Acclaimed, Grammy Award-winning producer 9th Wonder will join the Wake Forest University African American Studies Program as a professor for the 2022-2023 academic year.

The North Carolina native will be a Professor of the Practice in Residence in African American Studies for the fall of 2022 and will teach an undergraduate seminar entitled “Where It All Began: A History of Hip Hop.” He'll also participate in special programming for both the Wake Forest and Winston-Salem communities during his teaching semesters.

9th said he's been connected to Wake Forest since he was just a teen.

“I’ve been connected to the University since 1989 by way of Ernest Wade, former director of Minority Affairs," he told Wake Forest News. "I was selected as a 14-year-old for “Project Ensure,” a college prep program for academically gifted minorities from Winston-Salem going to the 9th grade. I spent every summer there until I graduated from high school in 1993. Wake Forest was my very first taste of what college life could and would be.”

9th, who got his start with the North Carolina-based group Little Brother, and has produced for everyone from Beyoncé to Kendrick Lamar, Jean Grae, Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu, Murs and KRS-One, has a long history in higher academics. He received the Nassir Jones Fellowship at Harvard University where he lectured and conducted research in the Hip-Hop Archives and has taught at Duke University and North Carolina Central University for over a decade. He's also taught at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia and last year, was appointed a visiting professor at Long Island University’s Roc Nation School of Music, Sports and Entertainment.

9th joins poet Brenda Marie Osbey as two of the newest additions to the Wake Forest University African American Studies Program.