Mellow Men

Mellow Man Ace: Alright Dad. I want to thank you for taking time out today to do this interview. It’s the first time I’ve actually been able to interview you.

Where were you born?
Cirillo Reyes: First of all, it is a pleasure to be supporting my son.

I am from Pinar del Río, Cuba. It’s about 175 miles away from Havana. I was born a long time ago, in 1933.
MMA: Where were your parents born?
CR: Same location, more or less. My father was born on a farm not far away from the city. And then he moved to the city when the years passed. I heard my father was born back in 1901, and my mother in 1906.

MMA: What was life like growing up for you in Pinar del Río?
CR: In Pinar del Río I went to school, all the way up to becoming a schoolteacher. I also got a diploma in business school.
MMA: Were you a good kid, or were you running the streets looking for trouble?
CR: No, no problems. I remember that my father and my mother gave me a lot of respect. I was very disciplined and I liked to follow advice from grownup people.
MMA: Not like me! [Laughs]

What did you do for work?
CR: I went all the way to become a high-school teacher. I was a good student and had the ability to teach whatever was necessary—chemistry, Spanish, English…everything.

Frank151: What year did you come from Cuba to the United States?
CR: We came here in December of 1971.
F151: Why was it so important for you to leave?
CR: Well, by the time I left, Cuba was in a transition—a lot of confusion, a lot of big problems. I didn’t feel comfortable at that point. It was tough to stay there.
MMA: Now, when he says “tough,” he doesn’t mean, like, “Oh, my cable got shut off this month.” No. Tough is like, if you speak out against the government, you’re subject to incarceration.

And it’s safe to say that myself, and my brother, we took advantage of the opportunity that he gave us. We didn’t just come to America to dick around and waste time or not become thriving members of society. I think we’ve upheld the family name and musical tradition very well.

Dad, had you ever been to the United States before you moved here?
CR: No. I saw a lot of movies and read books about the United States. You had a sense of how the society lived. It’s different, what you think about a place and when you live in that place. You have to adjust your mind and your way of thinking to try and understand everything.


MMA: You’ve lived in America for 30-something years now. What do you miss the most about Cuba?
CR: I miss the people. I miss everything about Cuba—my hometown. It might not be a big city, but I was born there and I spent 38 of my years in that place.

F151: Do either of you have plans to go back to Cuba anytime?
MMA: My dad went back in 1979. I haven’t been back since we left, but I want to take my dad with me to be my tour guide. And I’d love to take my wife with me and my two kids, Cuba and Havana, so they can see where they’re from. Now that there’s so much hip-hop going on in Cuba with Orishas and so many others, I think once I show up in the plaza in Havana and start talking hip-hop, the rappers will start bugging out. I know through my own cousins who we sent records to that I’m known there as a founder.

Dad, tell us about the family members that are still in Cuba.
CR: I have my family in Cuba, in Pinar del Río. But also, I have a brother who lived in Marianao, Cuba. He’s in Havana, because there he had the opportunity to improve himself as a musician. He played the oboe. The oboe is for symphonic music, or pop music sometimes.

There are a lot of musicians in our family. My father was a composer, a good clarinet player, a bass player. He was my first music teacher. He taught me do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do. So, after my father came my brother Juan, who played the trumpet. After Juan are my nephews—Reynaldo plays trombone and Iván was a percussionist.
MMA: How important was Cuban music to you growing up?
CR: Well, Cuba itself is like a music plant, a music factory. Everywhere you go, you find music. Let’s say during a baseball game, you can see musicians playing somewhere around the park.
MMA: Did you coach baseball in Cuba?
CR: I was a teacher when I was invited to join a team, which was competing in a national championship. I was one of the coaches of Pinar del Río’s team, and we won the championship that year. When I came into the United States, I coached in South Gate.
MMA: Did you teach me my curveball?
CR: You were a very good player. You were an ace hitter on the field, and a gentleman off the field. That’s how the name Mellow Man Ace came. Mellow Man, you know—nice guy. But Ace came from the baseball field.
MMA: What baseball names do you remember that were either superstars in Cuba, or came to America to become superstars?
CR: In the ’20s there was Adolfo Luque. He was a pitcher—I think that one year he won 27 games. Luis Tiant and Mike Cuellar came to the US together. In those days it was not easy to be here playing, because there was a lot of racism. But then, Jackie Robinson broke that barrier. Tony Oliva was a slugger from Pinar del Río, but he never played baseball in Cuba. When he came to the United States the first year, he hit .332.

MMA: Now tell me a little bit about the music that you would play around the house for me.
CR: I used to go to the record stores in search of Cuban music, like Celia Cruz and Orquesta Aragón. I remember a dance song in Cuba called “Un Real de Hielo.” “Un real de hielo” means you buy a block of ice, for a dime.
MMA: The lyrics said, “When you go to the city, buy me a block of ice. But on your way back, make sure it doesn’t melt.” In that era songs were about simple things. That could become a hit.

There was another record that you used to play about a girl who didn’t really have a butt. And so in order to get men at the parties, she used to have to wear a pillow on her butt.
CR: It was “La Engañadora,” because she tried to fool people. In our country, men love women with big butts. According to the song, she bought some pillows and went to the party to dance. That was the first cha-cha-cha that was written, and it was a hit all over the place.

MMA: Tell me a little bit about how you felt when I made it big in hip-hop.
CR: Well, that got me by surprise. All of the sudden I started noticing a big difference around my house. It was because you went somewhere with your music. A lot of interviews, a lot of limousines, people calling from here, from there…. You put our name in the history books.

MMA: What would the father who made two legendary rappers say to the world?
CR: I’m proud of that. And I have a relationship with all my sons and daughters. Keep going and do something. Whatever you do, try to do your best.
MMA: I think it sunk in real well with me and my brother. I think after selling millions of records—both my brother and I—it’s an example of the way you were hard on us to achieve good things and believe in ourselves.

F151: Why did you choose to settle in South Gate?
CR: I came to California because my family is afraid of cold weather. I was looking for hot weather. The weather here in California is like the weather in Cuba.
MMA: I’m not happy about that. I wanted you to live in New York. That way I could have been there in the Bronx, hip-hopping and skibbedy-scabbin’. I brought New York to LA, you know.

F151: Is there a Cuban community in South Gate?
CR: There are Cubans in this area. There’s a Cuban social club called La Cofradía. Those clubs were founded by the first-generation Cubans who came here.
MMA: That’s where we used to go when we first started rapping—singing Spanish raps with obscenities and whatnot. The older Cuban folks would call my dad on Monday because on Saturday we were in there tearing shit up, doing songs like “El Más Pingón” and things like that. It was great.

We used to wil’ out in that place. I mean, we used to go crazy…go in the bathroom and do mad lines and get on stage and just pour beer on each other, on some Beastie Boys type shit.
F151: So while they’re trying to protect you and keep you out of trouble—
MMA: They had no idea what we was doing in the bathroom, man. It was crazy! I’m sorry you had to find out this way, Dad!
CR: When Celia Cruz got her Hollywood Walk of Fame star, she was invited to come to La Cofradía.
MMA: Celia Cruz happened to be a very good friend of the family after so many years. I remember I even performed with her a couple of times on a tour with José José and some other people. We became very close. Very priceless time in my life.
F151: This club sounds pivotal in starting Cypress Hill and the music you were doing.
MMA: Absolutely. Aside from all the surrounding house parties that weren’t Cuban that we’d just mob into and snatch microphones and start rapping, those clubs like La Cofradía were the staples. If you came looking for a battle, you knew where to find us. And you got served, regardless. We’d knock down tables or whatever we had to do at that time to outshine you. We’d snatch your microphones from you. We’d unplug your microphones while you were rapping. We really didn’t care. We were on some other shit. For me, it was a huge part to have that venue to be able to perform in the late ’80s. Not just for myself, but for my brother and Cypress and DJ Muggs.


F151: Mellow Man, what does being Cuban and growing up in America mean to you?
MMA: We’re a proud people. It’s rich in culture—the music, the baseball. My goal was to become the first Latino rapper to blow it up on a mainstream level. And my own Cubanism and not forgetting it is what allowed me to become what I am and to open many doors for other people. But the core of that starts with my dad, this city, those clubs, that surrounding. The rest is pretty much hip-hop history.

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