9th Wonder On Sampling For Kendrick Lamar | The Formula, S1E2 - YouTube

9TH WONDER: Beyoncé –her dad came in.

He heard the song “Girl” playing loud.

[Plays Destiny’s Child’s “Girl”]

He said, “This is a smash. This is a hit.”

He looked at me, he was like, “You made this beat, son?”

I said, “Yes, sir.”

And Beyonce turned to him and said, “Daddy, he made it on that.”

RODNEY CARMICHAEL: In hip-hop, sampling is like alchemy.

It’s an artform that rearranges space and time.

And the producers who build on the tradition use sonic DNA from the past to cook up the future.

Even when you know how it works, it can still feel like magic.

The name 9th Wonder says it all.

A proven innovator with a disciplined approach, he lends every sample he touches his own sense of soul.

That becomes clear in surprising ways when he breaks down the three beats he composed

that all went into a single song from Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer-winning album, “DAMN.”

[Plays Ted Taylor’s “Be Ever Wonderful”]

9TH WONDER: The first song I sampled in Kendrick Lamar's “DUCKWORTH.,” – it's a song by Ted Taylor,

and the song was called “Be Ever Wonderful.”

A lot of times, producers listen to samples, and they say, “That's a great sample, but he didn't do it right.”

It's just like fashion.

Maybe a shirt on this side, jackets over here, but it takes a mind to put all those together.

It's the same thing with records.

It's like, if you don’t know how to dress this up man, just don't wear it.

[Plays Kendrick Lamar’s “DUCKWORTH.”]

Sometimes people make beats and don't understand body motion means a lot,

especially when it comes to the region you're making the beat for.

So if I'm thinking of classic West Coast, I'm thinking this,

I'm thinking of all the like different, you know, foot movements and all of that stuff.

I also knew that Ludacris used this for “Splash Waterfalls.”

The same sample.

So now I’m thinking, “Ok, I have to flip it another way.”

I'm fighting against three or four different thought processes.

The second song that I sampled in “DUCKWORTH.” for Kendrick was called, “Ostavi Trag.”

[Plays September’s “Ostavi Trag”]

That’s a lot going on.

Progressive rock or prog rock has been a thing that a lot of us have been sampling for a while.

As Q-Tip started sampling jazz, Dilla and Madlib really started to go to other countries

and started digging there.

So prog rock became like a thing.

If I have a loop or part of the sample that I want,

I piece it together in my mind like a puzzle.

I have this part.

I have a middle to go along with it.

Now I need an end.

[Plays Kendrick Lamar’s “DUCKWORTH.”]

The third song that I sampled is some close friends of mine, “Atari” by Hiatus Kiayote.

One of my producers, Cash, came to me and said, “Man, here's some sounds on this record.”

We started to go through the record and I ran up on...

[Plays Hiatus Kiayote’s “Atari”]

I read in an article one time that Pete Rock said he did 25 beats a week.

That's 1000 jumpers a day.

Am I shooting 1000 jumpers a day?

Well, I'm shooting 200 jumpers a day.

So I started to come up... come up with a thing called, “30 before Thursday.”

I start on Monday, and my goal is to have 30 beats before Thursday.

I would listen to every song on the record, so by the time another producer came along,

they say, “Man, you took every great sample off of this record. There's nothing left.”

After a while, I had like eight Hiatus Kiayote beats.

So now I'm sampling the now and sampling my friends.

[Plays Kendrick Lamar’s “DUCKWORTH.”]

I'm just doing what Pete did for me, what Pete and Preem did for me and what James Brown did for them.

It's still just a paying it forward.

I just always look at it like a link in the chain. A link in the chain.

So it trips me out but you know I still... man, these young boys getting better.

This is not like the NBA where you can retire. You have to keep going.

[Plays Kendrick Lamar’s “DUCKWORTH.”]

That's what makes “DUCKWORTH.” the joint, because of that.

Three countries.

The sample came from three different countries, with three different generations, three different genres,

covering all parts of Kendrick's life involving three people: him, his dad and Top Dogg.

CARMICHAEL: Did y'all ever have that conversation?

9th WONDER: Nah, I'm hitting him today, and I'm going to ask him.

I'm hitting Kendrick today, say, “Hey man, did you know? Did you mean to do this?”

Because it's exactly, that's what it is. It's threes all the way across.