Getback

After the finger-waggling of the divisive The Minstrel Show, Little Brother's third official full-length-- and first without 9th Wonder-- represents an attempt at figuring out just why the duo are rapping, and for whom.

Little Brother's third album, Getback, opens with a typically lush beat that combines ecstatic strings and glistening piano, before a jarring burst of static ushers in a much harder groove and an incendiary Big Pooh lyric that suggests the plus-sized MC has traded in his Pete Rock albums for classic Public Enemy. It's…

Hip-hop is most certainly not dead and nowhere near dying, and, as Getback shows, neither is Little Brother.