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After the ascendance of greats like DJ Premier, Pete Rock and Q-Tip in the 90s. There was a new wave of producers that would come to prominence in the 2000s who would carry the torch for Hip-Hop and take it in new directions. This new generation of beatmakers included the likes of Madlib, Kanye West, Just Blaze and J Dilla. Another one of these well-respected track masters was North Carolinaâs 9th Wonder, whose warm and soulful records combined with hard boom-bap drums made the Little Brother trio of Phonte, Rapper Big Pooh and 9th one of the most beloved groups of the 00s.
Beyond the group, the producer born Patrick Douthit would go on to craft tracks for everyone from Jay Z and Destinyâs Child to Buckshot and De La Soul. Most recently, he has worked on Anderson .Paakâs Malibu album, released Brighter Daze, his sixth collaborative project with Murs, and put out Indie 500, a compilation with Talib Kweli. 9th also runs his own label, Jamla Records, home to artists like Rapsody and GQ, as well as managing a collective of producers known as The Soul Council. To say he has a full plate would be a massive understatement.
Another endeavor he is undertaking is celebrating J Dilla at Dilla Weekend in Miami this weekend (2/5-2/7). 9th was not only a peer of Dilla, he was a fan. He took time out of his busy schedule to speak with Ambrosia For Heads, at length, about what made Dilla different from other producers, Jay Deeâs approach to making records, and the separate branch of Hip-Hop the MC/producer created.
Ambrosia For Heads: Thereâs photo of J Dilla holding a vinyl copy of Little Brotherâs The Listening. Had you seen that before?
9th Wonder: Yeah, I have. That photo was taken in the ABB [Records] offices in 2003, when [Little Brother] first signed to ABB. The Listening vinyl was released. Dilla was in the ABB offices, and he took a picture with it. The crazy thing about that though is I never met him. Not once. [We never talked] on the phone, nothing. The only thing I know in my relationship with James Yancey isâŠwell four things: his mom and uncle, his music, that picture, and his grave. Thatâs it. Iâve never talked to him. Iâve never met him. I never had a phone conversation. Nothing.
Ambrosia For Heads: Thatâs crazy. I had assumed you guys had worked together, since you were peers. What was it like for you to work on the remix to âThe Look Of Loveâ?
9th Wonder: âLook Of LoveââŠthat was 2002. That was around the time where I was just remixing anything that I could get my hands on. I did a thing called 9th Invented The Remix; I remixed an Amerie joint, I remixed a Bilal joint. This was before I [released] Godâs Stepson. All of this stuffâŠI was remixing anything I could, [Nasâ] â2nd Childhood,â anything I could touch. âThe Look Of Loveâ had an acapella to it. I remixed itâthis was at a time when I was selling beats for $50. Itâs early times, hungry times. When I put it up, everybody was like, âDamn, this remix is dope.â Thatâs one of the songs that if a 9th Wonder fans wants to prove that he or she has been down with me since day one, thatâs one of the songs they mention: âI been down with you since âThe Look Of Love (Remix).â Iâm like, âJesus. Really, 2002?â
Ambrosia For Heads: So you had to have been aware of J Dillaâs work before that photo. Would you say you admired his work? Were you a fan?
9th Wonder: Yeah. The first person to turn me onto, at the time âJay Dee,â was Phonte. But it was through Slum Village. Office Space, the movie, âGet Dis Moneyâ was on that soundtrack.
Ambrosia For Heads: I remember, and in the movie.
9th Wonder: â In the movie, rightâthe bar scene, itâs playing in the background. Thatâs when I knew who he was. That was â98. Prior to that, of course there was [De La Soulâs] âStakes Is Highâ and there was [The Pharcydeâs] âRunninâ,â but I didnât know he did those. I was stuck in â[DJ Premier], Pete Rock, RZA Land.â I was stuck there. Once you get stuck in an artist or producerâs [niche], itâs hard to see anything elseâeven if itâs dope. But I knew âRunnin'â was dope, and I knew [A Tribe Called Questâs] Beats, Rhymes, & Life was dope, and I knew Stakes Is High was dope. But I didnât know this guy from Detroit who was doing it. So Slum Village was like my introduction to Jay Dee. It was through that, it was through my good buddy Pizzo from HipHopSite.com, it was through his site, âcause he posted âPlayersâ on his site. Thatâs when you used to click on it and the quality was shytty, right? The quality was totally bad. So I got introduced to Dilla that way.
Ambrosia For Heads: So thatâs exactly the same way for me. I remembered that movie, and checkinâ it outâand I remembered âPlayers.â That sent me to Slum. Then I started doing the research, and that sent me to Janet Jackson, and Erykah [Badu] and all of that. I know you worked on Erykahâs New Amerykah Part One, with âHoneyâ being the breakout single. A lot of that album was kind of an ode to Dilla and his passing. Did you and Erykah talk about that as one of the themes surrounding the album?
9th Wonder: No. Not as much. I just knew by listening to it thatâs what it was about. It had something to do with Dillaâthe sound of it. In talking about that album though, if we discuss the idea ofâwhich is a term I really donât deal with a lot is âNeo Soul.â Neo Soul became a market after Erykah and DâAngelo [came out] and everybody was like, âWhat is this?â They never called it Neo Soul themselves; they just wanted to be different from Jodeci and Boyz II Men and 702âwhoever was R&B contemporary at the time. But the wild thing about it is the sound of what people know as quote-unquote Neo Soul, Dilla is the father of it. The warm sounds, the hand-claps and all of thatâDilla is the father of it. I donât even think that he meant to be the father of an art-form or market that some people see as pretentious and some people see as snobbish in certain ways or conscious. But the Dilla we know was in strip clubs. [Chuckles] The Dilla we know used to make beats, go to the strip club, and then come back. Like, if you look at the cover of Welcome 2 Detroit, itâs a stripper on the front. [Laughs] Itâs kind of ironic that the sound he quote-unquote fathered and the things that it represented, as we now know as Neo-Soul, it wasnât Dilla at all. Now weâre all children of Q-Tip and A Tribe Called Quest; letâs not get this confusedâwhen I say he is the father of quote-unquote Neo Soul. Whether weâre talking about The Roots, Outkast, Little Brother, Slum, Pac Div, Drake, Wale, Kanye [West]âweâre all children of A Tribe Called Quest, all of us. Thatâs how we started that jazzy family treeâTribe started that. But to break off of that family tree and have a family tree of his own, Dilla was that, that soundânot necessarily the beliefs, but that sound. I say all that to say; it makes sense that Badu would [pay homage to J Dilla on New Amerykah Part One].
Ambrosia For Heads: A lot of people know about his work in Soulquarians, but what youâre saying is that it started before that. When would you say it started for Dilla? What are some of the influential records?
9th Wonder: Iâma say the whole Slum Village sound. With âRunnin'â and âStakes Is High,â those were still hard, boom-bap records. But once we get to like Fan-Tas-Tic Vol. 1 and 2, those two, it turned from simple boom-bap records to kind of some James Brown-standing-around-the-campfire-clapping type records. Thatâs what those hand-claps were. It sounded like some â70s âAy!â Clap. âAy!â Clap. Thatâs what âGet This Moneyâ sounded like. It wasnât just the hard, quote-unquote New York-influenced sound. It sounded like somethinâ totally different. It was more laid back than that. âPlayersâ was like that. âGet Dis Moneyâ was that way. âGo Ladiesâ was that whole clapping [club] type of shyt. I think it started there. I think once he tapped into that it just opened up a whole new lane for beatmakers.
Ambrosia For Heads: In addition to the hand-claps, what would you say about the records he was using for samples? Hip-Hop went through our James Brown movement in the â80s, and we got to more George Clinton/P-Funk stuff in the â90s with Dr. Dre. What kind of records do you think he was pulling that were shaping that sound, in addition to the hand-claps?
9th Wonder: It wasnât too far fromâagain, what Q-Tip started. Q-Tip started the whole idea of âOkay, we beat up every James Brown record that we could. We exasperated every P-Funk record that we could.â So Q-Tip took the idea of âsome of this Cal Tjader recordâ or âwhatâs up with Lou Donaldson?â or âWhatâs up with Cannonball [Adderly]?â or âWhatâs up with Grant Green?â or âWhatâs up with Grover Washington? Why are we not using those?â So what Dilla did was take it to the next level. âOkay, we got the American Jazz artists. But whatâs up with the Brazilian Jazz records? Whatâs up with the German Jazz records, or the Japanese Jazz records?â Again, which is another family tree. Like you said, it was James Brown, James Brown, P-FunkâSoul. Then it turned into Jazz Fusion, Jazz. The only Jazz [Hip-Hop] was sampling at one point was Bob James, right? Then we turned into âOkay, letâs find Gap Mangione. Letâs find another Jazz guy. Letâs find this computerized, mathematical guy, and sample that.â Once it got there, it made crate diggers stop looking in the conventional placesâwhich, in turn, meant your ear had to be in a certain place.
Ambrosia For Heads: You talk about crate digging. What does it say about the work ethic that Dilla had to have to be finding these obscure records in the time before the Internet, before everything was available with a click? What did you learn about him by listening to those records that he was pulling?
9th Wonder: It took a lot. Weâre at a 20-year cycle for this boom-bap sound. On the mainstream, more-exposure level, with the success of the Anderson .Paak album, and even some of the stuff with me and Rhythm Roulette and stuff like that, weâre at a turning point where boom-bap is becoming the new old thing again. At one point in the mid and late 2000s, the room for creativity and the room for being different, when it comes to this sampling thing, was getting thin. Thereâs only so much you can do with a Soul record. So I came into the game around 2001, 2002. At that particular time, this is right after [Jay Zâs] The Blueprint. Kanye, Just Blaze, and BINK! were speeding up records and looping records. Me as a producer who also sampled Soul records, I was like, âHuh. I might not want to sample what theyâre saying so much, Iâm more concerned with the instruments behind it.â Itâs just the fact that I canât take the words off. So if you listen to a lot of my early stuff, I had to make that lane. âI canât lift Curtis Mayfieldâs vocals off of this song, but I can chop around his words. I can do that.â Dilla made crate-digging, looking for songs, looking for samples like âOkay, I know this sounds like a Pete Rock sample. How can I make this sample mine? How can I make it into a Dilla-sounding sample? Thereâs a lot of records out there, but sometimes we run up on the same stuff. How can I chop this recordâwhich I know my contemporaries got. How can I make this record mine?â Dilla made you think when it comes to listening to a joint. Dilla made you think on that particular level, with the records he chose and the beats that he made.
Ambrosia For Heads: How would you compare and contrast your style of beats with his?
9th Wonder: [Pauses] ManâŠI donât, to be honest. Thatâs a dangerous thing, to compare yourself to Dilla. I would say that, in large respect, we come from the same thought process of âYo, this is my sound.â If anything, Iâd say that Dilla and I, and Madlib, and Alchemist, and all the beat-makersâŠall the way from Pete and Preem, all the way to Marley Marl, if anything we all contrast each other in what we all believe in. We believe in our sound. We believe in the sound that we come from. We believe in preserving that sound, and making that sound goâno matter whoâs rapping on it, whether it be your most conscious rapper or your most hood trap-rapper. It donât matter. Our sound is our sound, and we refuse to compromise that for anybody. Dillaâs was respected across the board, from the undergroundest of the underground kid to Justin Timberlake, heâs respected all the way across the board. I would like to say in some respect, in some way, shape, or form, I try to make my brand, make my career, or make my sound respected like that as wellâfrom the most underground kid to Destinyâs Child. Itâs that particular sound no matter what, from the pop record to the record found on Sandbox Automatic. It donât matter. Thatâs [how] I see, in that particular way, that me and Dilla are alike. We understand that scope. We understand that we ainât gotta compromise to make a Janet Jackson joint or to make a Destinyâs Child joint, or âI can do a Badu joint and turn around and do a Common joint and then turn around and do a Frank-N-Dank joint.â So I took that and said I can do a joint with Murs or Jean Grae, and also turn around do a joint with Jill Scott and Mary J Blige and David Banner and Big Boi. I can still branch myself out without compromising myself.
Ambrosia For Heads: Who would say are your 5 favorite producers, they donât have to be âtop,â in any genre?
9th Wonder: Oh wow! Any genre? Iâm a huge Teddy Riley fan. Huge. Iâm probably a bigger Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis fan. I love the production of Al B. Sure and Kyle West. I was in love with that. Al B. Sureâs âRight Nowâ record which was kinda like the Tevin Campbell âAlone With Youâ recordâthem and Chucky Thompson really taught me how to make R&B-Hip-Hop records. When dudes like me can ride down the street bumpinâ a slow jam that got some bottom to it! We can talk Pete, Preem, and Da Beatminerz all day, and Dilla and Madlib, and Hi-Tek, and Nottzâand my own team, the Soul Council and all the people I love. But we talkinâ about producers, bruh? Those [ones I mentioned earlier] shaped the early â90s. All those shaped my high school and middle school. We talkinâ about Guy, and Janet, and New Editionâand Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis produced the N.E. Heartbreak album. That shaped my life, bruh! Outside of the Rap records, those are the records. So, we got Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, we got Teddy Riley, we got Al B. Sure and Kyle Westâthatâs three. Chucky Thompson, thatâs four because of Mary J. Blige My Life. That album alone⊠For the fifth, man, Iâma say Raphael Saadiq.
Ambrosia For Heads: You know who I thought you were gonna put in there? Devonte.
After the ascendance of greats like DJ Premier, Pete Rock and Q-Tip in the 90s. There was a new wave of producers that would come to prominence in the 2000s who would carry the torch for Hip-Hop and take it in new directions. This new generation of beatmakers included the likes of Madlib, Kanye West, Just Blaze and J Dilla. Another one of these well-respected track masters was North Carolinaâs 9th Wonder, whose warm and soulful records combined with hard boom-bap drums made the Little Brother trio of Phonte, Rapper Big Pooh and 9th one of the most beloved groups of the 00s.
Beyond the group, the producer born Patrick Douthit would go on to craft tracks for everyone from Jay Z and Destinyâs Child to Buckshot and De La Soul. Most recently, he has worked on Anderson .Paakâs Malibu album, released Brighter Daze, his sixth collaborative project with Murs, and put out Indie 500, a compilation with Talib Kweli. 9th also runs his own label, Jamla Records, home to artists like Rapsody and GQ, as well as managing a collective of producers known as The Soul Council. To say he has a full plate would be a massive understatement.
Another endeavor he is undertaking is celebrating J Dilla at Dilla Weekend in Miami this weekend (2/5-2/7). 9th was not only a peer of Dilla, he was a fan. He took time out of his busy schedule to speak with Ambrosia For Heads, at length, about what made Dilla different from other producers, Jay Deeâs approach to making records, and the separate branch of Hip-Hop the MC/producer created.
Ambrosia For Heads: Thereâs photo of J Dilla holding a vinyl copy of Little Brotherâs The Listening. Had you seen that before?
9th Wonder: Yeah, I have. That photo was taken in the ABB [Records] offices in 2003, when [Little Brother] first signed to ABB. The Listening vinyl was released. Dilla was in the ABB offices, and he took a picture with it. The crazy thing about that though is I never met him. Not once. [We never talked] on the phone, nothing. The only thing I know in my relationship with James Yancey isâŠwell four things: his mom and uncle, his music, that picture, and his grave. Thatâs it. Iâve never talked to him. Iâve never met him. I never had a phone conversation. Nothing.
Ambrosia For Heads: Thatâs crazy. I had assumed you guys had worked together, since you were peers. What was it like for you to work on the remix to âThe Look Of Loveâ?
9th Wonder: âLook Of LoveââŠthat was 2002. That was around the time where I was just remixing anything that I could get my hands on. I did a thing called 9th Invented The Remix; I remixed an Amerie joint, I remixed a Bilal joint. This was before I [released] Godâs Stepson. All of this stuffâŠI was remixing anything I could, [Nasâ] â2nd Childhood,â anything I could touch. âThe Look Of Loveâ had an acapella to it. I remixed itâthis was at a time when I was selling beats for $50. Itâs early times, hungry times. When I put it up, everybody was like, âDamn, this remix is dope.â Thatâs one of the songs that if a 9th Wonder fans wants to prove that he or she has been down with me since day one, thatâs one of the songs they mention: âI been down with you since âThe Look Of Love (Remix).â Iâm like, âJesus. Really, 2002?â
Ambrosia For Heads: So you had to have been aware of J Dillaâs work before that photo. Would you say you admired his work? Were you a fan?
9th Wonder: Yeah. The first person to turn me onto, at the time âJay Dee,â was Phonte. But it was through Slum Village. Office Space, the movie, âGet Dis Moneyâ was on that soundtrack.
Ambrosia For Heads: I remember, and in the movie.
9th Wonder: â In the movie, rightâthe bar scene, itâs playing in the background. Thatâs when I knew who he was. That was â98. Prior to that, of course there was [De La Soulâs] âStakes Is Highâ and there was [The Pharcydeâs] âRunninâ,â but I didnât know he did those. I was stuck in â[DJ Premier], Pete Rock, RZA Land.â I was stuck there. Once you get stuck in an artist or producerâs [niche], itâs hard to see anything elseâeven if itâs dope. But I knew âRunnin'â was dope, and I knew [A Tribe Called Questâs] Beats, Rhymes, & Life was dope, and I knew Stakes Is High was dope. But I didnât know this guy from Detroit who was doing it. So Slum Village was like my introduction to Jay Dee. It was through that, it was through my good buddy Pizzo from HipHopSite.com, it was through his site, âcause he posted âPlayersâ on his site. Thatâs when you used to click on it and the quality was shytty, right? The quality was totally bad. So I got introduced to Dilla that way.
Ambrosia For Heads: So thatâs exactly the same way for me. I remembered that movie, and checkinâ it outâand I remembered âPlayers.â That sent me to Slum. Then I started doing the research, and that sent me to Janet Jackson, and Erykah [Badu] and all of that. I know you worked on Erykahâs New Amerykah Part One, with âHoneyâ being the breakout single. A lot of that album was kind of an ode to Dilla and his passing. Did you and Erykah talk about that as one of the themes surrounding the album?
9th Wonder: No. Not as much. I just knew by listening to it thatâs what it was about. It had something to do with Dillaâthe sound of it. In talking about that album though, if we discuss the idea ofâwhich is a term I really donât deal with a lot is âNeo Soul.â Neo Soul became a market after Erykah and DâAngelo [came out] and everybody was like, âWhat is this?â They never called it Neo Soul themselves; they just wanted to be different from Jodeci and Boyz II Men and 702âwhoever was R&B contemporary at the time. But the wild thing about it is the sound of what people know as quote-unquote Neo Soul, Dilla is the father of it. The warm sounds, the hand-claps and all of thatâDilla is the father of it. I donât even think that he meant to be the father of an art-form or market that some people see as pretentious and some people see as snobbish in certain ways or conscious. But the Dilla we know was in strip clubs. [Chuckles] The Dilla we know used to make beats, go to the strip club, and then come back. Like, if you look at the cover of Welcome 2 Detroit, itâs a stripper on the front. [Laughs] Itâs kind of ironic that the sound he quote-unquote fathered and the things that it represented, as we now know as Neo-Soul, it wasnât Dilla at all. Now weâre all children of Q-Tip and A Tribe Called Quest; letâs not get this confusedâwhen I say he is the father of quote-unquote Neo Soul. Whether weâre talking about The Roots, Outkast, Little Brother, Slum, Pac Div, Drake, Wale, Kanye [West]âweâre all children of A Tribe Called Quest, all of us. Thatâs how we started that jazzy family treeâTribe started that. But to break off of that family tree and have a family tree of his own, Dilla was that, that soundânot necessarily the beliefs, but that sound. I say all that to say; it makes sense that Badu would [pay homage to J Dilla on New Amerykah Part One].
Ambrosia For Heads: A lot of people know about his work in Soulquarians, but what youâre saying is that it started before that. When would you say it started for Dilla? What are some of the influential records?
9th Wonder: Iâma say the whole Slum Village sound. With âRunnin'â and âStakes Is High,â those were still hard, boom-bap records. But once we get to like Fan-Tas-Tic Vol. 1 and 2, those two, it turned from simple boom-bap records to kind of some James Brown-standing-around-the-campfire-clapping type records. Thatâs what those hand-claps were. It sounded like some â70s âAy!â Clap. âAy!â Clap. Thatâs what âGet This Moneyâ sounded like. It wasnât just the hard, quote-unquote New York-influenced sound. It sounded like somethinâ totally different. It was more laid back than that. âPlayersâ was like that. âGet Dis Moneyâ was that way. âGo Ladiesâ was that whole clapping [club] type of shyt. I think it started there. I think once he tapped into that it just opened up a whole new lane for beatmakers.
Ambrosia For Heads: In addition to the hand-claps, what would you say about the records he was using for samples? Hip-Hop went through our James Brown movement in the â80s, and we got to more George Clinton/P-Funk stuff in the â90s with Dr. Dre. What kind of records do you think he was pulling that were shaping that sound, in addition to the hand-claps?
9th Wonder: It wasnât too far fromâagain, what Q-Tip started. Q-Tip started the whole idea of âOkay, we beat up every James Brown record that we could. We exasperated every P-Funk record that we could.â So Q-Tip took the idea of âsome of this Cal Tjader recordâ or âwhatâs up with Lou Donaldson?â or âWhatâs up with Cannonball [Adderly]?â or âWhatâs up with Grant Green?â or âWhatâs up with Grover Washington? Why are we not using those?â So what Dilla did was take it to the next level. âOkay, we got the American Jazz artists. But whatâs up with the Brazilian Jazz records? Whatâs up with the German Jazz records, or the Japanese Jazz records?â Again, which is another family tree. Like you said, it was James Brown, James Brown, P-FunkâSoul. Then it turned into Jazz Fusion, Jazz. The only Jazz [Hip-Hop] was sampling at one point was Bob James, right? Then we turned into âOkay, letâs find Gap Mangione. Letâs find another Jazz guy. Letâs find this computerized, mathematical guy, and sample that.â Once it got there, it made crate diggers stop looking in the conventional placesâwhich, in turn, meant your ear had to be in a certain place.
Ambrosia For Heads: You talk about crate digging. What does it say about the work ethic that Dilla had to have to be finding these obscure records in the time before the Internet, before everything was available with a click? What did you learn about him by listening to those records that he was pulling?
9th Wonder: It took a lot. Weâre at a 20-year cycle for this boom-bap sound. On the mainstream, more-exposure level, with the success of the Anderson .Paak album, and even some of the stuff with me and Rhythm Roulette and stuff like that, weâre at a turning point where boom-bap is becoming the new old thing again. At one point in the mid and late 2000s, the room for creativity and the room for being different, when it comes to this sampling thing, was getting thin. Thereâs only so much you can do with a Soul record. So I came into the game around 2001, 2002. At that particular time, this is right after [Jay Zâs] The Blueprint. Kanye, Just Blaze, and BINK! were speeding up records and looping records. Me as a producer who also sampled Soul records, I was like, âHuh. I might not want to sample what theyâre saying so much, Iâm more concerned with the instruments behind it.â Itâs just the fact that I canât take the words off. So if you listen to a lot of my early stuff, I had to make that lane. âI canât lift Curtis Mayfieldâs vocals off of this song, but I can chop around his words. I can do that.â Dilla made crate-digging, looking for songs, looking for samples like âOkay, I know this sounds like a Pete Rock sample. How can I make this sample mine? How can I make it into a Dilla-sounding sample? Thereâs a lot of records out there, but sometimes we run up on the same stuff. How can I chop this recordâwhich I know my contemporaries got. How can I make this record mine?â Dilla made you think when it comes to listening to a joint. Dilla made you think on that particular level, with the records he chose and the beats that he made.
Ambrosia For Heads: How would you compare and contrast your style of beats with his?
9th Wonder: [Pauses] ManâŠI donât, to be honest. Thatâs a dangerous thing, to compare yourself to Dilla. I would say that, in large respect, we come from the same thought process of âYo, this is my sound.â If anything, Iâd say that Dilla and I, and Madlib, and Alchemist, and all the beat-makersâŠall the way from Pete and Preem, all the way to Marley Marl, if anything we all contrast each other in what we all believe in. We believe in our sound. We believe in the sound that we come from. We believe in preserving that sound, and making that sound goâno matter whoâs rapping on it, whether it be your most conscious rapper or your most hood trap-rapper. It donât matter. Our sound is our sound, and we refuse to compromise that for anybody. Dillaâs was respected across the board, from the undergroundest of the underground kid to Justin Timberlake, heâs respected all the way across the board. I would like to say in some respect, in some way, shape, or form, I try to make my brand, make my career, or make my sound respected like that as wellâfrom the most underground kid to Destinyâs Child. Itâs that particular sound no matter what, from the pop record to the record found on Sandbox Automatic. It donât matter. Thatâs [how] I see, in that particular way, that me and Dilla are alike. We understand that scope. We understand that we ainât gotta compromise to make a Janet Jackson joint or to make a Destinyâs Child joint, or âI can do a Badu joint and turn around and do a Common joint and then turn around and do a Frank-N-Dank joint.â So I took that and said I can do a joint with Murs or Jean Grae, and also turn around do a joint with Jill Scott and Mary J Blige and David Banner and Big Boi. I can still branch myself out without compromising myself.
Ambrosia For Heads: Who would say are your 5 favorite producers, they donât have to be âtop,â in any genre?
9th Wonder: Oh wow! Any genre? Iâm a huge Teddy Riley fan. Huge. Iâm probably a bigger Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis fan. I love the production of Al B. Sure and Kyle West. I was in love with that. Al B. Sureâs âRight Nowâ record which was kinda like the Tevin Campbell âAlone With Youâ recordâthem and Chucky Thompson really taught me how to make R&B-Hip-Hop records. When dudes like me can ride down the street bumpinâ a slow jam that got some bottom to it! We can talk Pete, Preem, and Da Beatminerz all day, and Dilla and Madlib, and Hi-Tek, and Nottzâand my own team, the Soul Council and all the people I love. But we talkinâ about producers, bruh? Those [ones I mentioned earlier] shaped the early â90s. All those shaped my high school and middle school. We talkinâ about Guy, and Janet, and New Editionâand Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis produced the N.E. Heartbreak album. That shaped my life, bruh! Outside of the Rap records, those are the records. So, we got Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, we got Teddy Riley, we got Al B. Sure and Kyle Westâthatâs three. Chucky Thompson, thatâs four because of Mary J. Blige My Life. That album alone⊠For the fifth, man, Iâma say Raphael Saadiq.
Ambrosia For Heads: You know who I thought you were gonna put in there? Devonte.