Summer of 1993. Oakland, California.
Tajai Massey, Adam Carter (A-Plus), Opio Lindsey, and Phesto Dee were still in high school. They’d grown up together in the East Oakland hills, four kids who spent hours in bedrooms listening to records and writing rhymes. Del tha Funkee Homosapien — their older cousin and mentor — had already made a name for himself. But this summer, they were about to make something entirely their own.
The result was ’93 ’til Infinity — the debut album from Souls of Mischief, released September 14, 1993 on Jive Records. Thirty-three years later, it is widely considered one of the greatest hip-hop albums ever recorded: a debut that arrived fully formed, sonically ahead of its time, and tied to a place and a moment that defined a generation.
The Record That Defied Its Era
1993 was the peak year of West Coast gangsta rap. Dr. Dre’s The Chronic had just redefined the genre. Death Row was ascendant. In that context, four teenagers from Oakland making jazz-influenced, introspective hip-hop about friendship, philosophy, and moving through the world with purpose was not the obvious commercial play.
It didn’t matter. ’93 ’til Infinity found its audience — and then kept finding new ones, decade after decade. The title track sampled Donald Byrd’s “Wind Parade” (itself sampling Weldon Irvine’s “Time Capsule”), creating a warm, rolling instrumental that felt like Oakland in the late afternoon. The verses were precise, conversational, and self-assured in a way that most debut albums are not.
The Souls were teenagers. They rapped like they had lived through everything.
The Archive: Hiero on the Road, 1997
The photos below — shot by director Jacob Rosenberg on Hieroglyphics’ 1997 Colorado Tour — show the crew four years after the album’s release, deep in their independent era. By then, ’93 ’til Infinity was a certified cultural landmark, and the Hiero crew had built their own label to control everything that came next.
In Their Own Words
Artist quotes from Tajai, A-Plus, Opio, and Phesto coming soon. Check back in September 2026 for the full 33rd anniversary feature.
33 Years Later
The album has never gone out of print. It still appears on best-of-all-time lists. The title track has been sampled, covered, and referenced across three decades of music. When younger artists want to communicate a specific quality — laid-back but sharp, Oakland to the bone, timeless — they reach for ’93 ’til Infinity as a reference point.
Souls of Mischief are still performing it live. On October 29, 2026, Hieroglyphics headlines Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado — alongside Cypress Hill, Method Man & Redman, and De La Soul. They will perform the album there, 33 years after they made it as teenagers in Oakland.