Grammy-winning producer 9th Wonder and his production team The Soul Council are used to hearing the words “I know somebody who’s a singer” or “I know somebody who’s a rapper” about 500 times a week.
“Sometimes it’s very tough to reach people like me because people don’t understand the volume of ‘asks’ that we get,” said 9th Wonder, a Winston-Salem native whose real name is Patrick Denard Douthit.
Those words come from family members and everybody else in a variety of ways, including Instagram and Facebook.
“That permeates Thanksgivings, Christmases, family reunions, homecomings, parties,” 9th Wonder said. “We hear that everywhere. (At) church.”
Recently, 9th Wonder started an online campaign to find a talented producer/musician to become his next protégé and to navigate through all the “asks” and music he and The Soul Council get from people.
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His project is aptly called Protégé.
“It’s an organized opportunity of sorts to find talent,” 9th Wonder said.
He said he realizes that people are genuinely trying to help the person whose name they bring up to him and The Soul Council, but it’s tough sometimes knowing who to help and not help because they can’t help everybody.
“It’s even harder to keep up with the music that’s sent to you,” he said. “It’s tough. It’s just a lot.”
Finding talent
The Soul Council, an eight-member production team that includes 9th Wonder, capped the number of Protégé submissions at 500 to keep from being overwhelmed by responses.
Contestants were asked to play a beat for 30 seconds, and they could say their name if they wanted to or not since they had already submitted their names.
All submissions received a personal video feedback.
“I think that’s cool,” 9th Wonder said of the feedback. “If I was doing that when I was a teenager or just starting, and somebody came to me and said, ‘You want to get in this contest man?’ And I get in it, and the producers I looked up to hit me back, and I’m like, ‘Wow. What?’”
After The Soul Council considered a lot of good submissions from throughout the world, Joshua “Josh” Bryant of Kinston was named the winner.
The protégé
Just as The Soul Council announced earlier this year to Bryant on a Zoom meeting that he was the protégé, the production team members learned that Bryant was moving to Los Angeles, Calif., in a couple of weeks.
But Bryant was still able to take an airplane flight back to the area in April to learn a lot of things from 9th Wonder and the other producers.
“He got a chance to come up to our studio,” 9th Wonder said. “He spent a few days with us.”
He said Bryant is doing well in Los Angeles.
“The beautiful thing about Joshua is he makes the sound of music that maybe people his age think that would be like vintage or old school, but for us it’s like, ‘Man, this is what the generation needs to hear. You need to keep doing this,’” 9th Wonder said. “He was like, ‘Man I can’t hardly find a new artist that wants to sing or rap over the stuff that I have. They want that new wave kind of sound or whatever.’ He said, ‘I can sound current, but I’ve still got to be me.’”
9th Wonder said Bryant has an open line of communication with The Soul Council.
“When he comes back and visits, he can always drop by,” 9th Wonder said. “We always try to keep tabs on him. If he needs any advice and has any questions, we’re always there.”
Bryant, a graduate of Chowan University, is 24 years old. He has been creating video content for five years.
“I create music production videos,” he said. “I film. I edit.”
He is a multi-instrumentalist — bass guitar, drums, piano and guitar — as well as an actor and writer.
“I sent in some of my stuff that I had already created, and I ended up being chosen,” Bryant said. “That was super cool.”
He said he just got a big gig in South Korea for the next six months to play piano.
“Things are looking well, right now,” Bryant said.
As far as his experience with The Soul Council, Bryant said that it was super welcoming, fun and mega inspiring.
“Everyone in The Soul Council has their own style,” he said. “And just watching ... it opened up a slew of possibilities for the way I create now.”
Professor 9th
At 47, 9th Wonder lives in Raleigh where he has his studio.
While growing up in Winston-Salem, he played in the band — both concert and marching band — from sixth through 12th grades. He is a graduate of Glenn High School and enrolled at N.C. Central University in 1993.
“I was raised in a house of gospel — ‘60s and ‘70s gospel,” he said. “What my mom and dad call spirituals. My older brother, who was 12 years my senior, listened to Cameo and Parliament-Funkadelic and S.O.S. Band and Midnight Star and Atlantic Starr. I kind of picked up on a lot of that, too, before I fell in love with hip-hop.”
9th Wonder started producing music in the early 2000s and joined the group Little Brother in 2001.
He did a beat for Jay-Z in 2003 and has done music for other notable artists such as Destiny’s Child, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott and Kendrick Lamar.
In 2010, he started his own label called Jamla Records, “which I named after Tamla, which was the first name for Motown, started in 1959,” he said.
For the past 16 years, 9th Wonder has been teaching. He started at N.C. Central University in 2006 then at Duke University in 2011.
In 2012, he became a Harvard University fellow.
“I spent a year at Harvard, teaching at Harvard and doing research for a colloquium that I presented in front of Henry Louis Gates Jr.,” 9th Wonder said. “I became a part of the rap committee at the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.”
He also became part of the Kennedy Center’s Hip Hop Culture Council in 2017 and was inducted into the N.C. Music Hall of Fame in 2019.
Now, he teaches at four educational institutions. This is his 12th year at Duke, and he is still at Roc Nation School in New York City.
For fall 2022, 9th Wonder will be professor in residence in African American Studies at Wake Forest University. He will teach an undergraduate seminar called, “Where It All Began: A History of Hip Hop.”
“I spent a summer there as a kid in a summer program at Wake Forest, so this kind of will be going back home,” he said.
He is looking forward to being close to his parents while in town.
“They live 10 minutes away from campus, so I’ll have a chance to see them while I’m home — once a week,” he said.
9th Wonder is also starting his first semester and first year at Elizabeth City State University in Elizabeth City as an artist-in-residence.
He will teach in person at Wake and Duke.
“I’ll teach at Elizabeth City in person for the first two classes, and the rest will be virtual, and I’ll fly back and forth to New York,” he said.
Students call him Professor 9th.
9th Wonder enjoys interacting with people, teaching and learning from them.
He got that from his mother, Patricia Douthit, who was an educator for 46 years in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School system.
“Just to see how she interacted with people in general,” he said. “She treated every student the same. And just her zest for education, to make people be excited to want to learn.
Being a part of the Protégé project was a lot of fun for 9th Wonder, and he’s considering doing it again.
“Look for my Instagram page when we post it next,” he said.
He also enjoyed working with Bryant.
“It was just fun to see the energy of somebody that young, to be around somebody that he looked up to,” 9th Wonder said. “I know exactly what that feels like. We had a great conversation.”