Harder now that it’s over

I suppose I should've known it was a rap for Little Brother back when it was announced that 9th Wonder wouldn't be contributing any beats to their next album. I mean, it does seem odd that a group would take out a press release to announce that one of its members won't be contributing to its next album, no?

Imagine how 9th Wonder must have felt. After all, it was almost as if they were suggesting that it was his fault The Minstrel Show sold so few copies that Phonte and the other fellow have to show up to the Atlantic Records offices on weekends and clean Cheeto dust from the TI's computers with a compressed air gun.

They may have had a point though. As much as I enjoy 9th Wonder's production, it seems like he hit some sort of wall in terms of artistic development a long-ass time ago. Basically, he never really got any better than he was when they put out The Listening. What's more, the novelty of his schtick has long since run out.

Even when his shit's that good, it's like, Of course it is. But it's not like I haven't heard this before. In retrospect, he may have played himself by cranking out so many remix albums (he did the first one evar, right?) and weed carrier albums and the shit he's done with the Boot Camp Clik and so on and so forth.

Now they've gone and announced that 9th Wonder is no longer a member of the group at all, which I took to mean there's some sort of beef. You'll recall that 9th Wonder would rarely, if ever tour with them, and my guess is that him getting the U-God treatment on the next album couldnt' have helped matters.

Also, Little Brother no longer have a deal with Atlantic Records, so maybe that's the final straw. If 9th Wonder can still clock a few grand here and there cranking out the same shitty beat he's been making since 2002, why bother going through the hassel of being on Koch Records with those other two bums?

Zero records sold at $8 per album still equals $0.

Which begs the question: what will become of the other two members of Little Brother now that they have no producer and no record label? My guess is that no other major labels are knocking down their doors with record deals, especially after seeing what happened with their homeboys The Roots at Def Jam.