill, I wasn’t your everyday musician. I was like a part-time musician. Back in those days, I would need a lot of help from the guys to perform whatever I was doing.
There were a couple of songs, like “Latin Lingo,” that I was able to breeze through because that’s just the way that I talked back in South Gate, California. We had that English and Spanish mashup kind of language. That’s how we talked. Aside from that, I had to learn how to write my songs and whatnot. Along the way, people worked with me and gave me opportunities to reach that goal.
Cryptic Rock – That’s fantastic. Here you are all these years later. Cypress Hill has had a tremendous amount of success over the years. Cypress Hill did many cool things in Hip Hop that other acts were not doing at the time and changed things a little bit. Tell me a little bit about that because that’s important. It had a big impact.
Sen Dog – Yeah. Well, Cypress never shied away from any collaboration, no matter what genre it may be in. We always looked at it as a challenge. What could we do next aside from just great Hip-Hop records?
We were always looking to do rapping Español or mix Reggae with Rap. I don’t know if you’d call it Techno or House, but we’ve mixed up the genres a lot. That just goes back to us growing up individually and what kind of music that we were into. All the guys in the band were all over the place before we met musically. In my situation, I listened to Funk records and Soul. My older sister was into the Disco music. My ears were always hearing something. My parents were always playing Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, Gran Combo, and Salsa stuff. My father was also into Classical music. There was always stuff hanging around. The things that I found cool to listen to and let friends know, “Yeah, man, this is what I’ve been listening to lately.”
When it came down to when we formed the band, it was all about diversifying ourselves as much as we could. We could always go and make a good Hip Hop album. Now, what else can we do? That was the whole thing. Fans appreciate when you step out of your comfort zone and try something else that people have never heard you at. That’s one of the reasons for Cypress’ longevity.
Cryptic Rock – Most certainly. That diversity of coming from different backgrounds and different music that you grew up with bleeds through. Cypress Hill, by nature, is a Hip Hop group, but you endeared yourselves to Metal fans. Metal fans dug what you guys were doing because you could see that you do have that foundation of liking Metal and Rock-n-Roll.
Sen Dog – Yeah. One thing we have always liked about Metal is the cover art on the albums. I would see a record. That’s how I used to buy records, by how interesting the cover was. If there was a hit song out there that everybody knew about, I’d go and get it. I would go to the record store and look at albums. The ones that had the more twisted mentality artwork on it… that’s what I want to listen to.
In our day, when you did your album artwork, or even your 8×10 glossy, in Hip Hop, it was all about showing all the freshest gear you got and how crushing you looked with your gold chain and all that. When we did our stuff, we didn’t even want to show our faces. We just wanted a gritty, grimy look that made people go, “Hmm, wonder what this all this about?”
We got that from the Metal bands that we’re putting records on at those times. Some of the greatest artwork, as far as I’m concerned, comes from the metal genre of that era. I’ve always liked the idea of doing something way to the left of everybody else. When we did our Black Sunday cover, I think a lot of Metal heads would have reacted to it like, “Hey, there’s some Hip-Hop guys out there on some different shit.” That led to people wanting to learn more about us.
You look at what people are wearing in the audience. Around our first album, I saw a lot of kids wearing Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, Run DMC shirts, Eric B. and Rakim, and all that. When we did Black Sunday, I started seeing a lot of Megadeth, Metallica, and Ozzie shirts. I’m like, “I think the Metal crowd has gotten into us.” I’ve always enjoyed Metal as an art form. To have that audience space recognize us for what we’re doing was something special.
It wasn’t a big deal for us to go to festivals around the world with big Metal bands. We looked at it as – whoever was performing before us and after us, they’re in trouble. We always were attracted to that style of music. I was, for sure.
To be out there with those bands, performing our brand of Hip Hop, and then going over just as big as any Metal band out on the bill was definitely a mind-changing experience for me. It took me from thinking one way to thinking another. It was an awakening.
Cryptic Rock – That is very cool to hear. You raise some good points about a Metal record. Who is not immediately curious about an Iron Maiden album cover with Eddie on it? That is something that immediately grabs your attention. Or a KISS album cover! These album covers were very fascinating.
Sen Dog – Yeah. The one that got me was Led Zeppelin IV (1971); an old man was walking with a bunch of sticks on his back. I used to stare at it just because it was so cool. Somewhere along the way, I don’t know if people stopped doing that or I stopped paying attention, but I didn’t see it as much in later years after I was a little bit more grown.
Cryptic Rock – Yeah. That is another story about how the art form has changed so much. That’s a good point, too. When you talk about album covers, your album cover for the new Powerflo album is reminiscent of a classic, early ’90s Thrash Metal album cover.
Sen Dog – Thank you for that. That’s what I was going for when I started putting the idea together. Once we had recorded this, all of us had agreed to name it Gorilla Warfare. Then I started to think, and I got on the internet and started looking for images of gorillas. I found one, and I threw it out to the guys. Everybody started putting their touch and ideas into it. What you see on that album cover is a collaboration of ideas from all four band members who had input into the artwork.
The vibe that I was going for was that ’90s Metal look. I’m not trying to make the genre what it was back then again. I just wanted to have that feel to our artwork where if you look at the record and do not know what Powerflo is, you could tell that it’s a Metal outfit by the artwork on that cover.
Cryptic Rock – It grabs your attention. This is the second Powerflo record. The roots date back many years, but what inspired this all to come together the way it has?
Sen Dog – Back a few years ago, I was going out and doing Cypress tours and then coming home and not doing anything in between. I’m not a producer. I’m a lyric writer. I had no one that was giving me tracks. I had a friend who introduced me to another guy named Josh Lynch.
Josh Lynch was in a studio that was about to close down. The owner let him use it for free. He was in there writing this material. I went in there and recorded the first song I ever did for Powerflo, called “Resistance.” From that point, I kept going back to Josh, recording a little more.
There was a guy from France he knew who was in the studio during that first recording. He was telling me, “Yeah, man. Kids in France are going to eat this up whenever they hear it. They’re going to love it.” It got me going, “Okay. Maybe I should do another song and another song.” Pretty soon, I had three or four songs. I was like, “I’m going to need a band. My original idea was to play it live with a DJ. Instead of playing Hip Hop, we’re playing Metal.
Having experience with bands, I was like, “Let me go after some of my friends here and play them the music and see what they think.” The first guy I decided to go after was Christian Olde Wolbers from Fear Factory fame. He had just had a terrible motorcycle accident. He was at home recovering, and I went to see him. There were parts of the song that he knew that was me, but then there were other parts he would ask me, “Who’s that singing?” I’m like, “That’s me, man.” It went from, “No, I’m done with music” to, “Okay. Well, all right. Well, I got to recover from my foot.” We got together on stuff.
Then we went after Billy Biohazard. It’s a funny story because first he said yes, and then he said no. Then he said yes again, and then he said no again. Again, he came back and said, “Yes.” I said, “Okay. This time, I’m holding you to it. You’re not going to back out of it.”
When I got Billy and Christian down with me, it seemed like the production of it started ramping up because these guys write music every day. If I wanted to get some of those tracks they were making, I’d have to check on them every day. They would send me stuff over and I started writing to it. That’s the beginning parts of how Powerflo came to be. Before you know, along with the songs that I had written with Josh Lynch and the rest of the stuff that I did with Billy and Christian, we had an album.
They were concerned about, “Well, this guy didn’t produce this music over here. How is it going to tie in with what we do?” I told him, “My voice is going to tie it all together. Don’t even worry about it.” We decided to keep all those songs and merge them. We had an actual album.
Then one of the guys would write me a song, and they would say, “Okay, here’s the part where I want you to power flow on, right there on that part.” That described my Rap flow over some powerful music. I just started hearing that name over and over again, and it hit something in my head. I was like, “You know what? That’s the name right there, Powerflo.” That’s what we went with.
That was the beginning of it all, on how it came to be. On the first album, Roy Lozano, who played in Downset, appears. Fernando Schaefer, of the Brazilian band Worst, appears on it, too. Since then, we’ve had to make some changes to the lineup. Now we have Fred Aching Rios of the BulletBoys. He’s our drummer. He’s the youngest of the BulletBoys, but it doesn’t matter to him. He loves to play. I love that my drummer loves to play drums all the time.
Now, we’re moving forward with this lineup and just trying to be the best we can be at what we do. Realizing that the world is full of Heavy Metal and Hardcore bands, what’s going to set what we do apart? Not just because of the names that we have in the band – that’s cool and everything – but we have to go out there and prove it every day. We have to go out there, play, and show people that we belong.
We were able to do that on the first album. We went out with Body Count, Ministry, and POD. We did a lot of good stuff with Life of Agony. It was cool. It was great. I loved that environment of it all. I wanted to stay doing that. We finished touring in 2019, and then COVID hit the following year. We had to shut it down. Everybody did. During that time, I moved from Los Angeles to the Las Vegas area. That whole move took some steam out of the project.
Then Roy quit the band for whatever reason. Then Biohazard got back together. Now, my producer was actively playing guitar live on stage with his band. I was like, “Okay, cool.” Finally, I went down with an illness that I had to be hospitalized for. Throughout that whole time, I was going back to LA and recording with the group to make sure the album was still coming together no matter what. Even it was just me and Billy. In the COVID situation, where it was he and I in the studio because we didn’t have a lot of people there, I would drive back there and get some songs done and then come back home.
Finally, when I got released from the hospital in ’22, I decided this is what I love. This is what I’ve always wanted to do. I’m going to go hard. I’m going to do whatever I can to get this record out.” Persistence pays off. You could have a great record and still have to wait your time. I decided I was going to wait my time. When the musical gods say, “Okay, it’s your turn.” My turn finally came. Here we are with this next album. It wasn’t easy. We had a lot of hurdles to go over, but we kept on running and kept making music.
We did all those things, no matter what. If my bass player was out touring with Vio-lence, my guitar player is out playing with Biohazard, my drummer was out with the BulletBoys, me with Cypress, we still consider ourselves a band. One day, this is going to come for us, and the time’s going to be right. The timing is starting to be right now. We’re getting this record out. Hopefully, we can get out there, play some live shows, and see what happens.
Cryptic Rock – That’s fantastic. It hasn’t been easy. It’s very inspiring that you manifested this, that it’s finally come to fruition, and that you have a second record out. As you said, you bought your time until the time was right. The record came out today. It must be exciting and redeeming after all the hard work put in.
Sen Dog – Yeah. This record is especially special to me because I was challenged by the guys in the band who told me, “Hey, we’ve heard you rap. You’re great at it. That’s what you want to do on this record again. Go for it. We’re behind you.” They told me that there were some things that they thought I could do that I didn’t even know that I could do. I was like, “Okay, let’s work out this challenge and see what it is that you guys are talking about.”
We came up with a heavier sound, but only because I got those guys by me who want to do something different on every album. Let’s show some evolution. I was up for that challenge. We went ahead and made this record.
I try to be myself in everything that I do and not try to do anything that I’m not. At the same time, I understand that there has to be a growth part of being in a band. We can’t do the same record over and over again. You have to show some diversity, growth, evolvement, and love for the music genre that you’re in.
Cryptic Rock – Absolutely. You can hear that growth. Powerflo has challenged you as a lyricist and vocalist. You could hear that on this record.
Sen Dog – Yeah. We were on tour with Powerflow, and in between shows, when we were partying on the bus, we were playing Slayer, Metallica, and Megadeth. We’re putting a lot of heavy stuff on. I was singing along with the records. Billy noticed something during those parties that made him say, “Hey, I think this guy could do it. Another style to his cool raps. He’s got something else with him. I got to give Billy Graziadei props for that because he worked with me on that. Coming from that world, already had experience with it. Once he gave me confidence, I was off and running.
Cryptic Rock – It is great when you find something that you did not know was there before. You talked about Disco earlier with your sister’s influence. The Bee Gees’ Barry Gibbs did not know he had that falsetto until about fifteen years into the band. He did not sing like that on the early records.
Sen Dog – Yeah. Those were my older sister’s records and she was into that movement. The trippy thing is that she and her girlfriends would come to our apartment there in South Gate, California. They would practice their dance moves for the dance that Friday night at the high school.
My sister would make me the dancing dummy so they could practice their moves. At first, I used to hate it, but then I was like, “Wait a minute. I get to dance with this girl from the high school and that girl.” I would act like I didn’t want to do it, but I did want to do it. I would go in there like, “Oh, what do you want?” “We need you to dance with us.” I’m like, “Oh, all right.” I got cool at it. For a young guy, I knew all the Disco steps that the kids at our school were like, “How did he learn that?”
Now that I look back on it, it’s part of a curve that I had to learn just to see what I liked and what got me going. I’m glad that I experienced that time because it led me back into Funk.
That was right before the early ’80s and the West Coast started putting down records. The New York guys have been doing it for years. Now the West Coast was doing it with Ice-T, King Tee, and all those guys from the early ’80s that got my attention. The Disco part is all part of the upbringing in music that every artist, at some point or another, goes on this journey just to see what’s out there and fill things out. To this day, I’m not scared to get on the dance floor and dance around. I’m not embarrassed. I’ll do it.
Cryptic Rock – Awesome! To wrap everything we have been talking about up, you talked about when you first started, you did not have a musicality to you. You have grown that through the years. In retrospect, what do you think is the most important thing you’ve learned from this entire journey?
Sen Dog – The most important thing I’ve learned would be patience. When I was young, I didn’t have a lot of patience. As you go through everything that you have to do in music, you learn it.
Another thing that I learned is to recognize what it is that you love to listen to because it’s important. For a long time, I didn’t step out of my comfort zone. Cypress was doing great, paying the bills, and getting money and everything. That was great, but then I felt like there was something else inside of me. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew that I had to get out there, explore, and see what it was. Around 1994 or ’95, I met up with some guys. I was trying to get a record deal for a band, and they wanted to fire their singer. They gave me the option of, “You could work with him, you could work with us.”
I decided to work with the band. They got me up there to do my first rap over heavy music. I didn’t want anything to do with any music anymore. I had taken a hiatus from Cypress. I didn’t want to record or tour anymore. They got me up there to mess around so they could play music with a singer. I ended up joining the band. If it wasn’t for those guys in a group called SX-10 that I did, I wouldn’t have kept myself in music, but I did.
I just grew from there. I started growing and did not even recognize it. That led me to what I do with Powerflo now because I was in a garage band that I liked a lot. That band had just stopped jamming. I went about making another one. Here I am with Powerflo.
I’m having a good time. It’s good music. I hope people who hear it dig it and come out and check us out—not just because I’m in it, but because it’s a good show with some quality musicians.
Cryptic Rock – The record is very good, too. People who discover it will enjoy it. It sounds like you are having a fulfilling experience with Powerflow.
Sen Dog – Yeah, it’s like we’re starting over again because it took years to get this record out. It’s something that I plan to put the pedal to the medal on and continue to do, keep it going and moving. As we speak now, we’re talking about making a third record for the next time we’re ready. It’s not a one-off and done for me. I believe in this style of music and the guys that I’m making it with. We definitely want to keep moving forward, showing growth, and proving to not just ourselves but everyone else in the world that this group belongs with whatever other people are in that genre. We work just as hard, and we want to prove that to the world.
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