Talking ‘Til Infinity’ (@tillnfinitydoc) With Filmmaker Shomari Smith!

Hmmm…Shomari Smith is a visu­al artist, and a lov­er of hip hop music and cul­ture, but also most import­antly i’m a hus­band, a fath­er, a broth­er, a son from East Oak­land California.

“Til Infin­ity” is a full length doc­u­ment­ary film cel­eb­rat­ing the 20^th anniversary of the release of the Souls of Mis­chief’s clas­sic 1993 debut album “93 ‘Til Infin­ity”. We take an in-depth look into the Souls’ his­tory and the events lead­ing up to their Jive record­ing con­tract sign­ing. We also explore the stor­ies and the cre­at­ive pro­cess behind the mak­ing of the entire album track by track.

I had a list of “hope­fuls” for this film. I was able to get, at the very least, a “shout out” from the major­ity of the artists on the list. But I really wanted to do a form­al sit-down inter­view with Ice Cube because of his dir­ect con­nec­tion with Del Tha Fun­kee Homos­api­en, The Souls, and Hiero from their very early stages. Ice Cube played a huge roll in mak­ing their dream appear “reach-able” when they were devel­op­ing a young rap­pers. I would have loved to hear Cube’s per­spect­ive on the early Hiero move­ment. The sit-down inter­view did­n’t hap­pen because Ice Cube is a busy man as you would guess but his staff was very respons­ive and gave me an oppor­tun­ity to get a shout out from him back­stage at the Rock the Bells music fest­iv­al in L.A. in 2012. I also wanted to do a sit-down inter­view with ?uestlove with whom I met after an after­noon DJ set he per­formed in my homet­own of Oak­land, CA in 2011. We were sched­uled to do an inter­view that day but he had just spent the last 2 hours stand­ing behind the 1’s & 2’s and was super tired so he gra­ciously gave me an on-cam­era shout out and a con­tact email to set up a form­al inter­view. I took steps toward con­tact­ing him though that email and also spoke with his man­ager­’s office a few times through a con­tact I received from a friend who is from Philly, but his team nev­er respon­ded. Also dur­ing my first day of shoot­ing back­stage at the 2011 Rock the Bells music fest­iv­al in San Fran­cisco I spoke with Com­mon briefly about answer­ing a few ques­tions on cam­era. He said yes, but had a few vis­it­ors in his trail­er who were wait­ing on him and he would be avail­able in a bit. I went to cov­er the Souls’ meet and greet for about 20 minutes and when I returned to Com­mon’s trail­er he was gone. The oth­er hope­fuls were Eminem, Kanye West, and Phar­rell Wil­li­ams and I was­n’t able to get a response from any of leads and con­tacts I had for them.

I believe clas­sic albums define an era. “93 ‘Til Infin­ity”, “Ill­mat­ic”, “Only Built For Cuban Links”, “Straight Outta Compton”, “Mise­du­ca­tion of Lauryn Hill”, all define spe­cif­ic eras in Hip Hop for me. With these types of mas­ter­pieces, you press play and you allow it to play from the begin­ning to the end. It’s hard to declare an album an “instant clas­sic” imme­di­ately upon it’s release but there are a num­ber of albums from the past few years that I feel have the poten­tial to achieve hip hop immortality:

“Til Infin­ity” would have been that film for me if I had not taken on this pro­ject. I had every oppor­tun­ity to make the stars align for this film and I took a chance and trus­ted my gut feel­ings. It would have been pain­ful to see this film hap­pen and not be the one responsible.

“Till Infin­ity” is my is my sole focus at the moment, but I am work­ing on a short about the Casual/Saafir, Hiero/Hobo Junc­tion Battle that will pos­sible be avail­able on the DVD extras of “Til Infinity”.

Regard­ing the film, 2014 will hope­fully be a year where I am able to share this pro­ject across the nation and pos­sibly the world and spark the next pro­ject or inspire the next first-time film­maker to take a chance and fol­low their passion.

My next screen­ing will be hap­pen­ing in the Bay Area as a part of the Oak­land Inter­na­tion­al Film Fest­iv­al April 6^th 2014., you can find out more inform­a­tion about future screen­ings on our web­site www.tilinfinitydoc.com