the soul purpose is the debut studio album from boston underground hip hop duo 7l & esoteric. the album was released on july 24, 2001. 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 inspectah deck. all of this culminated into a record deal with landspeed, 9 years after the group's original formation.