HHDX Special Interview by Josephine Basch
North Carolina has never had it this good. In a few short years, Little Brother have not only managed to create a movement, but have given hip-hop lovers a reason to keep listening. Their debut album, The Listening, released in 2002, came almost out of nowhere and drew more comparisons than you can shake a stick at. So it was no surprise when the likes of ?uestlove and Pete Rock started singing their praise. Without preaching or taking themselves too seriously, LB have managed to give their audience something to think about while keeping them entertained. No bells and whistles, just straight hip-hop. The Minstrel Show, their second full-length album and first major label release (on Atlantic Records) marks a more mature and pensive trio that has a lot to say.
They recently sat down with HHDX to promote their upcoming project and reflect a little on the current state of affairs, being the G-Unit of the underground and of course, world domination.
Your album is called The Minstrel Show. When I interviewed Paul Mooney, he spoke at length about how so many people still have that slave mentality and don’t want to break out of it…how do you feel about that?
Pooh: Today, as far as music is concerned, the black face has been replaced with: guns, rims, pimpin’… People feel like that’s the only way they can get on. And rapping, is to come in and talk about shootin’ niggas and moving boatloads of coke and shit like that, when that’s not the case. You just gotta be willing to be you, and a lot of people are not willing to be them. And that’s when it goes back to the minstrel shows, when white people performed and painted their faces black and later on, when black people started performing those same minstrel shows; they HAD to paint their faces black. Where now, you don’t HAVE to come in talking about guns and shooting and shit, people think that’s what they gotta do – that’s the only way. That’s basically what we’re talking about…you can be successful by just being you – the best you. You don’t have to go out and be an imitation 50 or Lil’ Jon.
9th Wonder: Or imitation Little Brother.
You got a lot of those?
9th: Not yet
Phonte: If the album goes platinum, I guarantee you…
9th: It’s whatever’s hot. And we’re trying to go platinum like Phonte said and sell a lot of units and… I guarantee you, a lot of labels will be like, “you talking about something real?”
Phonte: Yeah, “that whole reality rap thing – yeah we need that! Did you go to school? Did you go to college? Did you drop out? OK, that’s great.”
Pooh: The music business is like a car factory. It’s like, “OK, what’s gonna be the new car this year? 50, he’s the new car this year. We need to manufacture 50s tonight. OK, 50’s out of style. Little Brother, that’s the new car this year? We need to manufacture Little Brothers! Come on, we need to make these Little Brothers!” And that’s all that shit has become, like car factories.
Where do you guys see hip-hop going from here? You touch on it in your album, but it’s obviously not at the best place it’s been.
Pooh: I don’t know man. You can’t really say that hip-hop is “bad” right now, because whereas the quality of the music is really not where it was, as far as the money end of things, people are making more money than ever.
Phonte: It’s like if you could go back 20, 30 years and trade places with Kool Herc, and have him trade places with you, how do you think he would answer? “Man back then there was so much integrity!” Yeah nigga, but we was broke! Now cats is making money, but the music is…
It’s not about the music so much anymore. It’s a product.
Phonte: It’s definitely a product.
Pooh: It’s big business.
Phonte: We ain’t gone too far to see that yet. It is a business. As far as where it’s going, it really depends on the people. And when I say the people, I mean our generation – the hip-hop generation. It depends on where we taking it. Because it’s to the point now where it’s in the hands of people that are never gonna give a fuck about us. Real talk. So it’s like…we can’t protest Clear Channel and say “This is wrong, ya’ll shouldn’t be doing this,” and protesting these media outlets and saying that these images they’re showing is wrong. They couldn’t give a fuck…they never cared. It’s ALL about the money for them. So the change has to come from within, it has to come from us saying “look, this is a cool song in the club, but 4 o’clock in the afternoon my son is getting off the bus. Don’t play this shit.” We have to stand up for that, ‘cause aint nobody else gonna stand up for us. And it has to come from within our generation. It can’t be like how back in the early 90s, when you had C. Delores Tucker, Calvin Butts, Dionne Warwick, like all these people speaking out against hip-hop, to the young generation it just looked like, “all these old muther fuckers – whatever. Ya’ll just hatin’. Ya’ll don’t get it.” Looking back now, you can see what they were trying to stop from happening… the messenger just got in the way of the message. It takes somebody from our generation that look like, walk like, and talk like, to show the young generation, like, “yo, this hustling, this drug dealing shit – that shit is not cool. Your ass will be dead fucking with that shit. Cut that shit out.” It’s gonna take us to police ourselves.
Because the music is only one fold of the problem…all the problems just trickle through the music.
Phonte: The music feeds that. If you look at back at the 60s and 70s, where black people were going through a lot – it was the end of the civil rights movement and a lot of things were going on. You had Curtis Mayfield, Keep on Pushing and songs like, Let’s Clean Up the Ghetto. Even the group names: LTD (Love Togetherness and Devotion)…singing songs to uplift people. That said a lot…It was a community effort, and there was just more of a sense of family.
And there is good music out there. It’s just harder to access it.
9th: It’s hard to access it. It’s hard to get labels to sign it. That’s what we’re trying to bring back. We talk about that all the time: trying to bring back a balance in the game. There’s only one kind of music. We’re trying to bring a balance where you not only hear your 50s or you hear all these other artists talking about whatever. And the game needs that, because that’s a part of the black community, at the same time you need to hear the other side. You need to hear real life, you need to hear family life - raising a son or a daughter…you need to hear that, too. And it’s only a couple of artist doing that and there needs to be more of that. And on the flip side, I don’t want to hear 100 artists talking about tree hugging either, and one artist talking about shooting. I wanna hear it all. There’s room in the market place for everything.
Labels aren’t really giving deals to any artist that isn’t already selling like 15-20 thousand units on their own. But if you were moving units like that, would you be that pressed to get signed?
Phonte: Niggas want the fame, that’s what it is. Niggas want fame. It’s like, niggas would rather be famous poor people than anonymous millionaires. If you’re selling 500 thousand, or 100 thousand, at $8 a pop, by yourself, through a website, or out the trunk or whatever, I mean, you do the math! That’s 800 thousand, after taxes say $400 thousand. Then after expenses, say that’s $300 grand. And you can get rich doing that. And cats think that it’s all about the money, but niggas want that fame. That’s the most powerful drug ever.
Pooh: That’s more powerful than crack, it’s more powerful than that herron, it’s more powerful than all that!
Phonte: If you walk to a nigga on the street and be like, “yo dog, I’ll give you $100 now on the street, or I can give you $10 on TRL.”
Pooh: “Oh, I’ll take that $10 on TRL!”
Phonte: “I’ll take that $10 baby, ‘cause it might lead to my own sitcom – I’m the 10 Dollar Man!” This culture man, it’s just based on being famous and being known. Because truthfully, in 2005 you don’t really need a record label, but a lot of cats choose to go that route. And speaking for the group, we chose to go that route because we felt that we’d pretty much hit the ceiling as far as we could go on the independent. And for us to really make the impact that we want to make on hip-hop and the world, we knew we had to try to do it on a major label. If you’re gonna run a race, you got to have the best shoes on.
How important has it been to have The Justus League? Because you guys are like the G-Unit of the underground!
Phonte: Yeah, but without the chains. My joint, it don’t quite spin yet, it might turn…but yeah…People want to root for somebody…so for Little Brother, we were the first ones to really break through out of the camp. So now people are looking to see who else we got. And when they look and see there’s other talented people in the crew, it makes for a better story, because at that point you go from being just a group to being a movement.
North Carolina has never had it this good. In a few short years, Little Brother have not only managed to create a movement, but have given hip-hop lovers a reason to keep listening. Their debut album, The Listening, released in 2002, came almost out of nowhere and drew more comparisons than you can shake a stick at. So it was no surprise when the likes of ?uestlove and Pete Rock started singing their praise. Without preaching or taking themselves too seriously, LB have managed to give their audience something to think about while keeping them entertained. No bells and whistles, just straight hip-hop. The Minstrel Show, their second full-length album and first major label release (on Atlantic Records) marks a more mature and pensive trio that has a lot to say.
They recently sat down with HHDX to promote their upcoming project and reflect a little on the current state of affairs, being the G-Unit of the underground and of course, world domination.
Your album is called The Minstrel Show. When I interviewed Paul Mooney, he spoke at length about how so many people still have that slave mentality and don’t want to break out of it…how do you feel about that?
Pooh: Today, as far as music is concerned, the black face has been replaced with: guns, rims, pimpin’… People feel like that’s the only way they can get on. And rapping, is to come in and talk about shootin’ niggas and moving boatloads of coke and shit like that, when that’s not the case. You just gotta be willing to be you, and a lot of people are not willing to be them. And that’s when it goes back to the minstrel shows, when white people performed and painted their faces black and later on, when black people started performing those same minstrel shows; they HAD to paint their faces black. Where now, you don’t HAVE to come in talking about guns and shooting and shit, people think that’s what they gotta do – that’s the only way. That’s basically what we’re talking about…you can be successful by just being you – the best you. You don’t have to go out and be an imitation 50 or Lil’ Jon.
9th Wonder: Or imitation Little Brother.
You got a lot of those?
9th: Not yet
Phonte: If the album goes platinum, I guarantee you…
9th: It’s whatever’s hot. And we’re trying to go platinum like Phonte said and sell a lot of units and… I guarantee you, a lot of labels will be like, “you talking about something real?”
Phonte: Yeah, “that whole reality rap thing – yeah we need that! Did you go to school? Did you go to college? Did you drop out? OK, that’s great.”
Pooh: The music business is like a car factory. It’s like, “OK, what’s gonna be the new car this year? 50, he’s the new car this year. We need to manufacture 50s tonight. OK, 50’s out of style. Little Brother, that’s the new car this year? We need to manufacture Little Brothers! Come on, we need to make these Little Brothers!” And that’s all that shit has become, like car factories.
Where do you guys see hip-hop going from here? You touch on it in your album, but it’s obviously not at the best place it’s been.
Pooh: I don’t know man. You can’t really say that hip-hop is “bad” right now, because whereas the quality of the music is really not where it was, as far as the money end of things, people are making more money than ever.
Phonte: It’s like if you could go back 20, 30 years and trade places with Kool Herc, and have him trade places with you, how do you think he would answer? “Man back then there was so much integrity!” Yeah nigga, but we was broke! Now cats is making money, but the music is…
It’s not about the music so much anymore. It’s a product.
Phonte: It’s definitely a product.
Pooh: It’s big business.
Phonte: We ain’t gone too far to see that yet. It is a business. As far as where it’s going, it really depends on the people. And when I say the people, I mean our generation – the hip-hop generation. It depends on where we taking it. Because it’s to the point now where it’s in the hands of people that are never gonna give a fuck about us. Real talk. So it’s like…we can’t protest Clear Channel and say “This is wrong, ya’ll shouldn’t be doing this,” and protesting these media outlets and saying that these images they’re showing is wrong. They couldn’t give a fuck…they never cared. It’s ALL about the money for them. So the change has to come from within, it has to come from us saying “look, this is a cool song in the club, but 4 o’clock in the afternoon my son is getting off the bus. Don’t play this shit.” We have to stand up for that, ‘cause aint nobody else gonna stand up for us. And it has to come from within our generation. It can’t be like how back in the early 90s, when you had C. Delores Tucker, Calvin Butts, Dionne Warwick, like all these people speaking out against hip-hop, to the young generation it just looked like, “all these old muther fuckers – whatever. Ya’ll just hatin’. Ya’ll don’t get it.” Looking back now, you can see what they were trying to stop from happening… the messenger just got in the way of the message. It takes somebody from our generation that look like, walk like, and talk like, to show the young generation, like, “yo, this hustling, this drug dealing shit – that shit is not cool. Your ass will be dead fucking with that shit. Cut that shit out.” It’s gonna take us to police ourselves.
Because the music is only one fold of the problem…all the problems just trickle through the music.
Phonte: The music feeds that. If you look at back at the 60s and 70s, where black people were going through a lot – it was the end of the civil rights movement and a lot of things were going on. You had Curtis Mayfield, Keep on Pushing and songs like, Let’s Clean Up the Ghetto. Even the group names: LTD (Love Togetherness and Devotion)…singing songs to uplift people. That said a lot…It was a community effort, and there was just more of a sense of family.
And there is good music out there. It’s just harder to access it.
9th: It’s hard to access it. It’s hard to get labels to sign it. That’s what we’re trying to bring back. We talk about that all the time: trying to bring back a balance in the game. There’s only one kind of music. We’re trying to bring a balance where you not only hear your 50s or you hear all these other artists talking about whatever. And the game needs that, because that’s a part of the black community, at the same time you need to hear the other side. You need to hear real life, you need to hear family life - raising a son or a daughter…you need to hear that, too. And it’s only a couple of artist doing that and there needs to be more of that. And on the flip side, I don’t want to hear 100 artists talking about tree hugging either, and one artist talking about shooting. I wanna hear it all. There’s room in the market place for everything.
Labels aren’t really giving deals to any artist that isn’t already selling like 15-20 thousand units on their own. But if you were moving units like that, would you be that pressed to get signed?
Phonte: Niggas want the fame, that’s what it is. Niggas want fame. It’s like, niggas would rather be famous poor people than anonymous millionaires. If you’re selling 500 thousand, or 100 thousand, at $8 a pop, by yourself, through a website, or out the trunk or whatever, I mean, you do the math! That’s 800 thousand, after taxes say $400 thousand. Then after expenses, say that’s $300 grand. And you can get rich doing that. And cats think that it’s all about the money, but niggas want that fame. That’s the most powerful drug ever.
Pooh: That’s more powerful than crack, it’s more powerful than that herron, it’s more powerful than all that!
Phonte: If you walk to a nigga on the street and be like, “yo dog, I’ll give you $100 now on the street, or I can give you $10 on TRL.”
Pooh: “Oh, I’ll take that $10 on TRL!”
Phonte: “I’ll take that $10 baby, ‘cause it might lead to my own sitcom – I’m the 10 Dollar Man!” This culture man, it’s just based on being famous and being known. Because truthfully, in 2005 you don’t really need a record label, but a lot of cats choose to go that route. And speaking for the group, we chose to go that route because we felt that we’d pretty much hit the ceiling as far as we could go on the independent. And for us to really make the impact that we want to make on hip-hop and the world, we knew we had to try to do it on a major label. If you’re gonna run a race, you got to have the best shoes on.
How important has it been to have The Justus League? Because you guys are like the G-Unit of the underground!
Phonte: Yeah, but without the chains. My joint, it don’t quite spin yet, it might turn…but yeah…People want to root for somebody…so for Little Brother, we were the first ones to really break through out of the camp. So now people are looking to see who else we got. And when they look and see there’s other talented people in the crew, it makes for a better story, because at that point you go from being just a group to being a movement.
