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In the Crates with 9th Wonder

9th Wonder

In the Crates by Hubert Sawyers, 9/25/07

If you claim to be a current hip hop head and you do not know who 9th Wonder is, then I hate to tell you this but … you’re not. Well, you’re not as current as you may think, let’s put it that way.

9th Wonder is one of the most talked-about producers in the widespread internet age, outside of his influences and mentors DJ Premier and Pete Rock. It was his soul/jazz-based productions that catapulted Little Brother from OkayPlayer.com’s flavor of the month to landing a major label deal. 9th’s signature beats also saw him lending his talents to the likes of Jay-Z, Destiny’s Child and Mary J Blige. But 9th stays rooted in the true school side of things, producing critically-acclaimed projects for Murs and Buckshot, not to mention the internet buzz for his leaked-too-soon project with female eMCee Jean Grae. He is finally releasing his first solo album titled Dream Merchant Vol. 2, due to drop in late October.

I recently linked up with the busy producer and now, college professor to chat about his new project, his role in the proliferation of computer producers and his hip hop history course at North Carolina Central University that he teaches along with Christopher “Play” Martin.

Drop Magazine: Dream Merchant Vol. 2, you want to tell us a little bit about it?
9th Wonder: Dream Merchant is actually my first album – my album. You know, the ones I did for Murs, the ones I did for Buckshot and LB, it’s been their record. I’m just the producer on it. This is my record; I got to pick the beats on it – the beats I want people to hear. I definitely got some different stuff coming up, but this is stuff that I like. It’s a boom bap record. I like the record, man. It’s long overdue and I’m glad that people get to hear it.

DM: In the making of DM2, how was the process in creating this album. Was it easy thing to get everybody together?
9th: Umm no, at the time, I was juggling a lot of projects together… Doing Murs’ project, working on Jean Grae’s record, working on the second Buckshot record and even the first one. These are all things that were going on all at one time. I was working on 6 or 7 projects at one time, trying to piece them altogether. It’s not an old record … just because of my scheduling, plus now I’m teaching. It’s kind of hard to keep the balance in that. I just try to do everything with the best of my abilities.

DM: On this project, what was your favorite track and why?
9th: Umm… man, boy that’s hard. One of my favorites is the Big Pooh / Buddy Klein joint. “What Makes A Man,” that’s one of my favorite joints. I usually like that one. Another one is … I like the Camp Lo track a lot. A lot of people want to hear Camp Lo again, so I like that one a lot. That Saigon and Joe Scudda joint, I like that one a lot too.

DM: With the advent of the internet, cats no longer need to be in the same vicinity to consider collaborating. Even some of your own fam, like the critically-acclaimed Foreign Exchange (Phonte of Little Brother and Nicolay) project, are a good example of this. Now did you send your tracks off or did you have cats come in and record for this project?
9th: Some of the stuff I sent out. A lot of times we have to send stuff out, because of schedules. A lot of people like to tour; a lot of people move around all over the place. We are in a different place than from 1995. It’s a much busier place. The technology and stuff, people don’t have the time anymore to like, sit down and do a record, because they have so many things going on. And so, some people you gotta send out the record, some people they’ll come in. Some people’ll be in from New York and will come through the studio and get it done that way. I mean, there are so many ways. For the most part… it was kind of half and half. A lot of people came in and a lot of people I sent the tracks out.

DM: Do you have any interesting stories that came up in the midst of recording Dream Merchant?
9th: Not… really. Well, you know what, the last thing that we did was I re-flipped some of The Listening samples and I had a female eMCee by the name of Rhapsody and she rapped over that for interludes. That was something I came up with at the last minute. And also, one of the first songs that was done for this project was the Saigon / Joe Scudda joint. But it was a song that we finished up last, because the scratches were added last by DJ Flash. We did that song first and waited, waited, waited and then the scratches were added at the last minute. I mean, there wasn’t going to be any hook at all; it was just going to be straight [through], you know. It ended up being a hook on it and like I said, it’s one of my favorite joints. That was what interesting about it.

DM: I have found you to be an interesting case study. You are the first producer who publicly got props being known for making beats using software.
9th: Right.

DM: Now a lot of cats use software because it’s more accessible, cheaper and at times free, if you know what you’re doing. I have always felt that while a producer won’t necessarily make better music with better materials, unless he has talent to begin with. Cats like DJ Premier and Marley Marl has shown us genius with minimal means. Have you always used software?
9th: Yeah, I have. When I was in college, I couldn’t afford an MP[C]. I haven’t done anything in my career, because I wanted to be different. I did it because… just like any other hip hopper does something, they don’t have the means, so they have to make up something else. That’s why I started using Fruity Loops. It wasn’t a situation where I was trying to do something different or something like that. I didn’t know me being in my dorm room, I didn’t know it was going to make that much noise.

DM: Did you have aspirations to upgrade to hardware? Like copping an MPC or something…
9th: I do, I did. I mean, who knows? I might pick up a joint and try some joints, but I’ll be doing it for me and I wouldn’t be doing it for anybody else. This game is afraid for some strange reason… a lot of people in this game are afraid of being themselves. Maybe it’s because cats got a late start, maybe it’s because they got an early start. Maybe it’s because they got into the game at age 18 and the game has become more of them than they are. For me, I got into it at age 28, so I had a pretty good idea who I was as a person before I got into this thing, which sometimes can be a fault too. I’m comfortable just doing me, man. If I use Fruity Loops or if I use an MP, I guarantee nobody would know the difference. I mean, I still have people come up to me saying, “Come on man, you really using Fruity Loops?” People still ask me that.

DM: I hear you. Actually, I know from personal experience. I know guys that are very proficient at using Fruity Loops. And there’s enough internet producers with wack production that use Fruity Loops and people can tell the difference. Now your first copy of Fruity Loops, now was it legit? Or did you cop a crack? I know you may not want to admit that and if you don’t that’s cool.
9th: I got it from somebody and that’s true. I mean, at the time, when I first using Fruity Loops, I wasn’t that internet-savvy. I was raised in a hip hop generation when there was no internet. A lot of kids, they can remember it, but it wasn’t there. Like if they had to listen to a song, they had to drive over to their house, instead of “let me e-mail it to you,” which kills the whole notion of hip hop community. Making friends over records, like, that doesn’t happen anymore.

DM: Now that you’ve gotten a little bit of success (notoriety, financially, etc), have you upgraded your production set-up since the days of the dorm room?
9th: I have Pro Tools and that’s not because I’m trying to follow. It’s because of you can’t live in China without learning Chinese. I mean, you just can’t. This is a Pro Tools industry. Everything from movies, they use Pro Tools as the base. I had the undaunted task of taking all the sessions from Cool Edit and switching them over to Pro Tools, so I can take them and load them up into any studio, which is something that, you know, doesn’t take as much time.

Monitor speakers was a big thing, too. When we recording The Listening in my man Comanche’s apartment, he had these Peavey speakers where only one side was working. I mean, he had two speakers and only one side worked. Now I’m working on machines or I’m working on monitors that you can hear the pan automatically. And I guess all of that time, it was really, you know, taking a kid out of Indiana, shootin’ on the peach basket, you know what I’m saying, and then putting him in the gym with a real basket. It’s going to be easy to him, because he’s worked on minimal equipment. It’s the same thing for me, I guess.

DM: I must say I did notice from the material I’ve heard from you recently, the sound of your production sounds cleaner and dare I say smoother.
9th: I appreciate it man.

DM: Tell us about “Hip Hop In Context”, the course you guys teach at North Carolina Central.
9th: North Carolina Central is a school that myself and Chris Martin met at. We were both attending North Carolina Central; it’s a historically black college in Durham, North Carolina. It’s about 5 minutes from Duke, 15 minutes from Chapel Hill. This is a big college area around here. The class is from 1973 to 1997. The days that Kool Herc first started his parties in the Bronx all the way up to the day that Biggie died. And we do that because it’s a class full of 18 year olds and 19 year olds as well, so some of these records that we hold so dear to us – Illmatic, People’s Instinctive Travels, It Takes A Nation [of Millions] To Hold Us Back – these are records that are almost as old as these kids. I think hip hoppers needs to start paying attention to that and understand that these records are almost as old as these kids. You can’t expect them to know who these people are, especially when TV is not doing a good job itself. Except when the Hip Hop Honors comes on and that’s once a year. So we take the opportunity to teach these kids what they missed.

DM: Is this a music course? What field of study does this course fall under?
9th: It’s a flat history course. From 1973 to 1997, the first 24 years of hip hop is what we teach. It’s not a “I’m going to show you how to make beats” or “I’m going to show you how to rap.” This is a flat chronological history of the music. I got a class today talking about the birth of graffiti and breakdancing. Topics we’ll be talking about today are Scene, Marc Ecko and talking about Crazy Legs and Rocksteady Crew.

DM: Yeah, I would never imagine to be able to take such a class. I am just scrambling in my brain to figure out where I would look to register for this class. It seems a bit unimaginable going to college around ’98 to ‘03.
9th: Well at the time, hip hop was not old enough to be a history course yet. In ’98, hip hop was only 25 years. You can remember the early 90s. You were in elementary school and middle school. These kids were born in ’88. Everything has its time and it’s time for that now, especially with hip hop in the state it’s in. Taking this stuff down and making a chronological history before it goes waste.

DM: What would be a homework assignment? Am I writing papers, doing a presentation or what?
9th: End of the course, you have to create a presentation. There’s a 4-page paper at the end of the course [also]. The 4-page paper is on anything within the first 20 years of hip hop that you want it be on. The homework assignment is something we call “Reflections.” What we talk about in class, how did you feel about what we talked about today. How do you feel about what we talked about today. There are pop quizzes. There are like 2 tests that we have over the course of the class.

DM: Do you have any broader vision for this course?
9th: Yeah, I would love to do something. Hip hop is in the same place jazz was in the late-60s and 70s. Originally, folks were like, “You want to do jazz? What’s that about.” Now there’s jazz study programs in every state institutions across the nation. I think hip hop is at a place where it needs to be that, because we influence American culture so much. From the cars, talk to the commercials, movies everywhere. It’s already at so many schools now, but it’s not being taught by the players. It’s being taught by scholars who quote-unquote “studied the art.” [They] studied the art, but never made a beat, scratched or DJed, or graph written or wrote a rhyme in their life. … Why are you teaching this class? We need to know this stuff. A lot of the things that we know as hip hoppers that are Bible to us, a lot of these scholars have no idea about it.

DM: Well, thanks for talking to us. Any last words?
9th: Man, please please buy the Little Brother on September 25th. Please go buy the Dream Merchant album on October 9th.