Bumper Crop: REASON On 9th Wonder & Baby Tate

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This week, I interviewed Top Dawg Entertainment rapper REASON about his new album Porches. Our discussion deliberately avoided the label drama of the moment in order to get a better sense of how this solid sophomore effort came about. In these outtakes from our chat, he speaks about two of his collaborators: producer 9th Wonder and rapper/singer Baby Tate.

Ahead of this project, you dropped "The Soul Pt. 3" as its own separate thing. When you signed with TDE, the first volume of "The Soul" was the first track I think you put out there. What prompted you to continue this tradition?

REASON: That was definitely an ode to Kendrick Lamar–shout out to Kendrick– doing "The Heart" series. I always loved the Hearts; I followed them since the beginning. I always would brand my music as soulful. I say soul a lot before I rap. Ab-Soul is also from my neighborhood. There was all of these ties for me for the word soul. So, every single time I'm about to drop a project, I wanna do "The Soul."

This Soul was fun, because the legendary 9th Wonder is featured on it. That alone was just like a huge honor for me. This one was brighter; I feel like the other Souls were dark. The first "The Soul," the beat and everything, the ominous tone sounds dark. The second one was kind of similar. With this one, I was in Raleigh working with 9th. I went out there to work with him for a week. I was just in a good area of life when I wrote it, whereas [with] the other Souls, I usually wait until I'm in this dark, hungry, underdog place in life to write them. It is dope, but it gives it a different perspective with this one, just from the feeling of it.

And there's a certain joy lurking underneath every 9th Wonder beat.

Man, just to be able to say that I had that with 9th, I can't even. I was always a huge, huge fan. And then meeting him, I quickly forgot I was with 9th Wonder when I met him. For the first hour, he was 9th, and then after that we were arguing about Jordan and Kobe. He is just a super regular person and I appreciate 9th for everything that he's done for me, for real.