Souls of Mischief: In Full Gear

Montezuma’s Revenge is your first album as Souls of Mischief in nearly 10 years, what took you so long?
Tajai: “Well, we were working on solo projects and doing a lot of travelling and touring, man. We put two Hiero records out, I had a couple of records, Opio had a couple of records, A-Plus had a record…we’ve been dropping something every year and we tour as Souls of Mischief, so it’s not like we split up, we’ve just had a lot of individual efforts. Finally, the whole Prince Paul thing got us all organized and we got this record done.”

Paul [Stetsasonic, Gravediggaz, Handsome Boy Modeling School] is the first outside producer you’ve worked with on an entire album, how did your paths cross initially?
T: “He met Opio on a Handsome Boy tour in May of ’04, they discussed it and went back and forth until finally in ’06 we actually pulled the trigger and did it. Eventually he came out and lived with us for a month and a half out in Oakland. We had a house up in the mountains, which was kinda cool because we were all stuck somewhere so we had to get something done.”

Phesto: “We didn’t know what to expect other than – obviously Prince Paul being a great hip-hop producer – he would bring it to the table. We knew we’d do another Souls of Mischief record, we just didn’t know when. Then Paul became the catalyst for it, he was the one that came at us and said ‘I’ve wanted work with you guys for a while.’ We were blown away.”

93 ‘til Infinity is a well regarded record and it set the bar high very early on in your career, is that a lot to live up to?
T: “I think we’ve withheld the standard. Living up to that success? That’s not really in our hands, that’s on the fans. There’s only so much we can do.”

You wrote the book for indie hip-hop labels when you set up Hiero Imperium, has it been difficult to sustain a career as a relatively underground operation for so long?
T: “It’s not hard, man. Since we’re independent we get paid a larger percentage for our record. We tour anything between 100-200 shows per year, so there’s definitely a circuit that you can go out on. You look at groups like us or maybe an artist like Tech N9ne; we’ve got a fanbase that helps support us. We take our money and invest it in other things, so we don’t have to just live off hip-hop. “

How do you feel about hip-hop these days, and where do Souls of Mischief fit in?
P: “The focus of making a good album isn’t what it used to be, download culture’s to blame for that. Souls of Mischief will always try to make good albums. A lot of times, when you’re recording pop music the idea is to appeal to a lot of people who may not really know much about music. But us? I think we make music for hip-hop fans and people who are fans of music in general…not just buying the next hot thing on the street."