Rich in the tradition of boom bap and in essence of soul sampling music, producer, hip hop professor and A3C Mayor returns again this October to the A3C festival. Without a doubt 9th Wonder has become a staple at the festival and this year should be nothing less than excellence as we expect to see more great things from the 919, 336, NC representative.
Born Patrick Douthit in Winston Salem, NC (#salute the 336, #Trey-4, #WSSU) 9th is a Grammy award winning producer, DJ, Zulu Nation member, social activist and professor. What is hard to fathom is that it has been over 10 years since we were all introduced the well crafted sounds of Little Brother. What's even harder to believe is that for Little Brother in the beginning, penetrating the game seemed like an uphill battle. From Talib Kweli to Murs to David Banner to Jean Grae to Raphsody to Mary J. Blidge, 9th has racked up amazing credentials, marking himself in music history. We easily could spend 1000 words alone listing all of the collabs that have caught our ears and made us head nod until we reached migraine status.
It's a major deal when you have been nominated by Ben Jealous the president of the NAACP as National Ambassador For Hip-Hop Relations and Culture. Furthermore, as a Hip Hop social maven and historian, 9th, the professor, has made it a point to make sure that there are avenues for the youth to become abreast of the rich culture by teaching course at Harvard, Duke and of course one of my favs, North Carolina Central University. So, you can truly ask yourself, "what is the impact of Hip Hop in the past and today's culture?" "How has it progressed over the years?" Attend one of 9th's lectures and get the answers you seek.
A follow up to the Kenneth Price film "The Wonder Years", Price returned this year with another piece, "The Hip Hop Fellow" a chronicle of the making of the Hip Hop archive at Harvard University. 9th, being very instrumental in the process, surely wanted to make the archive as authentic, non-biased and as true to the culture as possible.
The Wonder Year - Trailer from LRG Clothing on Vimeo.
We all should truly thank Young Guru for having such an amazing ear for sound engineering. Furthermore, we should really shake his hand for having his finger on the pulse of good hip hop that day when he discovered 3 exceptionally talented young, NCCU college students. We can all admit that quite often we as fans complain about what is true Hip Hop, what's up with all the commercial BS? Or why the youth seems to have no regard for something we hold so dear? However, it can be said that 9th is doing his part to bring to the forefront solutions to these same questions. As for the future, Jamla is the squad, the movement, A3C is the Festival and the Mayor will be in the office.
(Safari M. Jeffries is a contributing writer for the A3C. You can follow him for more stories @A3C or @safarimjeffries on Twitter.)
