Little Brother Love

Little Brother : The Way You Do It (Captain Planet Remix)
this here's a Captain's Crate exclusive

Little Brother : The Becoming
taken from the album "The Minstrel Show" on Atlantic (2005)

Long before I started scrutinizing the periphery of pop culture in search of forgotten gems and original source material, prior to my developing a powerful appreciation for all things funky and foreign (or even knowing that those things existed), I was a hip hop head. I was aware of other kinds of music and was generally open about the vastness of my ignorance, but hip hop music provided the fuel that burned in breakbeats and drove me to my current state of musical obsession. Within hip hop's layers of samples I began my digging outward and backwards in time. And honestly, not being a musical prodigy by any means, it was the do-it-from-scratch formula to hip hop music that made me imagine I could have any type of future in music making at all.

Which brings me to Little Brother. The self-proclaimed younger sibling to all of those great names (Tribe, De La, JB's, Pete Rock...just scratching the surface) that played in my walkman and served as the fodder for my formative mixtapes. I don't want to say much for fear that I'll dive way out into the deep end of an olympic-sized pool of cheez whiz (which I may already have done), but it's a very rare thing these days when I am truly excited about a hip hop album and will continue listening to it in its entirety- and will continue to be blown away by it! The Minstrel Show accomplished this feat. The Listening did too. Haters say that they're not doing anything new, but doesn't rock solid soulful consistency stand for something in an over-flooded market-driven galaxy of wack fools? And yes, I thank god for The Roots, Outkast, Missy, Common, Kanye (slightly wincing about that last one), but 50 still outsells them, and drops a book, and makes a film that is "based on fact" just enough to actually really mess with millions of kid's heads (I'm an ex-public school teacher, not a republican). If hip hop is alive and healthy, then why does 90% of hip hop radio sound so fake? And if you actually believe the shiz they're saying, you're definitely getting duped. [Have to admit here that I still listen to and enjoy the radio, I still dance to 50, and I'm generally entertained by the videos that I see on BET]. I don't want to be a hater myself, my point is more to bring attention to the underdog [no 50, not you]. I just want to see a little more balance, that's all.

Flick a fat middle finger in the face of the countless record execs and industry cronies [excluding the good people at Atlantic who hopefully won't drop LB after this album] who put less faith in the listening public than I do in my four-year-old brother, and help this album go platinum. 'Cause right now, it ain't. As for the remix, I made this beat for another song which hasn't been recorded yet (Chinaka, where you at?), and with minor tinkering it fit quite nicely over an accapella from The Listening. Not trying to outdo 9th or nothing, just putting a crispy clean (and nostalgic like WHAT?!) spin on it. Hope you enjoy it. And try not to get weirded out if you hear a similar beat with different vocals on it down the road...

Also, I'm heading down to Puerto Rico next weekend for the Candela Music Festival. I'm real excited to be spinning alongside cats like Quantic, Bobbito, Rich Medina, Garth Trinidad, Nickodemus... but don't expect a post from me for a minute.