Better late than never, I suppose.
Little Brother got a deal with Atlantic as much because Ninth Wonder worked with Jay-Z as the considerable strength of their album The Listening. They put out an instant classic concept album, The Minstrel Show, and seemed to be on the verge of something huge. But a funny thing happened on the way to stardom- the album sold considerably below everyone's expectations, and BET refused to air one video on the grounds that it was "too smart" (this is, of course, precisely what the Minstrel Show album was satirizing). After that, producer Ninth Wonder- in many ways the biggest star in the group- left (or was asked to leave) and Atlantic lost interest in promoting the group. So, here we have a group that many feel to be the legitimate heirs of golden-age icons like De La Soul or A Tribe Called Quest, but instead of of arriving at the next level, they have arrived at the crossroads. As I was thinking about their upcoming free concert at the Cat's Cradle, I could not help but wonder if the group was in the process of regrouping, playing in their own backyard, or if they were about to fall apart.
It is, I think, only a slight exaggeration to view the current state of main-stream hip hop as being in a place much like the precarious position I imagined LB to be in, and that the case of LB demonstrates exactly how popular hip hop wound up in the place it is. Make no mistake, above ground hip hop is in a bad shape- athough for most of my time as a music fan I've been a casual observer of the hip hop scene, I can never remember things being quite like this- not even in the worst days of the East Coast/West Coast feud. Record sales across the music industry, of course, are down, but it has been demonstrated that hip hop sales are especially down, and more than that, quality artists have all but disappeared from the soundscan charts- with OutKast apparently all but broken up as a musical duet, Jay-Z's mediocre last album, Eminem's last solo album three years in the rearview mirror and even the Beastie Boys putting out a solo album of insturmentals, Kanye West seems to be the last bastion of the main stream still putting out music that demands listenings. The industry is drowning in inane, monotous krunk-drenched nonsense, and while the underground is thriving, unless Common or Kanye West can capture the airwaves it is hard to imagine any of them crossing over to the mainstream.
Little Brother, who aren't off when they complain of "more press than soundscans" seems to be in a particularily tricky situation. While BET calls them "too smart" for the mainstream, LB would appear to be too rooted in a classic hip-hop tradition to follow the paths of acts like Aesop Rock, El-P, Atmosphere or Sage Francis, who have been able to reach large crowds of backpackers and skaters, more conversant with the Pixies or White Stripes than De La Soul or Rakim. Instead of being seen as the best of both worlds- as clever as the underground but able to make people move like the above ground, LB, one fears, could wind up stuck fifteen years too late- a throwback to Native Tongues in a time when De La only makes the airwaves working with Gorillaz. And worst of all, this comes at a time when the mainstream NEEDS an act like LB more than ever- someone smart and able to point out the absurdities of the current scene over beats too good to be ignored. LB put it wonderfully- " I love hip hop, I just hate the niggas in it". This is precisely the voice that hip hop needs to avoid becoming even more of a bloated parody of itself in the public's eye.
As it turns out, if LB is in trouble, then no one told Phonte and Big Pooh. They took the stage before an audience that could only have been more of a home crowd if the show had been in the middle of the NC Central campus, and the two MCs were relaxed and fully confident in their considerable powers. I think we sometimes forget that hip hop, despite it's serious, politically concious side- it's role as the "CNN of the streets" (although lately one would be forgiven for mistaking it for the Home Shopping Network) is supposed to be fun. LB Is fully capable of cutting as deep as anyone, but their best work has often been as funny as it is socially concious or politically relevant. This, I think, more than any other factor, is why I'm not alone in persistently trying to compare them to the best of the Native Tongues stable.
Playing with a live backing band, Orgone, instead of with a DJ (prompting Phonte, if I remember correctly- a dubious proposition, since it's not in my notes, to joke that we were witnessing LB unplugged) LB put on a show that easily convinced me that my fears for the group's future were sorely misplaced. In between songs from both albums and their Chitlin Circuit mixtapes, the band joked around, clearly having a great time- they took us to church- a church not far from James Brown's Triple Rock Baptist Church in the Blues Brothers, giving the audience a rendition of "The Greatest Love of All" straight out of the funniest scene in Coming to America ("That boy's good!"). Unsurprisingly, their was a Justus League cameo, Khryis (I hope I spelled that in the correct incorrect way). Despite my own hopes, Big Daddy Kane, who collaborated with LB on the fantastic soundtrack song "Welcome to Durham" (Best line- "Goddamn- I found Brooklyn in the South) and who was a surprise guest at the GZA's similar free show, did not make an appearance, but I suppose I can hardly blame LB for my own fantasies not coming through. It didn't matter that much anyway, it's not like anyone was dissapointed when the show ended.
If LB is at a critical juncture in their career, which I still think is slightly true, that night they demonstrated that Big Pooh and Phonte were more than capable of overcoming this situation. A new album, Get Back, is set to drop this fall (I'm probably the only person who connected the album title with the Beatle's legendarily acrimonious "Get Back" sessions, which produced the Let It Be album, and I'm almost certainly wrong in reading this into the new project). Little Brother is probably not going to get the opportunity to save the industry, but they never asked for that thankless role anyway. And at any rate, as long as acts like LB are around, on the verge of the mainstream but apparently too good to break through, the music will be fine. And ultimately, as long as the music survives (as it will always do) then the industry can be damned.
