Little Brother, most likely to blow this year, and there sophomore album titled ‘The Minstrel Show’ is there first on a major label. Rapper Big Pooh and Phonte a rapping duo with one of the hottest underground producer 9th wonder (most notably working with Jay-Z ‘Threats’) in rap today. There debut remains an underground favourite and so does Phonte’s Foreign Exchange album.

The biggest thing you’ll notice is there’s not much in terms of live music on this album in fact the whole album was produced using Fruity Loops by 9th wonder with the exception of ‘Watch Me’ which is produced by Khrysis and has Jazzy Jeff doing scratches in the background.. What to expect from the production? Incredible baselines a lot of samples and drum loops snare & kicks and a few other instruments thrown into the mix.

The album starts off with ‘Welcome To The Minstrel Show’ a intro that sets the mood which follows through the whole album and even is the ending of the album ‘Minstrel Show Clothing Theme’. For those who don’t know In the minstrel shows of the late 1800’s, white and Black performers would blacken their faces with cork and perform as stereotypical, grossly exaggerated racist caricatures of Black culture. The whole album runs almost like a TV series on a network ‘UBN’, there’s a lot of interludes and skits after tracks and one skit even extends to being an RnB parody like song titled ‘Cheatin’.

Apart from that the tracks were Big Pooh and Phonte spit are amazing simply put, you have two rappers who were better than your average rappers on their first album who have now stepped up their games the lyrics are more harder hitting and the flows perfected. The album flows from one track to another track the best example of this is how ‘Beautiful Morning’ leads onto ‘The Becoming’. Also the subject matter is extremely diverse and covers a range of subjects.

Overall this album gets a 4.5/5 only reason it doesn’t deserve a 5/5 is because the interludes and skits ruin repeated plays from the beginning to end of the album. Buy this album if you want a break from the norm.