Little Brother - conducted by DJ Hyphen & J. Moore
Little Brother: Being Watched
March 2006
The North Carolina group have come a long way. From the critically acclaimed "Minstrel Show" helping push Little Brother further, and boost the Justus League even more so - the ever growing super ensemble keep moving forward with new music, tours and more.
These are the transcripts of an interview with Little Brother aired March 12th, 2006 on DJ Hyphen & J. Moore's "Sunday Night Sound Session" on Seattle's KUBE 93.3 FM. For more info. on DJ Hyphen click here.
MVRemix: We talked to you a couple months ago, you were either getting ready to have a kid [Phon]Te or you just had a kid...
Phonte: Yeah, I was on the way, gettin' ready to it. But he's here now. He's 4 months old... gonna be 4 months on the 2nd. He has the head of a seven year old. He's bringing down the house.
MVRemix: What's his name?
Phonte: Andrew.
MVRemix: Probably already causing terror.
Phonte: Exactly. He's wild, he had on wheels. Other than that it's all good man.
MVRemix: Has it been tough to promote "The Minstrel Show" with you having family responsibilities?
Phonte: Well not really, I mean whenever you in the business man, you gotta kinda know when to put the breaks on, otherwise people will work you to death. Literally, they will kill you - they'll have you working day in, day out. It's like, "Alright, I'll do that," but there's certain things; death, birth, family - it's like "Okay, I don't care what's going on. Its got to stop." So pretty much if it's nothing big like that, we work all the time. Once the baby came, it was like, "Yo, I gotta do what I've gotta do for a minute and get back at it."
MVRemix: No doubt, so Pooh how has the response been to the record? It came out... what month did it come out?
Big Pooh: September 13th, 2005.
MVRemix: You've got the date memorized!
Phonte: Ah yes, the date of death! [chuckling] The slow death march...
MVRemix: How has it been, it's obviously critically acclaimed across the board - every magazine review, all the online stuff - everybody loves it... What's been the response from the people you see in the street?
Big Pooh: Man, I can tell you man if critically acclaimed could win me a Grammy dawg, I would have a couple of them things sittin' above on my fireplace.
Phonte: Or if interviews equated to dollars, every time we got called like, "Yo, a dollar for every interview," we'd be millionaires.
Big Pooh: People we run into or people that actually got the album, or heard the album - I mean its been nothin' but love.
Phonte: They just gotta get to it.
MVRemix: What's the gap? What's the difficulty in creating a dope piece of art and translating that into the machine of commerce and getting it into the people...
Big Pooh: For us, it's probably the target market of the audience or the age market of people that our music appeals more to. TV and Radio is dominated by items that appeal to a younger generation.
Phonte: To the kids.
Big Pooh: To the kids... And a lot of times our music is not really for the kids, you know what I'm sayin'? So a lot of times labels don't know how to market - their main marketing themes are Radio and TV. So for us I think that one of the problems we had was finding a way to reach the market of people that's really, like the 25-30 something market that still listen to Hip Hop. We've been having a pretty hard time trying to actually reach that market. That was one of our problems.
MVRemix: That was one idea that was kicked around on The Lawn message board, I know 9th [Wonder] is trying to start some kind of radio station...
Phonte: Just some sort of programming, basically to have a VH1 Soul on the radio like that. Pretty much it's just kind of a gap. Our parents got Russ Parr and Tom Joyner or Michael Basling and then the kids got Clear Channel, [chuckles] Viacom and all that. So it's that middle age group that people grew up on, the 90's stuff. Ain't really no outlets for our kind of stuff. There's definitely an audience there. Even if you see the kind of uprising in Satellite Radio, I think just the fact that there are people who are willing to pay for something that is free is very telling about radio in general. In a couple years... I think people are gonna have to figure out first and foremost how to make money off of that generation, 'cause I mean that's what makes it turn anyway. Once they figure that out I think there'll be some more outlets for it.
MVRemix: What are the steps before you deliver the next record?
Phonte: For the next record, what we did... We just went and did the Gangsta Grillz mixtape with DJ Drama. We just got the first master today, it's retarded.
Big Pooh: "Seperate But Equal"
Phonte: "Seperate But Equal" it's coming soon, within the next week probably.
