If you know Phonte, you know he speaks his mind. Whether riding solo or with a crew, he’s never minced his words. Knowing this, we set up shop to discuss new projects, including recent releases and future projects, including the new LB LP.  

As promised, he didn’t bite his tongue as we hit topics ranging from getting no love at Summer Jam to the Stop Snitchin’ Movement. Needless to say, there’s a lot more in between. Keeping it as real as can be, he kicked knowledge, dropped exclusive information and got some things off his chest.

Read on. You might learn something.  

HipHopDX: We’ll start it off by discussing the new projects that just came out. What can fans expect?

Phonte: They can just expect the tradition of dope music. The HOJ compilation is a compilation of our extended family, artists we’ve been working with closely over the years. That album and the Darien Brockington album is just an extension of us as a team and another brick in our foundation of dope records.  

HipHopDX: Let’s talk about the BET situation, where people were saying BET claimed Little Brother was too intelligent to be played on the network.

Phonte: We really honestly don’t know where it came from. We don’t know if it came from BET or whatever there. But anyway, the word got around that supposedly BET said our shit was too intelligent for them to play. We took it as a slap in the face. But I would be more [offended] if I was a viewer of BET like ‘Damn, what are y’all sayin’ about me?’ You feel me? But you just gotta realize what the game has become. It’s constantly being peddled to the lowest common denominator. You just keep dropping lower and lower and that’s what you get. That’s why we’re in the state we’re in now.

HipHopDX: There was recently a Summer Jam performance that you and other people wrote about, where the audience just stood still…What did you take away from that?

Phonte: What I took away from it was that basically, people who religiously listen to the radio don’t want much out of music. It’s not to say that their taste in music is necessarily better than mine or whatever. I just think they don’t want much. The people like us, the music nerds, the people who are into music, we’re the cats that are looking online for new shit and spending money on crazy records and shit because we’re just into music. Music is the love of our life so we’re constantly looking for new shit and searching deeper for it. To the average person, they don’t care. Music for them is just a means of entertainment or a means of partying, dancing or whatever. Whenever you’re a group like Little Brother or Rhymefest or…hell, anybody that tries to use music as more than just a form of just dancing and tries to use it as a means of provocation or stimulation of thought of any kind, then it’s always going to be an uphill battle in today’s market. So, I just looked at it for what it is and I know next time. I know what I’m up against. Continued on page 2 »