9th Wonder is celebrating the popular digital audio workstation program FL Studio (formerly FruityLoops) by looking back on his decorated career.
On Sunday (December 18), the legendary producer took to his Instagram with a post celebrating the 25th anniversary of FL Studio. In his post, 9th shared a picture of the program’s user interface before going down memory lane and remembering his experiences with the software.
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“Sign of the Times. I never thought that I would end up being a music producer. That never was a goal of mine as a kid. Did I love music? Yes. Did I think I was gonna be a part of the story we call “Hip-Hop”? No,” 9th Wonder captioned his post. “Everyone’s path is different into the culture. Mine was by way of a computer program in 2000. Some things you just do, out of necessity, not knowing the ripple effect it would have on culture. I was introduced to @flstudio in 2000 by my brother @khrysis_, and it all fell into place from there. Heavily ridiculed and looked down upon? Yes. Did it stop me from making slappers? No.”
He continued: “Now, many moons later, making beats WITHOUT a computer is now almost obsolete; there are still hardware users in the culture, but I see more laptops and controllers than ever before. Either way, me stepping into a studio making Jay-Z’s “Threat” in 25 minutes was the beginning of a revolution. Sitting in a studio in front of half of Rocafella and make a beat with an @ibm ThinkPad in 2003 for such a legendary album, was mind blowing to some, but for me, it was just something I had been doing, over, and over, and over….making slappers on a PC.”
9th went on and gave praise to the “millions” of creatives who still use FL Studio around the world and told them to continue making beats and adding on to the culture.
FL Studio was partially released in December 1997 and had an official launch in 1998 under the name FruityLoops. The program became a hit amongst musicians and producers, especially does Hip Hop as it made sampling and other beat-making tools more efficient.
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Along with 9th Wonder, other big-name producers continue to use the program, such as 808Mafia, Metro Boomin, Boi-1da, Hit-Boy, Mike Will Made It, Mustard, TM88 and more.
DJ Khaled recently came under fire after an old interview of him dragging the digital program surfaced online last month. In the clip, Khaled said programs such as FL Studio changed Hip Hop production for the worse and made it easy for anyone to be a beatsmith.
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“Producing changed. They made Logic, they made Fruity Loops,” Khaled said at the time. “It’s called: too easy. It’s called: you tell a computer what to program. That’s why you see everybody is a producer and a DJ now.”
“But it takes a great producer like me to tell them, ‘The sounds is garbage, they’re fake, don’t fall for the trap,'” he added.
Many producers spoke up and took a stand against Khaled, including Hit-Boy, who explained that he actually used FL Studio to produce some of the We The Best mogul’s biggest hits.
“I produced ‘theraflu’ and ‘wish you would’ for khaled and kanye fully off FL studio,” the King’s Disease producer wrote on Twitter.
