Some memories I have from 1993:
- Seeing “Jurassic Park” and thinking there was no way special effects could get any better.
- Hearing about a bomb that went off in the underground parking garage of the World Trade Centre and wondering why somebody would do that.
- Learning how to use devil sticks, and getting pretty good at it too, only to find out that it wasn’t cool anymore.
- Playing Final Fight at the arcade.
- My friend’s dad showing off his car phone.
- At my grade 8 graduation, awkwardly accepting a girl’s request to dance with her. The song was “Walking on Broken Glass” by Annie Lennox. I had no idea how to dance to that song. I still don’t.
- Crystal Pepsi.
- Deciding I didn’t like rap music anymore.
- Seeing a Chrysler Intrepid on the road and feeling like the future had arrived.
- Watching the Blue Jays win the World Series for the second year in a row. The announcer said, “Enjoy it, Toronto, because you never know when it will happen again.” I laughed, because of course they would win it again. They haven’t.
- Listening to “I Wish” by Skee-Lo, and deciding that maybe I still did like rap music after all.
- Listening to “Black Sunday” by Cypress Hill, and deciding that although I did like rap music, it sometimes scared me.
- My older brother getting cassette tapes in the mail from Columbia House, and my parents explaining to me why it wasn’t worth the money.
- Getting cassette tapes in the mail from BMG.
- Realizing that getting cassette tapes in the mail from BMG wasn’t worth the money.
- Hearing that Sydney would host the summer 2000 summer Olympics, and thinking that the year 2000 was so far in the future it might as well not exist.
I didn’t know about Souls Of Mischief’s “93 ‘til Infinity” in 1993. My knowledge of hip-hop was still limited to what was in the mainstream, and grunge’s gravitational pull was about to drag me further away from the hop-hop genre.
But when I did hear this song, probably over a decade later, I was amazed at how perfectly 1993 it was. It was strangely evocative, triggering memories that it had no business triggering. Suddenly I was 13 again, coveting my friend’s Hypercolor shirt and memorizing the Chicago Bulls’ starting lineup.
Maybe it had been playing out a car window, or at a party I attended, too awkward and nervous to pay attention to the music. Maybe it slipped in subliminally.
I chose the instrumental version to feature here, not out of disrespect to the lyricism of Souls Of Mischief, but because the instrumental has the magic that originally drew me to 90s hip-hop: the art of sampling. Sampling is a bit of a lost art; crate-diggers of the 90s had a way of reviving old vinyl, pulling past generations of artists back into the present.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. The main loop is a sample from an epic jazz-fusion track by Billy Cobham called “Heather”. The bass line, muffled chords, and occasional high notes on the keyboard…the ingredients are there in perfect proportions.
2. The drums are taken from another epic – a 1975 funk-disco track called “The Jam” by Graham Central Station. Simple but driving, these drums were also sampled by Geto Boys, Notorious BIG, Soul II Soul, Beastie Boys, Method Man, A Tribe Called Quest…there was probably no time during the 90s that this drum beat wasn’t being played somewhere.
3. The title captures the frame of mind that a person can only really inhabit during their youth. Souls Of Mischief were still teenagers when they released this- young enough to think that the present will last forever.
Recommended listening activity:
Designing your own blank VHS tape cover.