Souls of Mischief: Phesto, Opio, Tajai, A-Plus

Infinity is more comforting when it’s immaterial. At 18, limitlessness is its own form of intoxication. By 30, it’s oblivion. In September of 1993, infinity meant marimba samples, maxin’ in the studio, frigid 40s, mediocre cinema, and blunts no ruler could measure.

Time mangled the memory of my first dose of Souls of Mischief’s “93 'til Infinity”. I remember watching the last minute of the video on "Yo! MTV Raps" or "The Box" and communing with the land conquered by the East Oakland rap crew. Opio, Tajai, Phesto, and A-Plus balanced atop rocks like condors at Yosemite and menacingly waved cue sticks in pool halls. They frolicked on black-and-white beaches and scowled before barbed wire. They wore Bash Brothers-era A’s jerseys and Vans and shouted out the roll call of their Hieroglyphics crew.

The consequences of “93 'til Infinity” were clearer: For six months, I vainly searched for the cassingle at record stores throughout West Los Angeles. Music Plus was negative. Sam Goody didn’t got it. Everywhere else was too far to walk. But this scarcity afforded it immense power. Before the cloud offered cloud-rap catalogues in one torrent, three minutes of off-the-top turnbuckle bars could become as mysterious as a masked man.

With no means to replay the music, all of the song's name checks, internal rhymes, and visual images became broken fractals in my memory. The hook became a promise. The few captured words became sutras: “Coolin, schools in session, but I’m freshing… restin’ at the mall… loots, props, respect, and blunts to pass.” The things you’d murmur to yourself in the seventh grade, tagging the Hiero three-eye logo on a Trapper Keeper. It made more sense than learning how to modify an adverb clause.

Jive Records’ under-promotion all but ensured that “93 'til Infinity” would stall at No. 72 on the Billboard Hot 100. Subsequent Souls of Mischief singles fared worse. The album—also called ‘93 'til Infinity—never floated higher than No. 85. By any statistical metric, its epitaph should be in the same dollar bins where A-Plus originally scooped and sped-up a Billy Cobham sample. Instead, Souls achieved immortality through influence, skate videos, and the inexhaustible global demand for chill.

There are now reinterpretations of “93 'til Infinity” from Freddie Gibbs, Joey Bada$$, Big K.R.I.T., J. Cole, the Underachievers, and Kanye West, who once gave Souls the highest praise he could offer: “They were the first fresh-to-death rap group. They were the '93 me.”

“It’s probably the most remade rap song ever,” Opio says over the phone recently. “There must be 20 or 30 versions of it. ‘Microphone Fiend’ is one of the greatest songs ever, but how many versions of it can you think of?”

After the songs they’d written at 15 and 16 sparked a bidding war, Souls of Mischief chose Jive because the label ceded publishing rights, thanks to the negotiation tactics of Opio’s stepfather—the attorney who extricated Ice Cube from his Ruthless Records contract. Before the deal, Souls earned airplay from the era’s most respected underground radio programs: the Bay’s "Wake Up Show" with Sway and Tech, and New York’s "Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show". Phesto remembers seeing 2Pac at an early Souls show in Berkeley Square. Too $hort allegedly caught them at Mr. Floppy’s Flophouse, an East Oakland Victorian party house (with roots as a bordello frequented by Jack London).

It helped that Souls were down with Ice Cube’s cousin, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien. A couple grades ahead, the Hiero co-founder’s house was a revolving door of psychedelic drugs, girls, and Nintendo games; it also doubled as a primitive studio where Souls of Mischief kept their four-track, microphone, and beat machine. When Del dropped his first single, “Mistadobalina”, the 16-year-old members of Souls sling bladed on the B-Side.

Despite the low-simmering rivalry, Northern and Southern California hip-hop have always been intertwined. A-Plus made the beat for “93 'til Infinity”, but was mentored by South Central’s Sir Jinx, who produced Ice Cube’s early solo material. Before settling on Souls of Mischief, the group was previously known as Rhythm & Excellence, and Maad Circle. (The latter name was repurposed for Jinx’s next group, which helped launch WC and Coolio.)

Hip-hop remained a sub-culture, but one large enough for the industry to see dollar signs. During 1992 and 1993, Bay rappers reaped what Too $hort, Freddy B, Richie Rich, MC Hammer, Digital Underground, and 2Pac had sown. Paris and the Coup mau-mau’d the majors with lyrics about landlord killing and pig poaching. Rap-A-Lot scooped up Seagram. The independent out-the-trunk hustle sparked the rise of Andre Nickatina, San Quinn, Rappin 4-Tay, RBL Posse, Dru Down, Mac Dre, Mac Mall, and even Master P, before he returned to Louisiana.

Jive invested the heaviest. When 93 'til Infinity dropped, the label roster read like a Bay Area Hall of Game: E-40, Spice 1, Ant Banks, Souls of Mischief, and Casual. They joined Too $hort, already several platinum plaques deep, his gospel of pimpology having spread nationwide. Yet until Souls broke through, few East Coasters gave the Bay much artistic respect.

You see it in the press that accompanied ‘93 'til Infinity's release. A Vibe profile led with the dawning realization that hip-hop is no longer just a New York thing. Every article rushed to set up false “gangsta rap vs. alternative hip-hop” binaries. Few failed to call them a “more aggressive Native Tongues.” The comparisons increased when they toured with Tribe.

“We were trying to carve a new niche by being from the Bay, but influenced by everyone from Melle Mel, to Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, and Kool G,” Phesto tells me. “Nobody from the Bay in the national spotlight was doing what we were doing.”

The Eastern establishment worshipped them because they spoke the same language. Most Bay albums from the era cribbed inspiration from pimp culture, Black Panther identity politics, and burn-rubber funk. Souls of Mischief laid back with soul-jazz loops that you’d find in DJ Premier’s crates: Freddie Hubbard, George Benson, Ramsey Lewis. Dirty breaks came courtesy of the J.B.’s and “Synthetic Substitution”. But East Oakland remained so ingrained that they sampled Too $hort on the album’s first cut.

Set in the aftermath of Reaganomics and recession, ’93 'til Infinity captures its time and place like most great hip-hop records. Souls came of age in the Cokeland where D-Boys rolled around in Fila sweats, ’62 Impala’s, and Gold Daytons. But they also came from well-educated families and attended multicultural schools where they absorbed Black Panther and hippie ideals.

“Some people looked at us as nerds, but we still had to protect ourselves,” Phesto remembers. “It was survival of the fittest, and we had a lot of brushes with violent conflicts. We grew up just down the street from some really bad hoods.”

That’s why a song like “Batting Practice” isn’t merely a metaphor for knocking MCs out of the ballpark. They actually carried baseball bats for safety; Del brandished one with a custom-made Hiero wood burn. “Anything Can Happen” concerns a murder plot in retaliation for the fatal shooting of a friend (Tajai’s mom also catches lead in her thigh.) “Tell Me Who Profits” indicts the educational system, phonies, George H.W. Bush, and Clarence Thomas. “What a Way to Go Out” spins a series of increasingly tragic outcomes: accidentally shooting your sister, life incarceration, and death from HIV-related pneumonia.

“Half our homies are now dead, in jail, or super thugs,” Opio says. “But our response to the hood was different. We were trying to elevate and expand our minds through psychedelics and books. When we were growing up, the thugs told us that they’d kill us if we sold dope with them. They told us that we needed to be the lawyers.”

But lawyers were the problem when it was finally time to record at San Francisco’s Hyde Street Studios. Jive was most excited about “Cab Fare”, the would-be lead single that never cleared legal, thanks to a sample of Bob James’ "Taxi" theme. Their interest was only rekindled once executives heard “93 'til Infinity”, one of the last songs written for the album.

There is an alternative galaxy where “93 'til Infinity” is called “91 'til Infinity”. This is not a place you would want to visit. The weed is weaker. The malt liquor is lukewarm. Every time you dial up Bridget, you get a wrong number. “91 'til Infinity” was originally the name of a melancholic demo. But once Souls reached Hyde Street, they switched the old title onto a freshly written song. A-Plus had originally given the beat to Hiero affiliate Pep Love, but fortune ultimately favored the group with the record deal.

Infinity is the condition intuitively understood at adolescence. Souls of Mischief were only 18—rapping with reckless energy, toying with syllables, finishing each other’s sentences, spinning stories with the enthusiasm of telling them for the first time: “Greenbacks in stacks… so many females… good vibrations…so much inspiration.” (The latter repeated twice for added emphasis.) Heard again as an adult, it sounds like a flashy delusion. As a teenager, it’s a covenant with no strings attached.

Reflecting back on awkward ‘93 rec-room dance parties, Onyx’s “Slam” is the song that stands out. It reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and induced thousands of suburban rap kids to meekly mosh, but you rarely hear it today. That September alone, though, De La Soul, Spice 1, Lords of the Underground, and Black Moon released excellent albums. None remotely neared the Top 40, but all remain totemic.

Souls of Mischief’s biggest hit might have been slow to seep into the collective unconscious, but once it did, it never left. Its inclusion in skate videos from 411 and Plan B introduced a generation of skate punks to hip-hop (including Randy Randall of No Age). The Source canonized it in 1998 by naming 93 'til Infinity one of the “100 Greatest Albums of All-Time.” OutKast openly admitted its influence on Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. Four Tet once called the title track his second favorite record flip ever, and it inspired “Double Density”, one of his first releases—recorded at 15. Vampire Weekend recently interpolated “Step to My Girl”, another early Souls demo that could’ve been a hit had the sample cleared. When asked, Ezra Koenig told journalists that he first got into Souls of Mischief as a teenager.

Writer James Agee once described infinity as “the sparkling of a wren blown out to sea.” These are the psychic mirages that we celebrate, the songs that push out past the vanishing point, dancing on a trail of diamonds. Maybe it’s the marimba, but “93 'til Infinity” still sounds like it sparkles. Late last month, Souls of Mischief hosted a sold-out 20th Anniversary concert in Oakland. The highlight was self-evident.

I spent much of the last two weeks wandering around my neighborhood, listening to 93 'til Infinity, attempting to trigger long-expired memories. School is back in session, and I live across the street from a junior high. It means the streets are permanently clotted with groups of girls and boys who were born in 2001, bobbing their heads, little white ear buds permanently implanted, a cassette collection in their phones. They probably aren’t listening to “93 'til Infinity”, but they’re searching for songs that transmit the same illimitable chill.

Before I get off the phone with Opio, I ask what happened to “Bridget,” the girl whose name sets off the song.

“There was no Bridget,” he replies. “It just rhymed with 'digits' and 'midget.'”

And so it lasts forever, because she never existed.