GHETTO ALLSTARS

The security of Houston’s club scene is under the microscope for a reported assault of respected DJ and industry veteran Ron C (Ronald Coleman).
 
The alleged incident occurred Thursday night (February 26) at Houston’s Toc Bar following a verbal dispute between Ron C and security personnel over the treatment of one of the DJ’s friends.
 
During the discussion, the GO DJ Coalition president was put in a chokehold from behind, tasered in the throat, and left unconscious on the ground….(read more)

In an interview with the April 2009 issue of Ebony, Beyoncé admits that her “messy” nature creates problems in her marriage to hip-hop mogul Jay-Z.

“I’m a little messy! Oh, yeah. I think that is the most difficult thing for him. He’s very, very organized.”

Halle by Halle Berry, the debut fragrance from Academy Award-winning actress Halle Berry, will arrive in stores later this month.

Raleigh-Durham, NC

Jay-Z, Little Brother, Mary J. Blige

Fruity Loops, AKAI MPC 4500, Pro Tools.

11 Years.

A lot can be learned from super producer 9^th
Wonder; literally since he‘s added teaching to his repertoire. In his
ten year career he has worked with the best in the industry and has
become a well respected talent in the game.

He’s
confident enough to speak on how his skills seem to come effortlessly,
yet humble enough to give props when due to other musicians. He takes
time out in between nursing himself back to full form from the cold to
talk about why he was dismissed from Little Brother, why he thinks
T-Pain wins and juggling ten different artists between his two labels.

AllHipHop.com: How did you get into production?

9^th Wonder: I used to do pause tapes with a friend of mine back at North Carolina State University
and arguing about who was better between DJ Premier and Pete Rock. Then
it went from there to trying out beats on the computer then to doing
beats everyday and to where I am now. I was always into music as a kid.

AllHipHop.com: Who were some producers you respected growing up?

9^th Wonder:
Pete Rock, Premier, Diamond D., Bomb Squad, Organized Noize, Marley
Marl, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Teddy Riley; just whoever was big or
making great music.

AllHipHop.com: How is the music scene where you’re from different from bigger cities?

9^th Wonder: I live in Raleigh, Durham; the music is not really different from any other [city]. The only difference between New York and North Carolina is that ya’ll had The Box and Uncle Ralph McDaniels’ show and stuff like that. But Yo! MTV Raps was everywhere. So the same thing you saw on Yo MTV Raps I saw on Yo! MTV Raps. The biggest difference is after the show came on; ya’ll could have seen Grand Puba outside somewhere. We couldn’t do that.

AllHipHop.com: What album brought you your first Grammy recognition?

9^th Wonder: Mary J. Blige’s The Breakthrough.
The track I did on there was “Good Woman Down”, and Mary shouted me out
for the first time on the American Music Awards, Billboard Awards and
the Grammys. She was thanking the producers and I felt honored to be
shouted out in the company of those guys.

AllHipHop.com: Tell me about your time being affiliated with Little Brother, and why you left.

9^th Wonder:
I just want to get the record straight I didn’t leave, I was asked to
leave. It was more of a situation where they were like “you’ve been
doing your own thing, been working and doing this and that. We’re going
to continue on as Little Brother, you continue on as 9^th Wonder”.

It
wasn’t a situation where I was like “alright fellas I’m out”. It felt
like I hadn’t been a part of the group for a long time for various
reasons. I never said anything about it before, but over the years
people kept asking why did I leave. I didn’t leave; I was asked to
leave.

AllHipHop.com: Did you feel as though you could be both 9^th Wonder and a part of Little Brother?

9^th Wonder:
I felt like you could do that. If you look at it, I was not the first
person out of LB to put out a solo record. Phonte put out Foreign Exchange, and Big Pooh put out Sleepers.
So then I wanted to put out my record. It’s kind of hard for a producer
really. I don’t see why somebody would say it’s a problem, and then
somebody else say it’s not. But that’s what it is; some people agree
some people disagree.

AHH: How did the idea come to slate to take Nas’ God Son, and remix it to create God’s Stepson?

9^th Wonder:
There was a friend of mine by the name of DJ Bumrush. He came by my
house and brought some accapellas. He already saw how I remixed some
other stuff, like Amerie, Musiq Soulchild, etc. So he brought some
accapellas by my house and said experiment with these. Then I remixed
them and after that went from there and a friend of mine named I.D.  said we should call it God’s Stepson. It’s nothing I planned to do or said ‘I’ll use this to get into the game’. I just did it.

AHH: Then you re-did Jay-Z’s The Black Album the following year.

9^th Wonder: Yea I was actually on The Black Album. The good people over at Def Jam / Roc-a-Fella put out The Black Album accapellas and everybody went Black Album remix crazy. I guess everybody thought that’s what I did to get recognition and what not.

AllHipHop.com: How would you describe your production style?

9^th Wonder:
Soulful for the most part, I like Soul music. You can find Soul music
anywhere. For a long time cats said “you make underground beats”. It’s
kind of hard to say that now because I got beats with MOP, Destiny’s
Child, Erykah Badu, Mary.

You
really can’t call it underground anymore; whatever that means now. When
your biggest artist like a Soulja Boy is selling 40,000 in the first
week, what’s underground? It’s kind of hard to put somebody in that box
and I’m glad that box is going away.

AllHipHop.com: How did the teaching opportunity happen with NCCU?

9^th Wonder:
A lot of people I went to high school with in my hometown are now
teachers. They would come and ask me to talk to their students. So some
professors over at Central caught wind of it, and it went from there. I
went over there for a couple meetings and workshops and the chancellor
at North Carolina Central University
at the time who’s now the chancellor at FAMU asked if I would like to
do a class and be what they call an “Artist Of Residence”. He hired
myself and Play from Kid ‘N Play and I’ve been there for about three
years now. This will be my fifth semester there and I love it.

AllHipHop.com: What was the most difficult album you’ve worked on?

9^th Wonder: Murs’ Murs 3:16: The 9^th Edition. A lot of people think that’s my best work. Working
with Murs, we argued a lot and there were a lot of differences of
opinion. Murs was coming from working with a different camp which can
impose and was very difficult at the time. With artists when you’re
working with one producer and then working with another producer, it
kind of makes things difficult. It came out great but that was the
hardest record I ever did.

AllHipHop.com: Was it because of the transition between producers?

9^th Wonder: Yea because he used to follow a different producer. It’s totally different. Like if you listen to 3:16 then listen to some of his other stuff, everything is different.

AllHipHop.com: What equipment do you use?

9^th Wonder: Right now I still use Fruity Loops, Pro Tools, I mess around with the [Akai] MPC 4500 right now. The crazy thing is that on The Formula,
the album I did with Buckshot, there’s five beats I did on the MPC
4500. And I’ve asked kids to tell me which ones are which, and no one
got it right yet.

AllHipHop.com: Which genre of music lets your creativity flow best?

9^th Wonder:
R&B; I have an artist by the name of Tyler Woods. He was on the
Buckshot and Talib Kweli record “Hold It Down”. I have a label on Duck
Down called Jamla. I named it after Tamla; which was the offshoot pop
label at Motown.

I have fun with Tyler
because we get to think outside the box, but think inside the box too.
The motto for Jamla is “the new sound that you’ve heard before”. That’s
the kind of out of the box thinking I can do with Tyler. I think that’s where T-Pain wins because he’ll try anything. The “Chopped And Screwed” record showed me that.

AllHipHop.com: And that turned out to be a pretty hot record.

9^th Wonder:
Yea; I wasn’t a big fan of T-Pain until “Can’t Believe It” and “Chopped
And Screwed” that was the record where I was like “ok dog, you win”. We
as musicians are very critical of other musicians. You can be the best
musician in the world and another musician will be like “that’s
straight”.

AllHipHop.com: What projects are you cooking up in the studio?

9^th Wonder: The first release off [Jamla] is Sky Zoo’s album The Salvation. I
have another label on Stone’sThrow called The Academy. On Jamla we also
have Rhapsody, Remo and Gee Q . What makes this cat so special is that
he plays basketball which surprised the life out of me because usually
rapping and basketball don’t mix too well. He’s not a basketball player
that can rhyme, but a rapper that can just hoop.

On
The Academy side, we have N-1 Platoon, Tom Hardy, another group called
Actual Proof. Then there’s Median and last but not least Britney
Boscoe. So there’s five on one side and five on the other. Don’t ask me
how I’m going to pull it off, but I am. Lastly I’m doing a lot of work
with Idris Elba.

AllHipHop.com: I didn’t realize he was a musician.

9^th Wonder:
Yea he’s a Hip-Hoper. Once again he’s not an actor that can Rap, he’s a
Hip-Hoper that can act. He loves music and he’s a talent.  He
takes his music very seriously. I’m also working with David Banner. We
have a couple joints that we’re working on. I’m also doing a lot of
work with the NAACP as well. I’m trying to become more responsible and
understand the power that Hip-Hop has.

AllHipHop.com: Will we see another Little Brother collaboration?

9^th Wonder:
Well, I don’t think so. Phonte has said it a couple times that there
will never be another reunion, but who knows. No matter what we do, the
music will still be what it is, whether we do it together or apart.

AllHipHop.com: What will your legacy be?

9^th Wonder:
Just to be in a long line of Black musicians. I think we kind of stunt
ourselves in saying we want to be the best rapper alive or best
beat-maker alive. Everybody learned from somebody. I want to be in that
circle of talk twenty years down the road and be the person that cares
about my people. It’s also just having pride in your people as well as
having pride of where you’re from and your ancestry.

I want to be proud of my people and I want my people to be proud of me. I think Obama is trying to change that and have America be proud of America.
No matter what, we’ll always still have that divide because we have
different cultures and different households. Me, I just want my people
first to be proud of me. You got to start at home and my home is Black
folks; I’m Black. I also want the musicians that came before me to be
proud of me too.

Rihanna and Chris Brown are seeing each other again, a source tells People.com.

The young lovers have reunited three weeks after Chris, 19, allegedly attacked the “Umbrella” singer and her famous fivehead during Grammy weekend in Los Angeles, PEOPLE Magazine insiders revealed late Friday.

Have we learned nothing from What’s Love Got To Do With It?

“They’re together again. They care for each other,” according to the PEOPLE source. The on-again couple are currently spending time together at one of Sean “Diddy” Combs’s homes. Adds the source: “While Chris is reflective and saddened about what happened, he is really happy to be with the woman he loves.”

Jennifer Hudson stopped by The Oprah Winfrey Show on Friday. The award-winning singer discussed her Super Bowl performance, Oscar and Grammy wins, her upcoming tour with Robin Thicke, and her three dogs, named after three greatest accomplishments, Oscar, Grammy, and Dreamgirls.

Jennifer also performed her latest single, “If This Isn’t Love,” from her self-titled Grammy Award-winning album.

Russell Simmons, 51, has taken to his popular Global Grind blog to explain the recent court “order” granting his ex-wife, Kimora Lee Simmons, $40,000 a month in child support. The hip-hop entrepeneur calls the decision to shower his two daughters with the massive monthly figure his own.

“I am reading these stories today about how a judge ordered me to pay Kimora $40,000 a month in child support and I want to make something very clear. Nothing was ordered, it was given. My kids have a fabulous life; they are exposed to a broad range of artistic and scholastic educational programs and I’m very happy to contribute to that. As long as I have it, they can have it. If I ever don’t have it, I’m coming to live with them!”

RZA of Wu Tang Clan has teamed up with the Hip-Hop Chess Foundation to host Mind Over Matter II at John O’connell High School in San Francisco tomorrow ( February 28th).
 
The event targets inner city youth who have fallen victim of financial stress due to the recent decline of the economy in an effort to teach them “patience, logic and strategy,” as alternative ways to deal with the financial hardships.
 
“In these times of financial stress we see violence is rising as bank balances…(read more)

You can’t keep a “Good Girl Gone Bad” down. Rihanna’s got a spankin’ new party track heating up the
Net this Friday. Presenting Rihanna in “Whippin’ My Hair,” produced by The-Dream and Tricky Stewart.