Oakland’s Souls of Mischief celebrates 30 years of defining song

rewrite this content and keep HTML tags Over the past decade, it’s become a rarity to post up at some trendy bar recommended by a co-worker — the kind of bar with the giant round ice cubes — without hearing Vampire Weekend’s singer Ezra Koenig lamenting about someone always stepping to his girl.The baroque melodies and cheeky lyrics of Vampire Weekend’s “Step” have become indie rock canon, but the roots of this album cut from 2013’s “Modern Vampires of the City” run straight through Oakland, “and not Alameda,” as lead vocalist Koenig’s winking lyrics suggest.In this season of feting a half-century of hip-hop, Souls of Mischief’s “Step to My Girl,” the main inspiration behind “Step,” is one of Oakland’s signature contributions to the genre: an enduring track that continues to surprise, inspire and take new forms today. AdvertisementArticle continues below this adIt is also a song that almost wasn’t. It started with ‘Aubrey’The musical lineage of “Step to My Girl” actually begins in 1972 when David Gates, the frontman for Bread — a band designed in a lab to be taken with Quaaludes and a Tab — released a song about unrequited (and, in hindsight, stalker-ish) love.“Aubrey” was off the band’s breakthrough fifth album, “Guitar Man,” which Billboard wrote was a “dynamite program.” The single for “Aubrey,” called “superb” by Billboard, didn’t actually drop until 1973 and enjoyed an 11-week run on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 15. AdvertisementArticle continues below this adEnter jazz-funk saxophonist Grover Washington Jr., who recorded a cover of “Aubrey” for his 1973 album, “Soul Box.” A tender, acoustic examination of the Bread original, the playful instrumental featured strings, a flute and keyboard backing Washington’s soaring saxophone.Washington’s track was all but forgotten until a burgeoning hip-hop act featuring four teenage friends who grew up together in East Oakland decided the sax solo would be the perfect backdrop of another song about love getting snuffed out perhaps too soon — this time from a bad-faith third party — titled “Step to my Girl.”AdvertisementArticle continues below this adTo infinity and beyondSouls of Mischief comprises Oakland-based rappers A-Plus (Adam Carter), Tajai Massey, Opio (Opio Lindsey) and Phesto (Damani Thompson). The original lineup is still together, making music and touring (they wrap their current tour this Sunday at Red Rocks in Colorado). Opio, A+, Tajai, and Phesto of Souls of Mischief at the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, Calif. Tim Mosenfelder/Corbis via Getty ImagesThe group is associated with early Oakland hip-hop, but its mellow, vibey party starters — heavy on fantastical narratives and self-deprecation — often draw comparisons not to other Bay Area acts but to East Coast contemporaries like A Tribe Called Quest. AdvertisementArticle continues below this adSouls of Mischief’s debut album, “93 ‘til Infinity” was released by Jive on Sept. 28, 1993, and produced the band’s biggest hit, the titular track, “93 ‘til Infinity.” The song told you the rest of what you needed to know about the group: Souls of Mischief wasn’t West Coast gangsta rap but perhaps something a little more inclusive and chill. Even the music video was an outlier in the genre, shot in Yosemite, on the beach and in the desert — far from the cityscapes favored by the group’s contemporaries. The sweet juxtaposition landed “93 ‘til Infinity” on four Billboard charts — Hot 100, Dance, R&B/Hip-Hop, and Rap Songs, peaking at No. 11 on the latter — but its legacy has grown over time. “The four friends used Jive as an avenue to release their now-classic debut, ‘93 ‘til Infinity,’ a record many experts still consider an unbeatable high point in West Coast hip-hop’s evolution,” the Times Colonist wrote in June 2002. AdvertisementArticle continues below this ad‘A perfectly breezy, easygoing track’Even with the breakout success of “93 ‘til Infinity,” the song and the album, the unreleased “Step to My Girl” may have been more pivotal to Souls of Mischief. The track helped get the group signed to Jive and is still an enduring testament to Souls of Mischief’s youthful energy. The members of hip-hop group Souls of Mischief attend S.O.B.’s on July 3, 2013, in New York City.Johnny Nunez/WireImageAdvertisementArticle continues below this ad“We were at the age where we were getting into serious relationships,” Souls of Mischief’s Tajai Massey told the Daily Swarm in May 2013. “We wanted to make a love song, but for it not to be sappy, so we added the ‘I’ll beat you up if you talk to my girlfriend’ aspect to it. We were kids. Literally.”The song’s legacy raises the question: Why was it unreleased at the time? The percussive backbone of the song, a sampled drum break from Melvin Bliss, was cleared for use. As was a lyric from a 1990 hip-hop track from New Jersey rapper YZ, which was incorporated into the chorus. But in the emerging era of clamping down on samples, Grover Washington Jr. didn’t initially release his saxophone melody to Jive. AdvertisementArticle continues below this adAnimal New York reported in January 2014 that the song didn’t see an official release until 2003. “It loops both the Washington track’s intro and its main sax figure, speeding them up slightly, for a perfectly breezy, easygoing track,” the music zine wrote of the finished product.From frustration, Hieroglyphics is born After the success of “93 ‘til Infinity,” Souls of Mischief released its second album, “No Man’s Land,” in 1995, but the group had already become disillusioned with its major-label overlords. “It was bad from the start,” Massey said of the group’s relationship with Jive during an interview with the Fresno Bee in September 2002. “They [company executives] were getting a lot more of the returns than we were.”AdvertisementArticle continues below this adDel the Funky Homosapien performs in concert at the Apollo Theater on Feb. 22, 1992, in New York City. Al Pereira/Getty ImagesTo combat that, the group helped start an independent music collaborative in Oakland, a partnership that continues today. Hieroglyphics features Souls of Mischief, along with contemporary standouts Del the Funky Homosapien and Casual. The Hiero logo, a flat-line smiley face with three eyes, has been a Bay Area standard on hats, T-shirts and sweatshirts since the mid-90s.Rapper Del the Funky Homosapien of Deltron 3030 and Hieroglyphics performs onstage at the Summertime in the LBC festival on Aug. 5, 2017, in Long Beach, Calif.Scott Dudelson/Getty Images“We make more money now, but it’s way harder,” Massey told the Times Colonist. “The industry is a den of thieves, so if you’re able to cut them out to some extent, more money ends up in your pocket. But when you stop paying a snake to do the work for you, there’s a lot more you have to do yourself.”AdvertisementArticle continues below this adOn the group’s home turf, its creativity and counterculture bent have even given Souls of Mischief bona fides when it comes to the nascent days of hyphy, a hip-hop movement that took hold in the following decades.Massey, during a May 2006 interview with the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, said of the genre: “I love that, man. The youngsters are dancing against each other again. … I don’t really like the drug aspect though. And as far as hyphy music, I’m from Oakland. That’s where hyphy is from. Not the Bay Area. Oakland.” Tajai, Phesto and Opio of Souls of Mischief perform as part of Rock the Bells 2011 at Shoreline Amphitheatre on Aug. 27, 2011, in Mountain View, Calif.Tim Mosenfelder/Getty ImagesAdvertisementArticle continues below this adAnd while the homages to Souls of Mischief’s early days continue to trickle in (Mac Miller’s “92 til Infinity” mixtape, one of the more notable entries of the past decade), the track that remains the plumb line through the quartet’s career remains “Step to my Girl.” But there are also limits to how much of the song’s legacy Souls of Mischief will share, despite the appreciation for the tributes. Brian Robert Jones and Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend perform onstage at Okeechobee Music & Arts Festival at Sunshine Grove on March 7, 2020, in Okeechobee, Fla.Jason Koerner/Getty Images“Reportedly, [Vampire Weekend], the band led by Ezra Koenig wanted to use the same title as the circa-1991 original,” Hip Hop DX reported in March 2013. “Tajai asked that Vampire Weekend not do that, as he explained today. ‘Nah, that’s wack’ Elaborating, Taj noted, ‘They used a portion of my line and the cut for the concept…it’s cool, it’s homage.’”

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