Little Brother: 9th Wonder wasn't the real producer for our albums, Phonte was

[RickyGQ]

Threadstarter is being an obtuse idiot(like he usually does) for the sake of trying to get a thread popping. LB has talked about for years how Phonte was the one who created the song concepts, ideas, and themes of the album. Phonte literally writes sketch songs and ideas for TV shows, but y'all finding it far-fetched that he was doing the same for LB?? 9th wasn't there to record music after The Listening so who do y'all think was putting the ideas together for The Minstrel Show?

That’s not what we refuting. I 100% believe Phonte was the driving force behind the group but to say that to diminish 9ths contribution is silly when it was the beats that made these nikkas stand out. I was there on SOHH back then. Everyone was talking about 9ths production and how amazing it was he was using Fruit Loops and not a beat machine.

Phonte didn’t start to set himself apart until Foreign Exchange imo. And I think Pooh is just now starting to get his props and not just the Talib to Phonte’s Mos Def.

 

[Solomon Lurke]

Creative direction is something a strong artist should have regardless of a "producer" or being given that title to seem extraordinary.

/close thread

 

[Bugzbunny129]

9th would be a co producer at worst. He is the sonic backdrop, phonte doing normal rapper shyt. If he touched beats and moved shyt around and sat with the engineer and put yracks together then yes hed get co producer but 9th i would 100% label the main producer. Any rapper with integrity would do any of that to every song they touch. That is why sometimes they get co producer credit; like odb on shame and brooklyn zu, method man on his title song.

 

[Goat poster]

Honestly I never foresaw how problematic the "producer" tag in hip hop would become

IMO on both sides.

On one hand making a beat is a part of, and usually the majority of groundwork on the overall production on a record/album.

On the other hand Hip-Hop acting like the ONLY part of production is making a beat is severely misguided.

At this point I don't think we ever gonna see a middle ground on the definition.

 

[Ziggiy]

This isn’t anything new. Phonte has always been the leader of Little Brother. 9th himself has said this

 

[Supa]

Honestly I never foresaw how problematic the "producer" tag in hip hop would become

IMO on both sides.

On one hand making a beat is a part of, and usually the majority of groundwork on the overall production on a record/album.

On the other hand Hip-Hop acting like the ONLY part of production is making a beat is severely misguided.

At this point I don't think we ever gonna see a middle ground on the definition.

9th wasn't mailing in beats for The Listening. He was there with them crafting the songs, adding in vocal samples that complimented the theme, naming the actual album which was the overall concept for the album, mixing, finding the samples, etc.

He was the producer and the one who crafted the sound.

Phonte saying, "add 4 more bars to the verse, let the chorus play longer, drop the drums out and let me just rap over the melody" is what he should be doing as the songwriter. I wouldn't say that makes you the real producer.

There's a video of Alchemist making the Hold You Down beat and Prodigy is telling him how to structure parts of it. It's more about getting on the same page so he can rap over it and execute his vision. Alchemist is still the producer.

I'm sure I heard AZ say Phone Tap was his idea and he wanted the vocals to sound like they were over a phone line. That's songwriting even though part of it deals with sonics. Dre made the idea work musically so he's the producer.

Imagine 9th telling them to redo a verse or change lines around and then saying he was the real rapper behind Little Brother. You want your credit for the bars you took time to write give him the credit for the sound he created. He didn't write your lines and you didn't chop his samples.

 

[Bugzbunny129]

9th wasn't mailing in beats for The Listening. He was there with them crafting the songs, adding in vocal samples that complimented the theme, naming the actual album which was the overall concept for the album, mixing, finding the samples, etc.

He was the producer and the one who crafted the sound.

Phonte saying, "add 4 more bars to the verse, let the chorus play longer, drop the drums out and let me just rap over the melody" is what he should be doing as the songwriter. I wouldn't say that makes you the real producer.

There's a video of Alchemist making the Hold You Down beat and Prodigy is telling him how to structure parts of it. It's more about getting on the same page so he can rap over it and execute his vision. Alchemist is still the producer.

I'm sure I heard AZ say Phone Tap was his idea and he wanted the vocals to sound like they were coming over a phone. That's songwriting even though part of it deals with sonics. Dre made the idea work musically.

Imagine 9th telling them to redo a verse or change lines around and then saying he was the real rapper behind Little Brother. You want your credit for the bars you took time to write give him the credit for the sound he created. He didn't write your lines and you didn't chop his samples.

Yes and lets not pretend the beats themselves dont inspire certain choices phonte made. Its kinda silly.

 

[DaHNIC82]

5:55


Says that 9th Wonder was only the beatmaker, and not even for every song. And Phonte was the head Producer. Interesting

So why the hell does 9th Wonder get all the credit for these albums then?

Oh boy

 

[Supa]

Yes and lets not pretend the beats themselves dont inspire certain choices phonte made. Its kinda silly.

Exactly.

If the "beatmaker" is there with you collaborating on the song they get the production credit and you get credited as the songwriter.

There's other circumstances that can change that both ways like the rapper bringing in samples or the producer writing a hook but there's still clear distinctions.

 

[Brandwin]

.

 

[Shadow King]

Honestly I never foresaw how problematic the "producer" tag in hip hop would become

IMO on both sides.

On one hand making a beat is a part of, and usually the majority of groundwork on the overall production on a record/album.

On the other hand Hip-Hop acting like the ONLY part of production is making a beat is severely misguided.

At this point I don't think we ever gonna see a middle ground on the definition.

The thing is, within hip-hop, a great deal of the time, the beatmaker executes the same functions we assign to traditional non-rap producers. The exception is the beatmaker sending tracks/stems to an artist and his engineer and being uninvolved with recording.

The middle ground would be to stop trying to diminish beatmakers to assign extra weight to what is essentially a private listener with "vision" who can't build a sonic canvas whether through instruments or computers/machines.

 

[Yaboysix]

I was out on to them from back in the day when the cable cable networks used to have the music channels in the back of the channels (Hip-hop)

Their music would come on and little factoids about them would pop up.

I have YET to listen to a single thing from them, I'm hella late.i gotta heck them out...

 

[Da Rhythm Rebel]

Honestly I never foresaw how problematic the "producer" tag in hip hop would become

IMO on both sides.

On one hand making a beat is a part of, and usually the majority of groundwork on the overall production on a record/album.

On the other hand Hip-Hop acting like the ONLY part of production is making a beat is severely misguided.

At this point I don't think we ever gonna see a middle ground on the definition.

I was just lamenting earlier how I need the hip hop 'producer' vs 'beatmaker' discourse to die in 2024

 

[KillerB88]

Pooh is so salty when it comes to 9th.

I hate that shyt. I wish they could just get along.

Honestly, as much as I love the OG LB albums and Foreign Exchange. I can't stand those nikkas as people. They act like they're above nikkas that got the fame and recognition, but it's obvious they're jealous and salty as fukk. It's corny. They hate people for not being bigger fans of them.

 

[TheDarceKnight]

again...I dont know whats wrong with the comprehension or did you guys not watch the video??? thats not what they said! in fact they said 9th IS a producer, they said the main producer for LB was Phonte. however you want to take that, they did NOT say 9th is not a producer.

100%. Clickbait video title by math hoffa