Souls of Mischief Interview

Here's a sneak peek of my interview with Tajai member of the legendary Souls of Mischief. Their album Montezuma's Revenge will be dropping Feb 2010.

Souls of Mischief make rap with west coast sensibilities. Starting off in the early 90s members Tajai, A-Plus, Opium and Phesto, were wrapping up high-school while simultaneously rapping on tour with the legendary likes of De La Soul and Grave Diggaz...After a nine year hiatus the Souls stand stronger than ever before, as they gear up for the release of their fifth album Montezuma’s Revenge’, co-produced by the highly lauded  Prince Paul. Montezuma’s is the first collaborative effort for the Oakland MCs who create ‘lyrical hip hop structured with a beat’. Co-founder Tajai talks to us about sobriety, the ‘wackest part of hip hop’ and inspiring Kayne West.

Oakland, California comes up in the majority of your songs. Why did you choose that area as the base for SOM?

The bay area is the place of so many movements because it is so diverse, because it’s a port and because of its history. California was once part of Mexico; it was ground zero for the black power movement and for the hippie movement. All revolutionary movements have happened in the bay area.

Would SOM consider collaborating with some of the more recent rappers and producers? Heard Kanye gave you props. 

When Kanye was letting people know that we were one of his favourite groups it was at a time when his production and himself were over saturated. At that time, it wouldn’t have been the best time to collaborate with him; it would have been like us eating off his plate. If you look at Hip Hop for the past ten years: 98-01: it was all Neptunes beats, from 01-03: it was all Little John beats and 03-08: it was Kanye beats. So it’s like, how are whole genres of music sounding exactly the same? That’s crazy to me. That’s the wackest part of hip hop; the labels push you to sound like other people who are ‘hot’ at the time.   

So how do you feel about name dropping things like Cristal champagne in songs?

I don’t drink! I think the guys that were originally singing about Cristal, were drinking Cristal. We’ve never been into rapping about what we have and how big we’re doin’ it. It’s just not our subject matter; we’re about painting pictures.

How about Karaoke? You into that?

I’m going to keep it 100 percent; I sing a lot in the shower and in my car but I’m too scared to do karaoke. I do like it but I don’t drink and I reckon it’s really a drunk thing. For me it’d be like a real performance..

Whole interview on skiddle.com!

Photo from Hot110.