9th Wonder Chops It Up w/ 'The Combat Jack Show' Live At A3C

Super-producer, DJ and Harvard professor 9th Wonder takes the hot seat for the third edition of The Combat Jack Show live from the 2014 A3C Hip Hop Festival. The chat commemorating the tenth anniversary of the fest touches on a number of topics from the genesis of 9th's hip-hop fandom to his decision to dive headfirst into the genre after realizing he wanted to work for himself. He also talks about his first encounters with an actual hip-hop crew as a transfer student at NC State and the moment he began churning out beats during the fall of 1998 - a move that he says "killed the fear" of failure and helped him to create his own universe. That move allowed 9th to get into his comfort zone as a producer and eventually meet Phonte - 1/3 of the celebrated NC hip-hop trio Little Brother. 9th continues with a breakdown of hip-hop's proliferation in his life and across the southern states. He explains how that led to a renaissance in the underground and the ultimate rise of the south - a phenomenon that he attributes as much to Dilla and the Native Tongues as he does to Master P. Combat Jack serves up a pretty juicy primer for the discussion with 9th:

Live from Atlanta, at the tenth anniversary of the #A3c Music Festival, we finally caught up with producer and Harvard scholar 9th Wonder where he share his incredible story about leading a scene in North Carolina with the incredible Little Brother crew to not giving Jay Z a track he had for his own group. The breakup with Phonte and Big Pooh, making hits for Destiny's Child and why he's going so hard for his Jamla Records premier artist Rapsody, why he really wants to collaborate with Rich Homie Quan and of course, his journey in becoming a professor at Harvard University. This was truly an honor building with 9th and I hope you enjoy this as much as we did.

Check the track below to listen to the full interview with 9th Wonder. Stay tuned for more from The Combat Jack Show.