Sitting at the bottom corner of a three-story south Durham home, East End Studios looks like an inconspicuous Jenga block from the outside—just a door beside a garage, nothing fancy. Once through the front door, though, it's difficult not to feel the history and the possibility. Actually, it's tough not to bump into it, in the form of a dusty Ensoniq ASR-10, a keyboard used for sampling and making hip-hop beats, sitting near the front door.
R&B producer Mike "Mike City" Flowers once used this same studio and ASR-10 to make such hits as Carl Thomas' "I Wish," Dave Hollister's "One Woman" and Sunshine Anderson's "Heard it All Before." Now, though, the main person working this equipment is Brad Brown, a 20-year-old who's lived here his whole life. He remembers that, long before he was a teenager, he'd sit in the studio and watch Mike City make those classic tunes with his father, Eli Brown.
Brad Brown wants to make some hits of his own in this old house. His best friend and peer in the local hip-hop collective Band Geeks, Thomas Hardison, has the same idea. In fact, as Thee Tom Hardy, Hardison—a playful but reflective kid who grew up playing tuba at Durham's Jordan High School—is finding his voice and his place as one of the emcees with the most personality in North Carolina.
But that voice didn't always come so naturally—and, on occasion, it still doesn't. Inside the studio's production room, Hardison explains the difference between his current rap tone and the one he's already retired under the name Teethree. As Teethree, Hardison self-released two mixtapes, Grape Soda Chronicles and More Tee. The Teethree character was an interesting approach, but, ultimately, Hardison's circus-like sarcasm made the newcomer to North Carolina's hip-hop scene a difficult sale. After all, he sounded more like a voice-over character on the cable network Adult Swim or a rapping Toys "R" Us employee. Hardison—a bit embarrassed, it seems—laughs about the old character.
"When I first started I was monotone and boring because I wasn't confident. Then when I got confident I started rapping animated and over-the-top," he avers. "The voice that I used to use was more affected and more over-the-top. It didn't really sound cool. I sounded like MC Chris or the next nerd-core rapper. My lyrics were always good, but finding my voice was a problem. I still have this problem sometimes."
Today, sitting at a table in a science laboratory table at North Carolina Central University, Hardison, 20, fidgets with an empty juice bottle. Grammy-winning hip-hop producer 9th Wonder is next door, running the school's Hip-Hop Initiative, which lost its university funding earlier this year but remains in the same space. Hardison is one of 9th Wonder's latest finds.
"People have always told me that I was good," he says calmly. "I knew that I was different and that I could rap, but I didn't fully realize that this is something that I could really, really do until I got a call saying that 9th Wonder wanted to sign me."
Late in 2007, Hardison decided he would rather sit in on 9th Wonder's hip-hop course at N.C. Central than attend his remedial math course, which took place the same day at the same time, down the street at Durham Technical Community College. He skipped, and he hasn't returned to college or class since. Rather, a year and a half after introducing himself to 9th Wonder, he's now the youngest artist on 9th Wonder's Jamla/ The Academy boutique record label. After releasing The Hardy Boy Mystery Mixape: Curse of the Green Faceded earlier this year, he's now steadily if slowly working on his debut LP.
Even after that mixtape, Hardison still needed plenty of guidance about controlling that voice of his: "I would write to 9th's beats, and when he would hear them, he'd tell me to calm down because it sounded like I was yelling. So I would have to tone it down and get a more natural, lower sounding voice. I'm a man, I have a low voice."
And like clockwork, Hardison does that "eye thing" that's become his trademark: Whenever Hardison speaks pointedly, the outer corners of his eyes wrinkle into something that looks like a half asterisk, giving him an expression that makes him look like he's halfway between a man lost in meditation and a teenager throwing a tantrum.
Hardison, by the way, is white. White rappers aren't really a rarity in North Carolina (from the Justus League associate Joe Scudda to Kooley High's Tab-One), but Hardison's tack conflicts with that of his peers. Hardison didn't want to play up his color or lack thereof. Instead, the idea was to create a cartoon character around his name.
"My manager's idea was to brand me as a green logo and not hide that I'm white and not make it a secret," he says. "His goal, which I thought was smart, was to brand me as a cartoon character and make my identity a mystery, which is why we named the mixtape Hardy Boy Mystery.
The cover of Curse of the Green Faceded, then, was a green face, his head cocked in Hardison's signature way, with a swarm of words that began with the letter "e" surrounding it—"enigmatic," "exemplary," "exuberant," "ecstatic." At the last minute, Atlanta producer and DJ Don Cannon added his name to the project, co-signing the material, or approving of Hardison as a young, new rapper.
"His thing is that he's the 'biggest co-signer in the game,'" says Hardison." I don't know if that's really accurate, but it's a hell of a co-sign."
If it's not a problem for a fairly unknown white rapper from North Carolina to get a co-sign from one of hip-hop's biggest names, then hip-hop, it seems, might actually stand a chance of becoming a microcosm for a system that actually starts to overlook color more and more. After all, black-white coexistence in a black-dominated hip-hop culture has never seemed to be the real problem. White rappers like Hardison usually don't have problems with black rappers. It's the white rappers who have a problem with the other white rappers. On Hardison's Curse of the Green Faceded, he even throws a couple of jabs at Asher Roth, another white rapper who also released a mixtape with Don Cannon.
"I was a little jealous that Asher Roth had come out before me. I knew that if he came out first, I was going to be compared to him. I've already seen a couple blogs where it says that I sound like a mix between Asher Roth and Bubba Sparks," says Hardison. "I knew it was coming. There's way worse rappers out there, black or white. I just called him out in a song."
Hardison says he doesn't particularly care for Roth's music, but he didn't expect for people to put so much emphasis on a couple of funny punch lines, either. Hardison's explanation of this sort of cultural angst is startlingly honest. Essentially, he admits that his own misgivings led to the beef, not his feelings on Roth's music or personality.
"I think white rappers always tend to have a problem with other white rappers. I've gone through it. You wanna be the coolest white boy in the room. Always," says Hardison. "And if some other white kid is trying to position his place in a hip-hop culture that you want to be in, you're gonna get mad."
After all, he's still preparing for his time in the spotlight, he says.
"I don't think I'm ready to put out that first album yet. Some of the songs that made the mixtape, we were going to save," he says. "But we said fuck it, because I was getting so much better. If we saved the songs that we made, they might not be good enough to put on a future album."
And with all the talent that he's surrounded by, he should take as much time as he can to learn. And to have fun. Even if he isn't in the booth every night practicing breath control and perfecting his bars, you might find out that he was, as he said one day, "Out there doin' white kid shit with my girl on a hammock."
Play on. Let the kid live. -- [ SOURCE ]
Producer 9th Wonder has been recruited by a small North Carolina college to create a new program aimed to revitalize the school’s low enrollment.
The board of trustees at Barber-Scotia College in Concord, North Carolina has asked the renowned producer to develop the 9th Wonder Center for Music Studies and Entrepreneurial Studies, he told AllHipHop.com exclusively.
Founded as a women’s seminary tied to the Presbyterian Church in 1867, Barber-Scotia College is a Historically Black College, which has always had enrollment numbers under a thousand students.
Among the school’s alumni is Dr. Mary McCleod Bethune, who would go on to found what is now Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida, and serve as adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Since losing its accreditation in 2004, the now co-ed Barber-Scotia College’s enrollment is at an all-time low of just 20 students. The 9th Wonder Center is just one of many projects the school has recently revealed as it prepares to be recognized for accreditation candidacy in April 2010.
In May, the school also announced the creation of the Faithful Promise campaign, whose honorary chairperson is R&B singer Monica. The campaign’s goal is to raise $10 million by June 30, 2011 to fund scholarships, support operational costs and repay the school’s past debts.
“As the main facilitator for the Center for Music and Entrepreneurial Studies, I’ll be overseeing all aspects of the project,” 9th explained to AllHipHop.com.
Among his duties are the development of courses and programs of study, as well as the selection of the faculty and administration who will be involved.
“I’m in the process right now of asking some of my closest friend in academia to help me do this,” he added. “I’m calling my project The Bethune Project. I wanna come in and try to bring more students to that school. So I’m basically rebuilding a college. It feels like 1899.”
Once completed, the Center will offer courses in Music Technology, Music Ethnology and History of Black Music in a social context. While he develops the new Center, 9th Wonder will be pulling double duty as a professor.
Starting in Spring 2010, he will be teaching Hip-Hop in Context and History at Barber-Scotia. Having also just recently become an adjunct professor at Duke University, 9th has developed a course with Dr. Mark Anthony Neal, professor of Black Popular Culture in the department of African and African-American Studies at the University.
The two will be teaching a new course called “Sampling Soul,” which explores Soul Music from the 1950s to the present, while exploring how the music was shaped by Black culture and vice versa. -- [ SOURCE ]
The next big hope – or "saviour," as it seems to be spelt nowadays – to drop this year is Wale. Yes, something feels wrong – artists actually seem to be releasing music… All we need now is Dre and Saigon, and we'll know that the world is coming to an end. Wale has been simmering for nigh on three years now, having put out three mixtapes (one of which was pretty damn good), and the time has finally arrived for "Attention: Deficit" to makes a debut on the international stage. He clearly has some high profile friends, as the list of luminaries lending a hand is lengthy: Mark Ronson, Cool & Dre, the Neptunes, DJ Green Lantern, Dave Sitek, Bun B, Gucci Mane, Jazmine Sullivan, Chrisette Michele, Marsha Ambrosius, J.Cole, Lady Gaga… Can his identity survive that onslaught of talent and outside assistance?
The singles, such as "Chillin'" – which is the Lady Gaga-does-M.I.A. (but not in the dirty way) first release – more or less miss the mark, as does "Pretty Girls" featuring Gucci Mane. "World Tour" is an alright bit of fun that probably sounds much better live than on wax, so if none of the singles are particularly compelling, the album as a whole sure as hell better be. Musically, things start off quite promisingly with "Triumph" and "Mama Told Me" being followed by the Mark Ronson-helmed "Mirrors" – all three have character and appeal, and set a decent tone for the album. In fact, there isn't really a "wack" beat on the album, but, having listened to the whole LP many a time, you begin to realise that there are very few "special" or even distinctive instrumentals, with only a few such as "90210" managing to hit the mark. In particular, something like "Beautiful Bliss" is thoroughly competent, but sounds EXACTLY like a rip from Lupe Fiasco's "Food & Liquor."
So if he is The One to resurrect hip hop, we need to look at a few important points regarding, most importantly, Wale the MC. How are the lyrics? Well, although some of them take a little while to comprehend, his punchlines range from solid to very clever; the internal rhyme schemes are generally quite impressive and relatively intricate. He seems to have graduated from the Kanye school of rap, as he does sound an awful lot like Mr West at times (whilst Kid Cudi just sounds like West on a crack comedown). How about the subject matter? Well, although there isn't that much of a genuinely personal take on his life – other than boring nonsense about what gigs he has done where – he does at least TRY to make things interesting on a few tracks. His story-telling abilities on "90210" are coupled with a sense of bitterness that benefits the tale of a young white girl that unwisely wants the life that she sees on TV; "Shades" reopens the debate on the actual colour/shade of your skin, and asks a somewhat fascinating question: if Barack Obama had not been so light-skinned, would he have been elected as President? As for "Diary," a semi-interesting bout of high school poetry saves the number from oblivion via cod psychology. That's pretty much it, as you begin to realise that for an artist that has hyped himself up to be something a bit different from the rest, "Attention: Deficit" is actually a pretty thin album, one that is two songs away from vacuous.
The biggest problem with Wale's debut LP is that sure, the music is good, some of the concepts are interesting… But it is all very middle of the road, and Wale himself is an MC desperately in need of charisma. "Attention: Deficit" is a pleasurable listening experience but somehow kind of dull. That everything is by the book is neither here nor there, but – and this is where his score gets severely marked down – his VOICE is uninteresting: it lacks emotional depth on the deeper songs, arrogance on the party tracks, and character on the story-telling numbers. In this post-2006 landscape where every single bright young thing seems to sound exactly like some weird Kanye/Lupe/Wayne hybrid – only not as good as ANY of those three – apparently some people think that how good an MC you are has nothing to do with how well you are received. Recently Kid Cudi earned a classic rating on this site for his debut, even though (and ask almost anyone this) he cannot SING or RAP. Yet, Cudi's album was either extremely poor or absolutely fantastic, depending on your REACTION. I personally loved it – particularly musically – yet esteemed friends outright dismissed it. At least it prompted feeling, though. And that is my worry for Wale's "Attention: Deficit" outing – I've listened to it extensively, yet feel practically nothing for or against it, despite his protestations. The reaction to every single song is the same: indifference. I'm just not quite sure what the point of it all is, and the only thing that should be applauded is the consistently solid (but hardly classic) music, and the touch of ambition Wale displays on a couple of concept songs such as "90210" and "Shades." Otherwise, the question of whether his identity can survive with such a huge crowd of guest vocalists and producers is a moot point – Wale doesn't actually have much of an identity, and that's why this album will come and go without disrupting so much as a hair on your head.
Music Vibes: 6.5 of 10 Lyric Vibes: 6.5 of 10 TOTAL Vibes: 6.5 of 10 -- [ SOURCE ]
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