The Soul Purpose is the debut studio album by American hip hop duo 7L & Esoteric. It was released on July 24, 2001 via Direct Records. Recording sessions took place at Joe's Wax Museum, The Garden in Massachusetts, The Thingamajig Lab and Miss Pusskin's House in Brooklyn, BassCamp in Lynnfield and BPM in Boston. Production was handled by the Vinyl Reanimators, who also served as executive producers, 7L, DJ Spinna, Joc Max, Raw Produce and The ARE. It features guest appearances from Akrobatik, Apathy, Cadence, Checkmark, Inspectah Deck, Karma, Mr. Lif, Reks, Vinnie Paz and Count Bass D.
The album was preceded with four singles: "Speaking Real Words", "Mic Mastery", "Call Me E.S." and "Jealous Over Nothing". Its third single, "Call Me E.S.", became the duo's only charted single off of the album, reaching number 83 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and number 3 on the Hot Rap Songs in the US.
After years of doing guest verses for other acts, and releasing songs such as "Be Alert" on their own; the duo managed to garner significant hype in the underground hip hop community. They even received press in The Source, and attracted enough attention to get a guest verse from Wu-Tang Clan's Inspectah Deck. All of this culminated into a distribution record deal with Landspeed Records Inc., 9 years after the group's original formation.
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