9th Wonder
9th’s Opus

Written by Newadmin. Published: Thursday, November 11, 2010.

The word “opus” pretty much just means an artist’s musical composition numbered by their movements or broken down parts. This is term generally applies to classical music and in my musical reference it’s always been associated with an avant garde musician, i.e. Beethoven’s Opus Sixty One. But, in a non classical setting opus would come to represent a musician’s definitive work, an offering meant to surpass previous works, a work meant to exceed all expectations and greatly impress. Because the term opus isn’t in the urban music vernacular, when it is used it is meant to have a special significance, so when I heard of 9th Wonder releasing a project entitled 9th’s Opus, yes I became excited as anyone that knows anything about hip hop would, but I became moreso just very happy. Happy, feeling that I was finally going to get that offering from 9th that I’ve been waiting for since waiting what seems a fairytale eternity for the unicorn elusive “The Wonder Years”. (The cover art is actually the same sitting photo but cut out (white) with a photo patchwork quilt background.) Happy, 9th Wonder would be represented in the releases of fellow super producers Black Milk (Album of the Year) and Ski Beatz (24 Hour Karate School). I was happy to get the feeling I’ve been missing since his work with Justice League and since Little Brother disbanded. Okay, after all trumpet fanfare, cymbal crashes, angelic harp crescendo, timpani strikes and drum roll…here it is…9th Opus. I push play and about an hour later am I happy…not really…actually quite the contrary.

I’ve read this is supposed to act as an offering from his label It’s A Wonderful World Music Group and also representing the new talent coming out of North Carolina . If this is so, this doesn’t offer us much promise to the 9th Wonder legacy thus far. I would normally go into a somewhat play-by-play on each song, but I’d rather discuss it as a whole project. We have an artist, Halo, that has grunts and adlibs sound exactly like Jay Z’ from “what more can I say”. I actually thought it was a sound bite until I kept hearing it. We had another artist, TP, whose sound was a mix of Kanye and Big Sean and that reference plays in your head the whole time you’re listening to him. The best artist on this album is the seasoned Skyzoo who gives us one track of his signature NY accent and cocky braggadocio over a cognac cigar smoke flavored smooth bop provided by 9th. Not necessarily a stand out track, but a good one.

In all honesty, the best vocal contributors are the R&B acts Heather Victoria and Tyler Woods. Heather brings us the song “I will always be down” featuring Rapsody, which while she’s good vocally, doesn’t offer anything with the track itself that I haven’t heard before. My favorite song probably comes from Tyler Woods on “Who gets your love” featuring Hos. Tyler vocally is sultry and sincere and quite refreshing, the track is great, but the downfall comes from Hos who gives us the normal run of the mill street rhetoric of guns, drugs and police on what is more of a vulnerable, open and quite beautiful song. As discussed with AboveGround’s BIG D O, Thee Tom Hardy is pretty good, but I feel more so because of voice, a southern twang and hint of humor, versus lyrics. In a time where a lot of the new generation are getting shine not because they’re “nice” necessarily, but because they have something that people like whether it be voice, style, delivery or subject matter. I can see him and someone that folks like to listen to as he sounds comfortable in himself and natural. Do I think he’s dope or even really belongs on a 9th Wonder track, Hell No!

If we may be honest here, aside from Skyzoo and his R&B acts no one on this album belongs on this album. Big Remo, Halo, Actual Proof, The Away Team, GQ, TP, Hos, Thee Tom Hardy and Rapsody all get bunched in the category of wack to okay at best. 9th Actually takes a stab at the mic as 9thMatic and, as he does an okay job, I don’t understand why he’s even trying in the first place.

Okay, okay, okay, it’s apparent I don’t like the emcees on it, but what about the BEATS? From what I gather 9th did about 10 out of the 12 songs, Khrysis and E.Jones contributed also. On “Trouble man” and “Grinnin” you become very happy to hear the signature boom bap and snare that you have grown to love, and some critique, from 9th and “College” is a great track, very horn section powered sample, musical, and just a real good track. Everything else is okay and overall these tracks sound more like his throw away beats that Murs didn’t use for Fornever, Wale didn’t use for Back To The Feature and Jean Grae didn’t use for Jeanius. The words “okay, good, cool, alright” shouldn’t even be used in relation to 9th wonder, so where many may think I’m being too tough or critical, I’m not saying everything is bad, but using these words in relation to a producer with 9th caliber is, in essence, pretty much the same as…well…bad.

In interviews 9th hates bringing up Little Brother and his past work and collaborators, but the entire time while listening to this that’s all you think of, “Phonte and Pooh would have been great on this. Scudda and Chaundon would have sounded better on this.” Even when I didn’t always like some of 9th’s old collaborators lyrically or otherwise (a big pet peeve of mine is ,actually, having wack cats that work with a dope producer), but I still recognized that they worked in their own way whether it was sound, attitude, humor etc, and would still end up sounding good. Sometimes things and people work for a reason.

Maybe it’s my fault, maybe hearing the words 9th Wonder and Opus gave me greater expectations and if it were titled the “It’s a Wonderful World Music Group Mixtape” and didn’t have 9th on the title, then I wouldn’t be so disastrously disappointed. Maybe. I’ve listened to this numerous times to give it the proper opportunity and chance and circumstance and while I started to like it more as a whole (somewhat), when I came to skipping through the songs to figure which I liked more I could count them on one hand, and that doesn’t include the opposable thumb. If I were to include anything from this project on a playlist it would be Tyler Woods’ song minus the Hos feature and about three other beats, no vocals.

Where an opus is supposed to represent integral parts of a greater more beautiful whole, 9th Opus was more of a hodgepodge of miscellaneous tracks from apparently the handful of mediocre emcees he’s found hanging around the quad on campus. Sorry to have to be the barer of bad news, but at least we have The Listening to get this taste out of our mouths and know the truer greatness of 9th Wonder. Until next time…

$15.00 out of $20.00

-Jamal Frederick

Category: Reviews