Little Brother – May The Lord Watch: Immediate thoughts & reaction

“You are watching UBN!”

Against all odds, Little Brother are still with us.

The NC beloved hip hop group first formed in late 90s as a trio: Phonte, Rapper Big Pooh and DJ/Producer 9th Wonder. Three peas in a pod, if you will, and they took over the hip hop world with their first two, and arguably three, albums even if hip hop didn’t really know how to handle their trendsetting and “old school meets new school” sound. The trio were the forebearers of the return of “real” hip hop at a time when we all were shaking our tailfeathers, throwing down ‘bows and throwing it up to the windoooooow and to the wallssssssss.

With LB, you learned that you could be an incredible lyricist and rapper all the while being just like everyone else. LB were Kanye before Kanye, an everyman turned rap wizard with music that wasn’t larger than life, but rather much more relatable and down to earth. Everyone loved LB, that’s for sure – Lil Wayne made a song with them, and maybe you’ll say this doesn’t mean much since Wayne made a song with everyone, which sure. But hell, LB was on the Comeback Season mixtape with a very new, young and green Aubrey “Drake” Graham. There’s a universe where Phonte, rather than the boy from the Six, is the one bridging the gap between singing r n’ b and rappity rap.

LB had it all, is what we’re trying to say, and for a while they had the entire world eating out of their hands. Dope beats and dope rhymes, what more did we all want?

It turns out they had been screaming this out to the world when maybe their focus should have been inward. Because after the classics The Listening & The Minstrel Show, and even a dang DJ Drama tape back when it still meant a lot, LB split up. The three peas in the underground pod were no more.

Somehow they’re back together in 2019, minus producer extraordinaire 9th Wonder, but we won’t complain. They had hinted at a new tour coming up soon, and we somehow get a new album. We’re very much here for everything and anything they have planned. They’ve always been immense risk takers, and we suppose this is their latest “all in” moment.

They’re adding to a legacy that was already flawless with a new album, their first in nine years. Will it backfire, or simply reinforce their status as legends in the rap game?

1. The Feel

The nostalgia is at an all-time high and I haven’t even pressed “Play” yet: if we can be honest and forthright for one minute, we’ll recognize that LB were once our favourite duo. We’ve always privately and publicly hailed OutKast as our all-time kings and, while they are certainly up there, so are LB. And for a while as a teenager, we didn’t listen to anyone more often than we did Little Brother. Hell, we even sent LB a photo of us sporting a GetBack t-shirt, which they shared on their page. (The comments were awful, but fuck those internet commenters.) In any case, let’s do this.

Okay, we’re going back to the UBN well. We dig that. Solid start to the track, the drums are hitting hard and it’s Phontigallo first up. ‘Tay is the truth definitely. Not sure about that Rae Carruth line about — was it about moving units independently straight out of the trunk? Yeah not sure here, but we’ll let it slide. Phonte is gliding on the beat. Matter of fact, so is Pooh. Listening to LB is like riding a damn bike: you haven’t listened to a new album of theirs in nine years, yet here you are and it fall feels so natural.

2. A Word From The President

Ohhhhh hold on, we’ll have some skits on this album? I’m not mad, I’m not mad. I am mad, however, at the news that famed spoof singer Percy Miracles is apparently dead, which is the topic of this skit? Goddang, not Percy :( :(

So lemme get this straight: the concept of this album will be that it’s played on UBN at the Percy Miracles memorial service, and there will be a couple of skits that act as commercials played on the fictitious U Black N***as Network? We’re here for it.

The kicker of the UBN president reminding listeners to purchase their $69 tickets for Percy Miracles’ death is perfect. And so is the “may God bless this nation and this station” to end it.

You don’t see it, but I’m crying tears of joy. Having LB back in our lives is already so beautiful.

3. Everything

The strings on Everything here might make us cry, or maybe it’ll be the M.O.P. sample they laced underneath the beat to open the song? Phonte is kicking things off again. Listen to this man rap, man. Just listen. So, so underrated. We have him at №15 on our top 50 rappers list, and maybe that’s still too low. It’s Rapper Big Pooh’s turn and he answers the call. We giggled at the “fantasy that lasts longer than an erection” line because we are a child. Have you ever met a black man who’s so defiant and all wound up like he’s Nolan Ryan? Big line from ‘Tay lmao. Another solid track.

4. Right On Time

Another skit, this one to start Right On Time, and it’s an hilarious one once again. You know an album is shaping up to be something special when even the skits are bang on.

Right On Time, as a track, delivers. It’s grown men rapping about growing up, both rappers finding their introspective pocket and never leaving it. Pooh is batting lead off and Phonte follows up, and listening to both rap on as well as they ever have on the same track fills our heart up with so much joy. ‘Tay is saying he’s got stress on the main frame, how tf can you not love this man?

“Might not come when you want it but it’s right on time. It is right on time.” A nice touch to have Phonte singing this chorus, because it hits you. right. there. in. the. feels. You feel this deeply in your heart now, but you wish you did 10 years ago. Learning how to accept that things will come to you when they do no matter how hard you chase after them is one of life’s most precious, but also most difficult, lessons. Ain’t no need to bite it off all at once if you can’t chew it all, you know?

5. Black Magic (Make It Better)

OMG this bounce. When I come to pass, can you bury me here? Yes, we’re well aware here that your boy is most definitely not black and thus can’t make black magic, but great music is universal. Phonte and Pooh, they are black and they’re proud of it — of their blackness and yours, shout-out to Deray. May The Lord Watch, five tracks in, has the exact perfect vintage sound of previous LB projects. It’s like we’re transported back to 2005 after The Minstrel Show dropped, but with a sound that’s actualized and updated for 2019. “I’ll never make it perfect, just trying to make it better,” is a damn PhD thesis.

6. Life After Blackface

JOE SCUDDA! YES! A one-on-one interview with the man who blew it apparently. You can’t say everyone involved with this new album doesn’t get it, or doesn’t understand the vision. This skit here ends with a fade-out to Phonte singing, “it’s so good to be a white man again” and I might never stop laughing. Can we immortalize Little Brother in the rock n’ roll Hall Of Fame, like, 10 years ago?

7. Goodmorning Sunshine

Good morning to you too, sunshine. Can we just stay in this space forever and have this album playing on a loop over and over and over? “Lil Wayne said I shouldn’t have no ceiling.” God I love such fan service, thank you Pooh. Phonte gets tagged in here and I just might start crying. He’s singing on the chorus, and it’s a great reminder that ‘Tay is a dang great singer because his voice is true and unbelievably soulful. Phonte might have lamented once upon a time on Leftback’s Tigallo For Dolo that he was Grammy-nominated singing with The Foreign Exchange and all he could get with LB is a four-and-a-half mic rating, but we deserve to live in a world where he can be successful with both FE and Little Brother. As the chorus goes here, imagination is not the same as truth.

8. Dyana Change My Life

Ohhhh the mad black daddy also is back. Hahaha amazing. Poor Dyana, one woman shouldn’t have to endure so much misery.

9. What I Came For

Back to the album and What I Came For is a groove. We’re levitating over those clouds. If this beat were made up of stratuses or cumunolimbuses up there in the sky, it would be a cloud where you could go relive all of your favourite memories from the past. Not from your childhood cause that’s too early but, like, from your teenage years when you first discovered LB. Whatever, this stupid analogy makes sense in my mind.

10. Inside The Producer’s Studio

They have brought out ?uestlove for this new skit? Shut up. AND they revived “the incomparable” Roy Lee, producer extraordinaire. Right when Roy Lee calls ?uestlove in this fake interview “Question Love” is just about when this skit might have become the best skit in rap history. “Y’all thought it was gonna boom in the bap, it’s really gonna boom in the bap and the trap” and the “@roylee8” were just LB showing off here. They’re really, really special. And equally funny.

11. Sittin Alone

Another solid start wow. Whomever made this beat laced LB with so much soul you could make a museum of grown man rap. And whaddayaknow, grown men rapping about grown men rap is what LB deliver here. Pooh is first. It’s definitely an eye-opening moment when your new lit is the newly purchased candles that are perfectly centred on your dinner table, amen Pooh. “My new normal ain’t normal at all” is a hell of a bar from him — partly because before you know it, that new normal will feel normal too. Bet. What a verse from Pooh wow, he muses on the FOMO that’s run rampant in the social media age. Everyone is always living their best life when you look online and, although you know you’re not missing anything special, you know you’re still missing something. Phonte’s turn and you just know he’ll kill it. Story time okay. “After 35 the club is a different kind of torment,” we tell you Phonte is a philosopher. Hell of a song, our favourite thus far.

12. Picture This

The previous track will be tough to top, but let’s see. Different vibe here, we’re getting a sort of “I love you and I hate that I love you” type of vibe from the beat, let’s see if we’re right.

Phonte is batting lead-off and, yeah no we’re wrong. They’re taking us back to the start before LB were LB. The odds of them ever making it in music were against them, but make it they did. Same way with this reunion album. “One plus one equals three where I’m from” is cold as hell and basically explains America as we know it.

13. Niggas Hollering

Along with their reunion, LB originally had announced an upcoming new tour and here’s to hoping that they come back to our hometown. Please come back to Montreal, guys.

It’s dark and hot as hell inside the little room and you’re all alone because your boy decided he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, come with you. “His loss,” you tell yourself. You’re inside a tiny box inside venue Les Foufounes Électriques, a venue from your hometown that’s (in)famous for hosting rowdy rock n’ roll shows — but tonight it’s all hip-hop, classic and soulful boom bap, dope beats and dope rhymes. It’s Little Brother and there are something like 200 or 250 in that tiny tiny room, and you’re sweating like hell because again: it’s freaking tiny. The music is so loud and so good that it’s almost overbearing and overwhelming. You meet Chaundon by the merch booth and buy from him an LB shirt for either “fit-teen” or “fitty” dollars — his accent is so thick and the music so loud, you can’t fully understand him. (The shirt cost $15. All good.) You even met Pooh and Phonte before the show, they were grabbing food at what’s frankly a shitty food joint across the street. You know you should have told them to go elsewhere but hell, you were starstruck af. It’s probably still today the best hip-hop show you’ve ever witnessed in person.

Anyway, solid skit once again.

14. All in a Day

The claps on All in a Day are everything. Beat has a sort of “accordion” effect in that it arrives, leaves and comes back again. It’s probably not really what you call that but whatever. It’s fire at the end of the day, as long as we can agree on that. We’ve read somewhere that Pooh and ‘Tay recorded the entire album together in person and it shows. There’s that je-ne-sais-quoi that can’t be faked. The lived-in and in-person charisma between the two spitters. May The Lord Watch, yes, and may they never stop rapping together. One of this album’s strengths is that it never overstays its welcome; how many songs, if any, have had more than two verses? That’s the best decision they could have made because the pace and pacing of the album is immaculate.

“You ask me what I’m doing and my only answer is whatever the fuck I want.” That, and Phonte’s entire verse actually, is a mood. Talk your truth, Phonte. Talk your truth, and talk your shit.

15. Work Through Me

Last song. Ugh. Does it really have to end? :(

Beat here is soulful as hell, we’re very much here for it. There really hasn’t been a single miss on the album and apparently it’s not gonna happen with the grand finale either. As they rapped on Chitlin Circuit 1.5’s Nobody Like Me, god ain’t let them run it back this far just to fumble it on the one. “We undefeated but who keeping score?” You right, Pooh. You goddamn right.

TL:DR

In conclusion, this new Little Brother album is a great, if unexpected, reunion album. It’s the triumph of blackness as well as the audacity of hope where all hope was seemingly lost. It’s the epilogue their legacy didn’t really need but that we as fans appreciate so, so much. It’s Phonte and Rapper Big Pooh doing fan service at times but never putting it on too thick: yes, they’re going to the well of nostalgia, but the sauce still has a definite 2019 taste. They’re even more full of wisdom than they ever were, and the punchlines are hitting just as hard.

It’s, dare we say, dope beats and dope rhymes. What else could we want?