Little Brother: Hip Hop In Blackface

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 dont want to break out of ithow 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 thats 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 thats not the case. You just gotta be willing to be you, and a lot of people are not willing to be them. And thats 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 dont HAVE to come in talking about guns and shooting and shit, people think thats what they gotta do thats the only way. Thats basically what were talking aboutyou can be successful by just being you the best you. You dont 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: Its whatevers hot. And were 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, thats great.
Pooh: The music business is like a car factory. Its like, OK, whats gonna be the new car this year? 50, hes the new car this year. We need to manufacture 50s tonight. OK, 50s out of style. Little Brother, thats the new car this year? We need to manufacture Little Brothers! Come on, we need to make these Little Brothers! And thats 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 its obviously not at the best place its been.
Pooh: I dont know man. You cant 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: Its 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

Its not about the music so much anymore. Its a product.
Phonte: Its definitely a product.
Pooh: Its big business.
Phonte: We aint gone too far to see that yet. It is a business. As far as where its 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 its to the point now where its in the hands of people that are never gonna give a fuck about us. Real talk. So its likewe cant protest Clear Channel and say This is wrong, yall shouldnt be doing this, and protesting these media outlets and saying that these images theyre showing is wrong. They couldnt give a fuckthey never cared. Its 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 oclock in the afternoon my son is getting off the bus. Dont 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 cant 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. Yall just hatin. Yall dont 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. Its gonna take us to police ourselves.

Because the music is only one fold of the problemall 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, Lets Clean Up the Ghetto. Even the group names: LTD (Love Togetherness and Devotion)singing songs to uplift people. That said a lotIt was a community effort, and there was just more of a sense of family.

And there is good music out there. Its just harder to access it.
9th: Its hard to access it. Its hard to get labels to sign it. Thats what were trying to bring back. We talk about that all the time: trying to bring back a balance in the game. Theres only one kind of music. Were 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 thats 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 daughteryou need to hear that, too. And its only a couple of artist doing that and there needs to be more of that. And on the flip side, I dont want to hear 100 artists talking about tree hugging either, and one artist talking about shooting. I wanna hear it all. Theres room in the market place for everything.

Labels arent really giving deals to any artist that isnt 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, thats what it is. Niggas want fame. Its like, niggas would rather be famous poor people than anonymous millionaires. If youre 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! Thats 800 thousand, after taxes say $400 thousand. Then after expenses, say thats $300 grand. And you can get rich doing that. And cats think that its all about the money, but niggas want that fame. Thats the most powerful drug ever.
Pooh: Thats more powerful than crack, its more powerful than that herron, its more powerful than all that!
Phonte: If you walk to a nigga on the street and be like, yo dog, Ill give you $100 now on the street, or I can give you $10 on TRL.
Pooh: Oh, Ill take that $10 on TRL!
Phonte: Ill take that $10 baby, cause it might lead to my own sitcom Im the 10 Dollar Man! This culture man, its just based on being famous and being known. Because truthfully, in 2005 you dont 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 wed 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 youre 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 dont quite spin yet, it might turnbut yeahPeople want to root for somebodyso 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 theres 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.