Patrick Douthit is a professor at Duke, and heâs one of the biggest Blue Devil basketball fans on the schoolâs campus. But you know him by a different name: 9th Wonder.
The legendary hip-hop producerâheâs made beats for Jay-Z, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole and pretty much every other big rapper in the industry over the last 15 yearsâhas also been a professor at Duke since 2010, teaching courses like âHip-Hop Historyâ and âHip-Hop Cinemaâ in the African & African American Studies department.
Despite growing up in nearby Winston-Salem, 9th Wonder didnât become a diehard Duke fan until the early â90s, when the Blue Devils won back-to-back titles and reached the national championship game in three out of four years. Some 20 years later when 9th started teaching at Duke, he received a Twitter DM from the star of those Duke teams: Grant Hill. 9th invited Hillâa beatmaker in his own rightâto come by his studio and kick it. Hill brought along his old friend and then-Duke assistant coach Jeff Capel, and through Capel, 9th eventually met Coach Mike Krzyzewski.
âHe talks about my Instagram a lot,â 9th says of Coach K, who is now a friend. âLike heâll say, Man, you put a lot of stuff on your Instagram. Because heâs a lurker on the âGram. Nobody knows this guyâs IG. Heâs on there.â
Coach K is rightâ9th is constantly posting about Duke hoops on social media, bragging about his Blue Devils. âArguably, weâre the most watched team in basketball,â the professor explains. âProbably the only team thatâs watched more than us is the Golden State Warriors. Whether you are a Duke hater or supporter, you are watching us.â
Over the years, 9th has built relationships with future pros who have passed through the Duke program, from Jabari Parker to Jayson Tatum, and they stay in touch. But itâs always in his capacity as a teacher first and a fan second. Seth Curry and Miles Plumlee were among his first students, and this year heâs spotted Tre Jones and Zion Williamson in his classes, too.
âI may swing by a practice or two, just to see whatâs going on and just say whatâs up. I definitely go to the games. But the majority of the time, my interaction with those players is in my classroom,â he explains. âYou gotta do my work, bruh. Like, Whereâs that paper? Whatâs up with that presentation, though?â
The bravest Blue Devils have even shown up at 9thâs studio to rap for him. Marvin Bagley III could really rhyme, 9th says. Thereâs an unreleased track featuring Parker, Amile Jefferson and Rasheed Sulaimon all rapping stashed away somewhere in his studio. Grayson Allen stopped by once. And this past summer when 9th met high school stars Cole Anthony, Armando Bacot and Cassius Stanley at Nike EYBLâs Peach Jam, they all wanted to spit for him, too. âEveryone claims they got bars,â he laughs.
Bars or not, the door to his studio is always open. âIâm in academia, but I also care about the culture these guys receive. Theyâre already receiving an amazing basketball culture, but the other side of things, Iâm very cognizant of giving them that.â
â
Abe Schwadron is the Managing Editor at numberFire and a former Senior Editor at SLAM.
Photo by Jon Lopez.