I honestly have been holding back on my emotions/opinions about Little Brother’s upcoming “last album” and the whole concept that 9th and Phonte are beefing right now and that one of my favorite hip-hop groups of all time is calling it quits.

Considering that this past weekend, Soundgarden just reunited here in Seattle after not playing a show together since 1997, a huge part of me knows that if all three of these hip-hop geniuses live long enough, they WILL do a reunion tour 8-10 years from now and try to collect bank. It’s a fact of the music industry…so I will call this a temporary separation. Between the love that Big Dho, the Justice League, Chaundon, and all of the LB affiliates have for one another, it’s impossible that we won’t be hearing anything less than 3-4 releases per year from these cats for the next few years. Not as Little Brother, but as a conglomerate.

STILL…CAN I GRIEVE? Goddamn. It’s just hitting me that LB is really trying to call it quits. What type of bullshit is that? I get that life moves forward at all times…but yo. Read the rest of this entry »

Today I popped Elzhi’s Out of Focus EP into my tape deck (yes I still listen to cassettes) and reminisced on how gifted Elzhi is as an MC. That EP is from like ’98 –I’ve even been told it distinctly sounds like it’s from ’98 –and mostly features production from DJ House Shoes. Neither Elzhi nor Shoes had come-up in the rap world yet, but both were just a year or two away from changing that. This is all around the time that Detroit artists like Dwele G, Waajeed, Hodge Podge (now Big Tone) and El were all emerging out of The Hip-Hop Shop/St. Andrews and on the verge of record deals.

Here we are some 11-12 years later and Elzhi is still coming off the top with crazy quotables and verses unlike any other rapper. It’s clear that he’s getting better with age and I’m loving him for it. Instead of having House Shoes on production this time, he’s got the even more internationally known, yet still Detroit born and raised Black Milk holding down beatmaking duties for his latest single. Those two have been grinding together since Slum Village’s Detroit Deli album. The two 313 favorites just released a video for their latest song called “Deep.” Ya gotta love the brief cameos from Phat Kat, T3, and DJ Dez.