othing dooms a song to premature obsoleteness quite like an artist offhandedly dropping the date in the middle of the track. I’m all for the freedom of creative expression, but come on guys, this isn’t your diary. Do you really need to remind yourself and your listeners of the year? Mentioning it in passing may seem relevant and interesting if your target audience hears the song a week or two after its release, but ten years later, the reference only seems… well, dated. The Idiot’s Guide to Becoming a Musician ought to have an entire chapter warning against this practice.

So when a single defies this rule and ultimately transcends it, as the Souls of Mischief’s “’93 ‘Til Infinity” does, it’s worth noting. A less aware group may not have pulled it off, but even the title of the track shows that these guys knew the challenge that faced them. It perfectly sums up the task of recording a song that defines one point in history, while maintaining a sense of timelessness—1993, to infinity and beyond.

The Souls of Mischief’s awareness shows up again within the song’s first 15 seconds. With the early-90s West Coast primarily represented by seminal albums like NWA’s Straight Outta Compton and Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, “’93 ‘Til Infinity”’s sound didn’t exactly conform to geographical norms. Tajai, one of the group’s four rappers, acknowledges as much in his spoken intro: “We hailin’ from East Oakland, California / And, um, sometimes it gets a little hectic out there / But right now, you know, we gonna up on you on how we just chill.” And just like that, the most sublime of horn loops kicks in; it enters at its loudest, and then fades to silence by the end of the second bar before returning to full volume two bars later. When accompanied by an appropriately low-key bass line, it creates the ideal hook to complement the lyrical antithesis of California’s gangsta rap.

The swagger’s still there, of course; it’s nearly impossible to avoid in hip-hop. But the stories that these guys tell (“I’m through there / No time to do hair / The flick’s at eight / So get it straight / You look great / Let’s grub now / A rub-down sounds flavour / Later”) altogether avoid the images of violence so prominent in their contemporaries’ songs. Although those tracks often accurately depict inhabiting a city that “get a little hectic,” they feel cold and distant when compared with the laid-back, almost jazzy groove of “’93 ‘Til Infinity.”

And ultimately, contrasting the Souls of Mischief single to the darker rap songs of its time reveals its purpose. As a track grounded in 1993, it acts as a feel-good reaction to the overwhelmingly negative nature of the region’s mainstream hip-hop. But as I alluded to earlier, it rises above its temporal restrictions. 12 years later, it exists on an entirely different level, functioning as a five-minute chill-out; it alternately, yet precisely, captures a feeling of nostalgia or the mood of another lazy summer night. When A-Plus, Phesto, Opio and Tajai state the song’s oft-repeated line, “This is how we chill from ’93 ‘til…” and leave that final ellipsis hanging, the limitless potential of music’s impact feels more immediate than ever.