Before 9th Wonder helped reshape the rules around sample-based production in the 21st century, he was an amalgamation of samples himself. For four years, he tried to carve out his own sonic identity amongst hip-hop giants of the time like Pete Rock, DJ Premier, J. Dilla, Large Professor, and Diamond D by imitating their blueprints until his own signature sound emerged. After 25 years of producing for Destiny’s Child, Little Brother, Anderson .Paak, Jay-Z, Rapsody, Reuben Vincent, and Kendrick Lamar, he’s now an archetype for so many others.
“When you start making beats for so long and making music for so long, then you have your sound, and you have a thing where people put ‘9th Wonder-type beat’ on YouTube,” he says. “If somebody’s going to go through making a tight beat of yours, then that means you’ve made it.”
From his early days revolutionizing computer-based production with FL Studio to turning Vincent’s latest album Welcome Home into an audio movie with the help of the Roland FANTOM, 9th explains the unseen work that went into the sound you can’t escape.
Playlist
Speed by Little Brother
Little Brother’s “Speed” is the quintessential 9th Wonder production. Beyond the infectious sped-up wailing from Bobby Womack on “And I Love Her” and the soulful backdrop that sounds like a late-night car ride, “Speed” is where it all started. 9th Wonder’s genesis traces back to his early years with hip-hop duo Little Brother. The song came after 9th quit his job at a UPS call center, Phonte came off a long day working at Blue Cross Blue Shield in the daytime, and Rapper Big Pooh was chosen to record on the song because rapper Median was hard to find. While his technical skills have improved over the decades, “Speed” is arguably the most important song he’s ever made.
“‘Speed’ was a song that created the group. That was the night we decided to become a group because we couldn’t find Median, but we found another guy: Big Pooh,” he says. “‘Speed’ was a precursor to everything that Drake has learned about singing and rapping at the same time.”
IN MY LIFE by Reuben Vincent
During a chat on the PLLRS podcast Won of One, 9th Wonder’s prolific protege Reuben Vincent revealed he slept in the 9th’s studio for six months, crafting what would become the Welcome Home album. Replaying the same “Yearning For Your Love” sample from The Gap Band that gave “Life’s A Bitch” by Nas its hypnotizing shine, 9th, along with keyboardist Give Em Soul, made Vincent’s reflections on his life feel photorealistic.
“We replayed the entire sample with a Roland FANTOM. The beautiful thing about the Roland is that if you replay a sample, nine times out of 10, the instruments used then are in there. We wanted it to sound like the original.”
I See Now by Consequence (feat. Kanye West and Little Brother)
Steel sharpens steel and real recognizes real. It only took eight seconds of 9th Wonder’s loop of Bobby Womack’s “I’m Through Trying to Prove My Love to You” for production peer Kanye West to make a point to praise him for making exceptional beats as well. While we may hear a minimalist yet memorable boom bap for the only Kanye West and 9th Wonder collaboration, what we were really hearing was a producer mastering his sound.
“Once you got your formula, you know what to look for. I started to listen to records, knowing what to look for. I knew what I was looking for [in Bobby Womack’s “I’m Through Trying to Prove My Love to You”]. That’s how the ‘I See Now’ beat was formed. It didn’t take long.”
Girl by Destiny’s Child
“Sometimes we can overthink beats. ‘Girl’ was a beat I did not overthink. I found a sample, and it just worked.”
After lacing Jay-Z with a sinister, stripped-down soundscape for the rapper’s Black Album standout track “Threat,” 9th produced “Girl,” a summertime bounce fit for Beyonce and Destiny’s Child’s final album, Destiny Fulfilled. The FL Studio savant says he mentally transported himself from the studio session where Beyonce was to weave together the dream-like chord progressions of The Dramatics’ “Ocean of Thoughts and Dreams” to his zone, with his headphones on, in five minutes.
“Beyoncé was there the night I played beats for Jay-Z. So, she told me, ‘We want you to do you. You just need bridges in your beats.’”
Baby Yeah! by Rapsody (feat. Marsha Ambrosius)
Besides Little Brother, the first artist you think about when you hear 9th Wonder is the North Carolina flamethrower Rapsody. This year marks the 15-year anniversary of her Thank HER Now mixtape, including her collaboration with Floetry’s Marsha Ambrosius. 9th is still a bit tight-lipped about the song he sampled on the beat because it’s yet to be cleared. Still, this song stands out for an unseen quality check 9th performs before presenting beats to artists.
“I’ve always had this thing where I make a beat, and I imitate the artist’s voice to see if it fits. That’s how I’ve always done it, no matter who it’s been, whether it be Busta Rhymes, 2 Chainz, or Rapsody.”
SO I PRAY by Reuben Vincent
Vincent told the PLLRS podcast Won of One that his Welcome Home album mirrored his real-life coming-of-age story after his career stalled. “SO I PRAY,” with its sparse instrumentation coated in light piano chimes and drizzles of warm chords, is a perfect example of how to score someone’s inner thoughts while giving them enough space to convey those ideas. Give Em Soul and Terrace Martin both used Roland products to help bring out that epic sound.
“They both made that record into a movie. The FANTOM has been around for a while, and there’s something classic about it. We decided to use that throughout Welcome Home to keep a congruent sound.
Without You by Anderson .Paak (feat. Rapsody)
Anderson Paak is one of the most prolific artist-producer hybrids of the last decade. 9th Wonder still found a way to add his grounded neo-soul stylings to Paak’s usual big-band expansiveness for a subdued yet groovy track. “Having a producer means trust. Sometimes it’s tough to trust. Anderson trusted my lead. I trusted him to do what he did as an artist.”
DUCKWORTH. by Kendrick Lamar
To surprise 9th Wonder is a feat in and of itself. The climactic track to Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opus DAMN, took listeners down a sonic rabbit hole that intersects the lives of two of the most important men in his life: his father and Top Dawg Entertainment founder Anthony Tiffith. According to 9th, he simply gave the Compton lyricist 26 beats to choose from, and the Grammy Award-winning word wizard chose to use three of those beats to signify a shift in the story’s tone. As complicated as the process might sound, how 9th made them is actually simple.
“By this time, I had been making beats for 15-16 years,” says 9th. “At some point, it becomes like breathing. It’s like asking somebody, ‘How do you breathe?’”
