When Souls of Mischief Met Adrian Younge
In 2014, something remarkable happened in hip-hop: a group that had released one of the genre’s most celebrated debut albums more than two decades earlier returned not with a nostalgia play, but with arguably their finest work. There Is Only Now by Souls of Mischief, produced in full by Adrian Younge, is that record — a sweeping, orchestral, late-career triumph that stands alongside anything in the Hieroglyphics catalog.
To understand what makes this album so significant, you have to understand the gap it had to bridge. When 93 til Infinity dropped in 1993, Souls of Mischief — A-Plus, Opio, Phesto, and Tajai — were teenagers from Oakland delivering a debut so fully formed it became an instant classic. The jazz samples were immaculate. The chemistry was undeniable. What followed over the next two decades was solid work — No Need for Alarm, Focus, Montezuma’s Revenge — that never quite recaptured that lightning-in-a-bottle. There Is Only Now changes that conversation entirely.
Adrian Younge: The Perfect Collaborator
The choice of Adrian Younge as sole producer is the album’s masterstroke. Younge, the Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist and composer known for Black Dynamite, the Ghostface Killah collaboration Twelve Reasons to Die, and his Venice Dawn series, operates in a sonic universe tailor-made for Souls of Mischief’s sensibility. He records everything live — strings, horns, piano, organs, vintage drums — in a way that conjures the soul and jazz sources that first generation Hiero producers were sampling from in the early 90s. Working with Younge doesn’t feel like going back to the source; it feels like arriving there for the first time in physical form.
The production on There Is Only Now is thick and cinematic. Strings swell. Horns punctuate. Everything breathes with the warmth of analog tape. This is not the choppy drum-machine-forward aesthetic of classic Hiero production — it’s something more expansive, more patient. And crucially, all four Souls members rise to meet it.
All Four Members Revitalized
One of the quiet achievements of this album is how it reinvigorates every voice in the group. A-Plus sounds looser and more confident than he has in years. Opio brings philosophical weight to every verse. Phesto, often the group’s most technically intricate MC, finds fresh angles on his delivery. Tajai anchors every track he appears on with authority. These are not rappers coasting on legacy — these are artists who found a collaborator who pushed them somewhere new.
The group’s chemistry — always their greatest asset — feels fully restored here. The interplay between all four voices is as tight as anything on 93 til Infinity. Twenty-plus years in, they still sound like the same four kids from Oakland who grew up making music together, except now with two decades of craft behind every line.
Standout Tracks
There Is Only Now ft. Raphael Saadiq
The title track is the album’s centerpiece and one of the finest songs any Hiero affiliate has ever recorded. Raphael Saadiq’s presence elevates the track into something genuinely moving. The production is lush and cinematic, Younge’s strings building a melancholic grandeur beneath verses that grapple with time, legacy, and presence. It is a song about being here now, and it sounds like it was made by people who truly mean that.
Blame
“Blame” is the album’s most immediate cut — a track with an almost accusatory energy carried by one of Younge’s sharpest grooves on the record. The percussion is live and crackling, and the MCs attack the beat with a hunger that makes clear this album is not a victory lap. It is a statement.
Soul for Real
“Soul for Real” earns its title. This is the album’s most openly soulful moment — a track built around feeling rather than flexing, with production that swells and breathes. It reminds you why Souls of Mischief were always about more than technical skill. They were always about soul, and this track proves it definitively.
Critical Reception and Legacy
Critics received There Is Only Now with near-universal praise upon its release. Pitchfork, AllMusic, and hip-hop outlets recognized what was happening: a genuine artistic statement from a group that refused to calcify. The album demonstrated something rare in hip-hop — that artists who peaked early could find ways to deepen rather than merely repeat themselves.
The album also introduced Souls of Mischief to a new generation who discovered Younge through his prolific 2010s collaborations. Fans of his later Jazz Is Dead series with Ali Shaheed Muhammad found in There Is Only Now a record that sat comfortably in that lineage — sophisticated, live-instrument-driven, deeply rooted in Black American musical tradition.
Where It Sits in the Hiero Canon
The honest case can be made that There Is Only Now is the best album any Hieroglyphics member has released in decades. That’s a remarkable claim given the strength of Del’s solo catalog, the power of the original Deltron 3030 debut, and the consistency of the crew across thirty years. But this album has something rare: a unified sonic vision executed at the highest level, a collaborator who drew out new dimensions in the artists, and four rappers performing simultaneously at the peak of their powers.
It is proof that artistic growth is not just a young person’s game. For everything Hieroglyphics, visit hieroglyphics.com/about/.
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