Jermaine Dupri has been honored with the prestigious Phoenix Award by the city of Atlanta, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the city.
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Dupri was handed the award while on stage during a recent Hip Hop 50 show by Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, who said the legendary producer was receiving the “highest award” he could give anyone in the city. The Phoenix Award “recognizes outstanding achievements and service to the city, state, nation or world.”
Aside from being an incredibly talented producer, Jermaine Dupri has long held a reputation for bringing out the best in the artists he works with — to that point, he revealed in June that there was one project that was incredibly difficult to work on.
Back in June, the Atlanta MC took to Instagram to post the cover art of Da Brat’s 1994 debut album, Funkdafied. Produced entirely by him, the nine-track LP topped the Rap and R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts in addition to reaching No. 11 on the Billboard 200 upon its release.
As per the post’s caption, this wasn’t an easy accomplishment. “29 years ago today, out of all the albums that I made this was the most difficult, female rap wasn’t the wave, but I was determined,” he wrote.
“I knew how amazing @sosobrat was, so we worked and worked till we found it and the rest is history, platinum, and all that shit.”
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Tyler, The Creator also recently spoke about Dupri’s extensive songwriting background, and how studying it only made him respect the North Carolina native more.
“He has so much knowledge,” Tyler said. “Jermaine Dupri is one of our greats. Truly, one of our greats, like, I was listening to ‘Sweetheart’ by him and Mariah Carey off of that album. And I’m listening to this, and I’m like, ‘I didn’t even know Jermaine Dupri was writing these songs.’ And by the way: I didn’t know! Pharrell told me! And I’m like, ‘N-gga, what?’ Yeah! This n-gga be writing these songs!”
