16 years since their classic hit 93 Til Infinity, we catch up with Souls Of Mischief as they drop by London for their European tour…

 

Souls of Mischief are the stuff of hip-hop legend. You’ve either heard them or you haven’t, there’s rarely a middle ground. Hailing from Oakland, California the four strong crew formed back in the early nineties. Tajai and A-Plus met when they were just eight at Elementary school and picked up other members Phesto and Opio during their school years, forming Souls of Mischief officially when they were in Junior High. They erupted onto the scene with the now classic, ‘93 Til Infinity’ on jive records in 1993, which catapulted them into the spotlight and now firmly holds it’s own in the Hip-Hop hall of fame. It’s highly unlikely, at the time, they were aware just how important that track would come to be or that it would be held so dear to those that heard it. Even now, if you mention it to true heads, you’ll get a nostalgic smile and a firm nod of recognition. They dropped a further two albums on Jive and went onto form alternative hip-hop group Hieroglyphics, eventually starting their own independent label: Hieroglyphics Imperium Recordings with crew member Tajai at the helm as CEO.

Souls Of Mischief ‘93 Til Infinity’ :

Since then they’ve been working on individual projects and touring constantly. ‘Montezuma’s Revenge‘is their first release as Souls of Mischief in over 10 years. With Souls Of Mischief touching down in London to play a gig to rammed out crowd at the Carhartt Store, I went to find out where they’ve been at all this time, what they feel keeps them relevant after so long in the game and what this album’s about.

So, your first album in 10 yrs…Where have you been?

Tajai: Just travelling man, putting out records. We got a bunch of solo records and Hiero records and stuff like that.

So you’ve all been doing your own projects?

Tajai: Yeah, yeah. I mean we’ve been travelling as Souls of Mischief but just when someone puts out a solo record we sort of do more songs from that record in the show.

You’re quoted as saying this is a ‘New album and a new beginning’. What do you mean?

Opio: It’s been a long time since Souls of Mischief have done a record collectively and used the title ‘Souls of Mischief’ but we’ve just been, as he said, just focusing on our solo stuff. We tour about 100 days out of the year and just coming into contact with our fans you know, we just want to give them what they want.

Phesto: Our last album as Souls of Mischief was ‘Trilogy Conflict, Climax, Resolution’ and we kinda look at that like, that was one chapter of Souls of Mischief. So, Trilogy was the end of that chapter and that’s why we say ‘it’s a new beginning’, it’s like we’re starting a new chapter as Souls of Mischief but we haven’t stopped making music in between that time.

How did you end up working with Prince Paul on this?

Opio: I was on tour promoting one of my solo albums in 2004, I think, and I was on tour with Handsome Boy Modelling Club, Prince Paul and Dan the Automator. Paul basically approached me and was like ‘Yo! I’ve been a fan of Souls of Mischief and I’d really like to work with you guys’ and we’re all big time Prince Paul fans. I wanted to get some music from him or something, ‘cos I know he’s a talented cat, but he was basically like ‘Yo we should do a whole record together’. He kept talking to me about it when we were on tour and he wouldn’t like never let me forget and on the last day of the tour he was like ‘I’m serious man; you know I want to do this record’ so he was like ‘make sure you talk to all your Souls of Mischief brothers and make sure it’s all good’. I mean it was obviously all good - and then we met up and had a secondary meeting when we were in NYC and drew out the plans in terms of how we wanted to put the record together and so forth.

How easy was it to get you all together?

Opio: It’s a challenge you know ‘cos there’s a lot of us, and just conflicting schedules and whatever. You know when you’re on tour you’re getting paid but when you’re doing a record you kinda gotta sacrifice and just be there.; hopefully you know you’ll make something out of it later. We knew that we were going to have some challenges so, we rented a house like an hour north of Oakland, San Francisco area just so we could get away from the distractions of having all of our friends coming through every 5 minutes. We live in Oakland, we’ve lived there our whole lives, so we got a lot of distractions when we’re in the studio trying to work. An hour outside is just enough to commute back and forth; far enough but not too far, it helped in just getting us there and doing music on a daily basis.

What’s the title about? I did some Googling and a couple of options came up…

Phesto: We’re eating right now! (Laughs)

Tajai: The album’s the SHIT!

Phesto: The street that we recorded the album on was called Montezuma that was the catalyst for that thought process. We always throw stuff out there and some people say ‘ahhhh’ and some people say ‘yeah’. This time everybody was on the same page and feeling that title and then all the other stuff with the Myan hieroglyphics and us Hieroglyphics and then the actual ‘Montezuma’s Revenge’ itself. Like you said, you Googled it so you know that: basically it’s sick.

How would you say your sounds evolved?

Tajai: It’s become more refined I think. We’re better at what we do then when we started out. We can do things in 2 moves that would’ve take 5 moves as far as lyrically. Then, musically I don’t know, we maintain like a true school era you know? We haven’t got caught up in the trends of what’s hot musically, we just made our own music and as a result, it has a time capsule effect- you know like that classicises it. You know what I mean? The whole thing is, lyrically we’ve been a light year ahead of cats for hella year, our whole career. So, it’s good kinda that the industry is catching up to where we were at lyrically 20 years ago so that we don’t have to feel like we’re confusing people when we’re making our music you know? As far as lyrics, musicwise: beat selection. We come from that sampling era and that era of dirty beats and all that kinda stuff, so we still got dusty beats on here and you gonna hear a crackle but it’s not going to be like ‘this shit sounds it’s from ’84’ or even that it sounds like it’s from ’93, it’s updated.

Phesto: I mean hip-hop music is a form of music that depends a lot on technology and, you know, with all the machines we use and obviously the whole studio is more accessible now. If you get computers and some software and a microphone you pretty much have a studio at home, that didn’t exist, at least not that I know of. People had home studios but you needed a lot more of this (rubs fingers together) you know? Like I say, we’re able to do, like he said, what might have taken 5 moves in 3. First thing I thought about when you (looking at Tajai) said that, was beats because, without getting too into it, just to track music out took a whole day! Now you can track music out in 5 minutes: cut and paste; cut, copy, paste.

After so long doing this, what’s the key to remaining relevant?

Tajai: Staying out man. Had we not been out all this time, between now and the last record, this record would flop. You know what I’m saying? Like nobody would even care but the fact that we’ve stayed relevant by staying in the game all this time and come with records, that makes it possible for there to even be a runway for us to drop a new record. I think you gotta get out and know your fans and this performance art is not like TV art or radio art, it’s performance art. I think being able to broadcast your video everywhere simultaneously, sometimes, makes fools lazy and they forget there’s a performance aspect to it so they don’t ever hone their craft like they should because they’re thinking about the visual rather than the audio when they’re making a record. I think us staying relevant is by actually, literally, staying relevant like: ‘Yo! Yeah we got a show. What’s up?’ - that’s what makes or breaks a lot of these careers. Had we not been out all this time, this record would probably be looked at as a comeback record and that’s not what we’re trying to bill it as or anything, it’s just our new album.

Having had such massive success with ‘93 Til Infinity must put incredible pressure on you to top that with each release?

Opio: I think the fact that we’ve kept putting out records and stayed touring has helped that song have the life it has and the type of nostalgia that’s associated with it you know? So, by being active we kind of help push that song and just keep it there the whole time and we haven’t really tried to do ‘93 Til Infinity’ part 2 or do anything corny like that. We always let that music be stand-alone and be true. We would draw people into our stage show and our newer music, like solo records or whatever, through that album. At this point it’s been such a long time since that song came out. All the fans we have, especially like the young 15/16yr old kids coming to the show, they weren’t even born when that song came out you and yet they still, somehow, got into it and started liking the music; but I don’t think they have the same relationship with it as someone who was like, right there when it came out.

Phesto: I don’t see it as pressure, I think it sets the bar high as far as making a good song. I’ve never heard someone say ‘I don’t like 93 Til Infinity’, either you’ve probably never heard it or you like it - that’s where the bar is for us. Obviously, each song has a life of it’s own and you don’t want to try to recreate anything that you’ve done, you always want to create something new but that standard still remains of trying to create something that, hopefully, everybody will like without loosing your musical integrity, you know.

Album artwork is different from your usual steez, how did that come about?

Opio: He’s a talented artist and I think it’s a good thing with us being artists and him being an artist, it’s his interpretation of what we look like combined with the music. When we’re writing lyrics, we’re painting pictures any way. Photography is art too but we’re animated characters as it is, you know what I mean? So, for him to draw us and put it all together like that is more representative of what this record is trying to be, trying to do something different. The work that he did was pretty incredible.

You’re currently mid European tour how’s that going?

Tajai: It’s cracking. I mean Europe always shows love though, like always, since the first time we’ve been out here it’s been all good - it’s cracking. A lot of young fans too, a lot of 18 and under.

New people constantly discovering the music then?

Tajai: It’s good though, at least they’ve stumbled onto something good you know? Like a lot of them are like ‘this is my first hip-hop show my dad or my brother put me onto you.’ At least we giving them something that’s worth it.

Is there a world tour in the pipeline?

Opio: We’ll be hitting up Japan, Australia, New Zealand.

So what’s on the horizon?

Phesto: Trying to promote the tour, trying to promote the album; get the album out there and let people know that there’ll be another album so keep your third eye open.

Montezuma’s Revenge is laced with classic sounding beats that will be refreshing to any hip-hop purist’s ears. It successfully bridges the gap between, that classic, golden nineties era and now. Although it does have that old time feel about it, it packs a modern punch that keeps it current and is, to my ears a welcome relief from the over produced, soulless, autotuned, lacklustre sound masquerading as hip hop these days.

Words: Milly Cundall

Photography: Charlie Whatley

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