There is now an answer to at least one chicken-or-egg “Simpsons” prophesy: The episode did come first.
But then, 28 years later, came the concert.
“Simpsons” fans mixed with Cypress Hill fans on Wednesday at the Royal Albert Hall, a stately concert venue in the English capital, for a one-night-only collaboration between the London Symphony Orchestra and the American hip-hop group. Some were there for beats. Others had come to see a joke become a reality.
“We came for the meme,” said Nick Brady, 30, who was with his brother. “We stayed for the music.”
The evening had been foretold by a 1996 episode of “The Simpsons,” called “Homerpalooza,” in which Homer Simpson takes his family to a festival and then falls in with the stars.
In the TV show, a festival employee arrives in a backstage area flanked by tuxedo-clad musicians. “Who is playing with the London Symphony Orchestra?” he calls out. “Somebody ordered the London Symphony Orchestra … possibly while high? Cypress Hill, I’m looking in your direction.”
The hip-hop group huddles, whispering. Then, thinking fast, one says: “Uh, yeah, yeah, we think we did. Uh, do you know ‘Insane In The Brain’?”
“We mostly know classical,” one orchestra member says, in a posh British accent. “But we could give it a shot.”
The episode’s ensuing jam session is not half bad: A violinist furrows his brows in concentration and then the orchestra lets rip.
The recreation on Wednesday wasn’t the first time that something featured in “The Simpsons” has seemingly spilled over into real life.
The show, which started in 1989 and has run for 35 seasons, seemingly augured Donald Trump’s presidency, the Higgs boson discovery, the Capitol riots and maybe even the 9/11 attacks.
But the Cypress Hill joke took on a new life in 2017, when the band posted the clip on X, then Twitter. To their surprise and delight, the London Symphony Orchestra replied.
Then, the networking began.
“Let make something happen for real,” the band replied, adding a brown fist-bump emoji.
“YES,” the orchestra answered, with its own fist-pump (in yellow, like the Simpsons).
The rest, said Mario de Sa, who runs external engagements for the orchestra, is history. And the sound inside the concert hall was immense.
“It’s loud, which is not what we’re used to,” he said, laughing. “I mean, orchestral shows can be loud. But not this loud.”
There were also more neck tattoos and vapes than usual at the Royal Albert Hall, which Queen Victoria opened in 1871 as a tribute to her late husband.
There were more lit joints, too.
“I wanna get high,” Cypress Hill sang, with the London Symphony Orchestra behind them, bows moving in unison.
“So high,” the crowd sang back, beer sloshing out of their plastic cups.
Then the musicians breezed into the next track on “Black Sunday,” their 1993 album, which got three Grammy nominations and sold more than three million copies.
Josh Weinstein, a “Simpsons” executive producer who oversaw the “Homerpalooza” episode, said by phone that the joke hung on the colliding of worlds.
Cypress Hill, a pioneer of West Coast hip-hop, is known for its stoner rap aesthetic. (“Hits From the Bong” is another classic.) That’s a far cry from the famed British ensemble: “The London Symphony Orchestra sounds like the fanciest, stuffiest orchestra in the world,” Weinstein said.
In reality, the orchestra regularly dips into pop, rock, gospel music and other genres. It commissioned a piece from Soweto Kinch, a jazz saxophonist and rapper, which it performed last year at Printworks, a London dance music venue. The orchestra’s musicians have also accompanied Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, Grizzly Bear and Devonté Hynes, among others.
“It’s all about finding new ways of bringing orchestral music to a different audience,” de Sa, the external engagements manager, said.
And it’s hardly the first nontraditional classical event at the Royal Albert Hall, either, said Matthew Todd, the Hall’s director of programming. The venue has long pushed to welcome more diverse audiences, sometimes with film scores.
“We want the Hall to be recognized as somewhere that is accessible for everyone,” he said.
Did the Wednesday night concert in London turn out how “The Simpsons” had imagined? Not quite: The mash-up was not even supposed to happen.
In the episode — spoiler alert — the guitarist Peter Frampton is actually the one who had called for the orchestra. He’s caught off guard when it doesn’t show up to support him.
Cypress Hill had invited the British rock legend to take part in Wednesday’s performance — but he couldn’t make it, and sent his regrets.
Frampton missed an electrifying show. Few in the crowd even touched their seats throughout the performance, dancing and drinking and rapping along — more stadium than philharmonic.
“We love you,” an enthused fan shouted, using an expletive, during what would normally be a sacrosanct break between movements.
Marge Simpson probably would have approved. During the Cypress Hill and London Symphony Orchestra collab session in the episode, she stands by Homer, bobbing her head to the beat.
“Now this,” she says, “I like.”
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