Little Brother Says They Influenced Ye AKA Kanye West
Written by djfrosty on June 8, 2023
Little Brother remains one of the best groups in Hip-Hop history and their impact and influence is still flourishing some two decades later. Phonte and Rapper Big Pooh recently shared in an excellent podcast interview plenty about their background, including saying that had a heavy influence on Kanye West when the Chicago superstar was early on the rise.
Little Brother sat down with the Dear Culture podcast, hosted by Panama Jackson. The three gentlemen discussed the early days of Little Brother, the impact of their 2003 album The Listening, and the nature of their relationship with their former bandmate, 9th Wonder.
Fans of the group are well aware of the track “I See Now” which features a strong verse from Kanye West and it would probably figure that the producer and rapper, a member at the time of the sprawling Roc-A-Fella camp, served as an inspiration but Little Brother says it was the other way around.
From theGrio:
Panama Jackson: There are a lot of groups in hip hop who will never be remembered. Y’all will never be forgotten. Like do y’all ever sit back, reflect on that part of it? Like y’all literally cemented a spot in a genre of music in hip-hop that will never be forgotten.
Phonte: Um yeah, I mean Pooh I’ll let you take it but I’ll just say. I think it was more so you know, Kanye didn’t influence us, we influenced him.
Panama: Yeah.
Phonte: So you know I just want to put that out there and make sure that’s clear. Pooh you can take it from here.
Panama: Make it clear right, I’m with you.
Big Pooh: Every now and again you have the moments where you like, damn, you know, look what we did. Or look at the impact, you know, that that we’ve had. But, you know, like, even when we when I saw they have put our name up at the Grammys when they was doing the fifth year of hip hop, and they had our name and it was front and center like that was that was one of the moments I was like, oh, censor word like, it was definitely one of the moments, it was just like, I expect us to always have quality. I expect excellence. But it’s still unexpected when people or when you step back and start seeing the high regard were held in. Not that we don’t deserve it. It’s just I’ve been so busy doing the work I don’t take a lot of time to. You know, sit back and acknowledge the work.
Check out the conversation between Little Brother and Dear Culture’s Panama Jackson below.
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Photo: Getty
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