Hip Hop scholar and Grammy Award-winning producer 9th Wonder thinks that Kendrick Lamar is taking Hip Hop back to the days of Public Enemy. In an interview with PBS, 9th Wonder heaped praise on Compton’s native son.
Speaking to Open Mind’s Alexander Heffner, 9th Wonder said that “Kendrick is speaking of unification. Kendrick is the highest selling rap artist this year. If we look back two or three years ago, political rap doesn’t sell, right?”
The producer, who worked with Kendrick on his 2017 album DAMN. to produce the track “Duckworth,” went on to say, “He’s changing that narrative, kind of taking it back to the times Public Enemy, It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, sold two million copies to a seventh grader like me. So it’s going back to that time, it’s slowly going back to that time, but it’s going to take a while.”
9th Wonder was doled out similar props to Chance The Rapper, saying “There’s not only a political edge but a spiritual edge and religious edge, venturing off into a place that a lot of people think that Hip Hop can’t go.”
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“People still look at Hip Hop as not the genius art form that it is. I think Chance has proved that wrong on so many levels. He proved ‘I can be spiritual, I can be religious, I can be political, I can be Governor of Illinois, I can sell out Comiskey Park.'”
Watch the fascinating full interview below.
