A week before opening for Boyz II Men, Little Brother talks sex jams
When Phonte Coleman, one of two emcees in Durham hip-hop act Little Brother,
opens the front door of his DJ's home in North Raleigh, he's visibly tired
and stressed. As he shuffles his bare feet across a hardwood floor, he
struggles to hold his eyes open. In just 11 hours, he'll fly to Hawaii with
DJ Flash and Rapper Big Pooh for a secret MySpace-sponsored show. He has
family in town, and he's been running errands and recording all day in
preparation for the trip.
But 15 minutes later, Coleman's eyes are wide open. He's laughing, singing
and clapping to the sounds of his memories: Boyz II Men, Usher, Jodeci and
other essential '90s sex jams. Standing alongside Flash in a small bedroom
converted into a DJ studio, lined from ceiling to floor and wall to wall with
battered vinyl singles and hip-hop posters, Coleman displays the same
charisma when talking about music that he does in making his own music. In
fact, after our mix of 12 songs was done, he wanted to hear more, despite the
settling dusk outside and his encroaching flight time. He downloaded R.
Kelly's "The Zoo"—"I'm your sexasaurus, baby"—and kept singing and laughing.
BOYZ II MEN, "I'LL MAKE LOVE TO YOU" (1994)
PHONTE COLEMAN: Oh, Jesus. [Laughs.] Well, I saw 'em live once. I was in
seventh grade ... the Greensboro Coliseum. It was the tour with Boyz II Men,
Jodeci and Hammer as the headliner. They did a good job. ... At the time,
when this came out, I really did like the song, but now—I find with a lot of
Babyface stuff—the syrup is just a little too thick. They're some good
memories to this. This wasn't even the coldest song on the album, though. I
wasn't even fucking with this one. The shit was "50 Candles." That was the
ballad on that album. I used to get it in doing phone-bone off of "50
Candles." But this shit here, they played it on the radio too much. I used to
hear it a million times, and I was just like, "If y'all never play this shit
again, it'll be too soon."
DJ FLASH: High school, baby.
PC: Yeah, notice how old he is? He was in high school, and I was still in
middle school. [Laughs.]
DJ: I was a sophomore in high school. Like he said, phone-boning, all that
good stuff.
USHER, "NICE & SLOW" (1997)
PC: God damn.
DJ: I still rock this in the car!
PC: This was my freshman year at Central, and in the dorms, they gave us
cable. We got cable that year, so we used to get Midnight Love on B.E.T. So
you can take your cakin' to new levels: You used to cake on the phone and
listen to music. Now you can cake and watch videos with your girl. ... This
was a solid joint, another phone-bone classic.
DJ: I had just gotten to North Carolina when this came out, when I met who
I'm with now, y'know what I'm saying? [Laughs.] I was going back and forth,
and this is one of my very special songs.
PC: This is when R&B was kind of getting fucked up, though. This was when
like "Splackavellie" and all that shit started coming out. "It's like Romeo
and Juliet/ Hot sex on the platter just to make you sweat." ... '97-'98, R&B
was just in a funny place. But this was one of the ones that was like a
well-written song.
R. KELLY, "SEX IN THE KITCHEN" (2005)
PC: Jesus, Lord. [Sings.] "Girl you're in the kitchen/ cooking me a meal/
Something makes me wanna come in and get a feel..."
DJ: Who does that, man? Like, "You know what? I'm looking at her. Yeah, that
right there. Tomatoes!" [Scribbling on an imaginary notebook.]
PC: R. Kelly is a talented dude. He's just a sick motherfucker in the mind.
The dude is an incredible songwriter. Motherfuckers be clowning him when he
say this shit, but he really is like the Marvin Gaye of this era, as far as
longevity, his track record, his records as far as his hits go. Dude can do
it all, but he's a sick motherfucker. I can't support his music no more.
INDEPENDENT WEEKLY: But he was acquitted, you know?
PC: Yeah, he was acquitted, but that don't mean he didn't do the shit! I saw
the tape ... I still got his old stuff, and he's got songs I'm still a fan
of. If we judged artists based on their personal lives, there wouldn't be
nobody we listened to. But, with this case for me, it was one of the few
times where I was like, "I can't support this motherfucker no more." Clearly,
dude has a problem, and—until somebody makes him seek help for that shit and
people stop enabling him and if we as an audience keep supporting him, we
ain't helping it none—I ain't buying no more of his records.
DJ: He looks in the camera!
PC: ["Sex in the Kitchen"] represents why so many people fuck with him. It
really is some common man shit. You just chillin' at the crib and you see
your girl like cooking it up in the kitchen and she has her little lace
panties on, you end up getting it on in the kitchen. "Fuck it. Just put the
oven on 350. It ain't gone burn. Now get your ass on this counter."
R. KELLY, "SEX PLANET" (2007)
PC: Kells again?
DJ: It sounds like he was just answering what you were saying.
PC: I don't know this one. What is it?
IW: "Sex Planet."
PC: Oh! This is the one where he's like, "I'll be in Uranus"?
IW: Yeah, he goes from common-man to astronaut sex.
PC: [Laughs.] Exactly. ... This is my problem with R. Kelly. The motherfucker
can write and sing anything, and ... he's written so many great songs, but
then he'll turn around and do some shit like this. This was the same album
that had the zoo sex song on it. He had a song where he was doing monkey
sounds. He was the sex-orangutan or some shit. It was horrible, man.
IW: Is it possible for a guy like R. Kelly to come back from the brink at
this point? Can he ever return to normalcy?
PC: Just when I think that he's done everything, when I think he's taken it
to levels of ignorance that I thought were just not possible, he finds a way
to one-up himself. One night, me and my wife, they actually showed ["Trapped
in the Closet"] on IFC. ... I couldn't turn away. So a midget and what next?
I thought that was like the most ignorant shit ever, but then, on the Double
Up album, he had a jam called "Real Talk" where he was just cussing: "Bitch,
I wish you would/ Burn my motherfuckin' clothes." I was like, "Yo! This nigga
has lost his motherfucking mind." It never stops with him. Every time I think
he has reached the pinnacle of ignorance, he finds a way to outdo it. I don't
know where it comes from.
JODECI, "FEENIN'" (1993)
PC: I think I bought this album and Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) on the
same day. I bought this on tape, and I bought the Wu-Tang on CD.
DJ: This was like the ultimate house-party grind song for me. There weren't
no clubs. I'm from a small town. So we did house parties, and when this song
came on, that's when you got all your feels.
PC: I don't know why they don't do this in the clubs no more. They don't play
slow joints no more in the club. I know you do it from time to time, but
that's how you get on the girl, when you get in her ear. You can't get no
number to Soulja Boy.
DJ: Fellas don't understand that. They want to group up together in the dance
floor, while all the ladies will be like, "Look at these silly niggas."
PC: Look at these silly niggas. They want to do the homie. "Do the homie/ do
the homie." I don't know why DJs stopped doing that shit.
FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD, "THE POWER OF LOVE" (1984)
PC: I don't know this. Who's this?
IW: It's Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
PC: I know the name. This is some '80s shit, right?
IW: Of course. "The Power of Love." Just wait for the break.
PC: Yeah, I'm waiting. ... Where is this going? Bring on those power chords,
baby. [Laughs.]
IW: This is his soul singing, I suppose.
PC: Oh, that's soul? He's white, I take it. He has to be.
DJ: I would ask you to run that part back: "The power of love..." [Laughs.
Phonte rewinds it.]
PC: It sounds like a bad Christopher Cross impersonation. He wanted to write
like an "Arthur's Theme" or "Laura" or "Sailing," but this shit quite don't
sail. It didn't make it out the docks. It don't go nowhere. That shit ain't
hot, cuz. Sorry, Frank.
BOYZ II MEN, "UHH AHH" (1991)
PC: [Laughs.] This was the joint, but they fucked my head up totally when
they came with the slow remix. "10, 9, 8, 7..." This one is dope, but that
remix that came out on the East Coast All-Stars album, which I have still...
IW: That was the first CD I ever bought. And The Bodyguard soundtrack.
PC: You know what? You're getting a pass for that because that was like the
Hannah Montana of its day. Everybody had that shit. ...
DJ: This record goes back to the "Do the homie" now. This record used to get
rub, but now I do the remix, the "10, 9, 8, 7, 6..." remix, and I go into
another record. They don't want to hear that slow shit. They want to keep it
moving.
PC: Here's Mike's rap. Here's the deep-voice rap. [Turns it up.]
IW: C'mon, rap it. You know it, right?
PC: I can't make that shit out. I couldn't make it out 17 years ago. ... I
hear lips and hips. That's about all I can make out of Mike's rap. Well,
let's see if we can make out Mike's rap. [The next two minutes are spent
deciphering the rap and correctly predicting the end rhymes: air with hair,
duty with booty.] Mike deciphered, ladies and gentlemen! We have broken the
Mike code. For 17 years, no one knew what he was saying.
IW: It was well worth the wait.
PC: It was well worth the wait. "To grasp, to hold, to rock that booty." Word
the fuck up, Mike. Knock them hoes down. Knock it down, Mike.
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