Deep dives into the Hieroglyphics and Souls of Mischief discography
In 2001, a cartoon band dropped one of the strangest, most hypnotic singles in pop music history — and an Oakland rapper named Del tha Funkee Homosapien ended up on it almost by accident. Clint Eastwood by Gorillaz went to number four on the UK charts, sold millions worldwide, and introduced Del to an…
If 3rd Eye Vision was Hieroglyphics announcing their independence with confidence, The Vin Skully EP and later The Hieroglyphics Event series represented the crew going further — deeper into concept, deeper into the underground, further from any concessions to accessibility. The Event II project occupies a specific place in the Hiero catalog: the record…
Hiero Day has been running since 2012 — a free outdoor festival in Oakland that Hieroglyphics Imperium started as a gift to the Bay Area hip-hop community. Over more than a decade, it has grown from a neighborhood gathering to a 8,500-person event that draws fans from across the country, a live music institution…
In the mid-1990s, two crews defined what it meant to be an underground collective in hip-hop: Hieroglyphics from Oakland, California, and Boot Camp Clik from Brooklyn, New York. Both operated outside the mainstream. Both built loyal followings on the strength of craft rather than commercial positioning. Both proved that a crew could sustain a…
Ask a room full of hip-hop heads to rank the Souls of Mischief MCs and Phesto will finish last almost every time. Not because he's the weakest — he's not — but because he's the most patient. The most understated. The one who seems least interested in grabbing your attention and most interested in…
Every group has that one member who functions as its emotional center — the voice that feels most human, most grounded, most connected to something real underneath the technical display. In Souls of Mischief, in Hieroglyphics, that voice belongs to Opio. It's easy to look past Opio if you're drawn to the flashier elements…
Souls of Mischief's 1995 album No Man's Land arrived under an almost impossibly heavy cloud. Their debut, 93 'til Infinity, had been the kind of record that redefined California hip-hop — lush jazz loops, elastic flows, four MCs rapping like they were trading solos in a late-night session. How do you follow that? The…
New to Hieroglyphics? Here are twenty tracks that will give you the full picture — the groundbreaking debut material, the collective anthems, the Del solo classics, and the deep cuts that devoted fans have been quoting for decades. Start With These Five 1. '93 'til Infinity — Souls of Mischief (1993) The beginning. The…
The years 2000 to 2003 were arguably the most creatively fertile and institutionally significant period in Hieroglyphics history. Del released Deltron 3030 and Both Sides of the Brain. The collective dropped Full Circle. Individual members were releasing solo albums and collaborative projects at a pace that demonstrated the full scope of what they'd built.…
Hip-hop's relationship with jazz is one of the genre's defining artistic threads. From the early breakbeats that sampled jazz-funk records to the explicit jazz-rap of the early 1990s, through the Hieroglyphics collective's deeply jazz-influenced production aesthetic, the two genres have been in conversation since hip-hop's origins. Hieroglyphics brought something specific to that conversation —…