According to B-Real, the song was actually a diss song aimed at Chubb Rock. The group felt Chubb had ridiculed their style on his 1992 album I Gotta Get Mine Yo. It is claimed that DJ Muggs produced the song "Jump Around" by House of Pain, which was later used to produce this song, with minor changes. The song is built around many samples: a repeating sample of a horse from Mel and Tim's "Good Guys Only Win in the Movies"; a drum break from organist George Semper's cover version of Lee Dorsey's "Get Out of My Life, Woman"; a sample of James Brown grunting from the opening of his song "Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud"; a sample of the line "insane in the brain" from Cypress Hill's own song "Hole in the Head"; the opening keyboard from Sly & the Family Stone's "Life" and a sample of the line "I think I'm going crazy" from The Youngbloods' "All Over the World," which concludes the track. In 2007, it was ranked number 85 on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of the 90's. According to a live interview aired on Double J during a feature of the Black Sunday album, "insane in the membrane" was a localised gang term used at the time by the Crips when doing something crazy. It was then appropriated into this song. A 2019 interview with the British newspaper The Guardian elaborated further that both Bloods and Crips used a similar phrase as an informal insanity plea upon arrest. The Double-J interview also notes that B-Real was a member of the Bloods.
Music video
A music video for the track was filmed at San Francisco's DNA Lounge. The video, featuring the group performing at what appears to be a rave, makes heavy use of strobing effects and "psychedelic" colorations, alongside numerous shots of marijuana usage, all of which seemingly corresponds with the album's drug-filled recording process, as described by the group.
Uses of the song
The song memorably featured in the 1996Simpsons episode "Homerpalooza", where the band performs the song with orchestral backing to Marge Simpson's approval. In 2012, the song was used as an electrical stimulus causing action potentials in the axons controlling chromatophores in the Longfin Inshore Squid skin to create a colourful display of the music. The video gameSaints Row IV features the song during a scene in the game where the player character meets up with present-day Shaundi and her past self. The song can also be heard on the fictional radio station The Mix 107.77. The song is featured in the films Bulworth and Scary Movie 2. A variation of the opening lyrics was also spoken by Owen Wilson's character Hansel in the film Zoolander.
