Little Brother is an American hip-hop duo from Durham, North Carolina, that consists of rappers Phonte and Big Pooh. DJ and producer 9th Wonder was an original member of the group but departed in 2007. The group has produced five acclaimed studio albums and six mixtapes. Little Brother is highly regarded among hip-hop fans and critics.

The individual members of the group, rappers Phonte (Phonte Coleman), and Rapper Big Pooh (Thomas Jones), and DJ/producer 9th Wonder (Pat Douthit), met in 1998 while enrolled as college students at North Carolina Central University in Durham, North Carolina. The group began as a trio. Little Brother were members of the North Carolina–based alternative hip-hop collective, Justus League.

In a February 2003 interview with MVRemix.com, Phonte explained the origins of the group's name:

Tribe, De La, Public Enemy ... were like our big brothers in the game so now we are the little brothers of that movement ... carrying on the tradition of good music.

The official debut for Little Brother came in August 2001 with their first recording, "Speed".

According to 9th Wonder in an interview with Complex, another rapper Median was actually supposed to be on the track before they got a hold of Big Pooh:

The Listening was done in Missie Ann. Cesar Comanche, who I met when I was attending North Carolina State University, lived not far from the school. He stayed in a two-bedroom apartment, and that's basically our studio Missie Ann. [Comanche] named it after his sister. And we pretty much did that album in Comanche's other room besides the bathroom. Every song on The Listening has a story to it, which is crazy. We started recording The Listening in August of 2001, which will make this August the ten-year anniversary when we started Little Brother. So the story goes like this. At the time Phonte was doing his 9 to 5 at Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, the insurance company, and he would come into the studio, and then going back to his 9 to 5, sometimes without even sleeping. That was a repeating fashion. One day, Phonte and I were doing a song called 'Speed.' Phonte did his part, and we took 'Take A Look' by Joc Max and Grap Luva, put out by DJ Spinna, which has a part that goes, 'I put my JBs on when I hustle with speed,' and I really loved that part, so I put that in there. We asked Median to be on it. He said he was down to do it, but on the weekend we wanted to record it, we couldn't find Median. Pooh, who was originally from Virginia, was in town at the time with his friends in Charlotte, North Carolina. Matter of fact, I think around March or April of 2001, Pooh asked Phonte to be a group, and Phonte said, 'No.' But Median wasn't around, so we were like, 'Let's just ask Pooh, he's in town.' So Pooh came in, and recorded the song, and we listened to the song like 18 times, and I looked at Phonte afterward and said, 'Let's try to be a group, man. Let's see what it sounds like.' Median could have been a member of Little Brother. 'Speed' was the first song we recorded as a group, because Median didn't show up. But we thought it sounded good, so we just said, 'Let's be a group.' And that's the first song in Little Brother's existence.

They continued to work the local, Raleigh Durham–area scene and were eventually signed by independent record label ABB Records. In 2002, they released the cult hit 7" single "Atari 2600", with lyrics centering on video games.