Pat "9th Wonder" Douthit was asleep during his biggest moment of 2006. The Little Brother deejay was napping on his couch the evening of Nov. 21 when singer Mary J. Blige won the American Music Award for Best Soul/R&B Album. She began her televised acceptance speech by thanking all the producers who worked on her album, "The Breakthrough," Wonder among them.
"At about five minutes to 11, all the phones started ringing at once," Wonder recalls. "House phone, my cell, my wife's cell. First call I picked up, they asked if I was watching the AMAs, and I thought something bad had happened. 'Mary J. Blige just shouted out your name!' That still blows me away. I don't even know what to say."
For the past few years, Wonder's career has headed nowhere but up. That trajectory's still there -- Blige may well drop his name again at February's Grammy Awards, where she's nominated in eight categories. But his path in 2006 included side roads into cla**rooms as well as strolls down the walk of fame.
He taught a cla** in the history of hip-hop at N.C. Central University in Durham while producing everybody from million-selling G-Unit rapper Lloyd Banks to underground emcee Murs. Come January, Wonder will teach again and take cla**es himself to earn his history degree. He'll also be producing a track on R&B singer Erykah Badu's next album, and he has a solo album of his own in the works.
As deejay/producer of Little Brother, Wonder, 31, makes up-to-date music that references the past. He sees himself as filling a gap between contemporary music and the old-school hip-hop he grew up with -- an approach he wants to apply to education.
"Nowadays you've got 18-year-olds walking around not knowing who Slick Rick is," Wonder explains. "And you've got people my age saying, 'I'm too old, I don't listen to rap anymore.' In schools, you have 13-year-old kids listening to Young Jeezy and 50-year-old teachers who are into the Grateful Dead. So there's a generation gap that has to be addressed. When I was growing up, I was influenced a lot by older cats. I want to do the same thing, be a mentor figure to kids."
In the midst of all this, it's possible that Wonder might be on his way out of Little Brother. The group's 2005 major-label debut, "The Minstrel Show," picked up rave reviews but sold poorly. A followup album is in progress, and so far Wonder's contribution has been minimal. Except for one song with a Wonder-produced beat, vocalists Phonte Coleman and Thomas "Big Pooh" Jones are working with other producers.
"They want to take it in a different direction, which is totally fine," Wonder says. "I'm always down for evolution, so let's see if it works. But I'm still steadfast on the thing, and whatever happens between us I want to stay between us. Whether it be with Little Brother or myself or other groups, I really want to focus my time on making music. I want to try to get the message across
