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Search for "Mike Posner LDOC" on YouTube. Find it, and you'll see an out-of-focus video clip that opens with a crowd of students crammed onto Duke's main West Campus quad. Then, the camera, held by someone on stage, turns to the right and rests on Mike Posner and his collaborator, rapper Big Sean. They start into a song, and the crowd is feeling it, singing along with "Smoke and Drive," a hit from Posner's recently released CD. It's a favorite for the students who have gathered to celebrate the spring semester's Last Day of Classes.
Standing toward the back of the crowd is 9th Wonder, a Grammy-Award winning hip-hop producer, the hip-hop ambassador for the NAACP, and a lecturer in hip-hop history at North Carolina Central University. A couple of days later, Posner (pronounced POSE-ner) will be in his studio laying down tracks for Washington-area rapper Wale's new mixtape, Back to the Feature, which 9th Wonder is producing. He watches as Posner warns the audience that his time is nearly up, then asks them whether they want to hear one more song. Cheers erupt.
Posner and Big Sean launch into "Cooler Than Me," perhaps the biggest hit of Posner's brief career. Imploring a young woman to abandon her stuck-up ways, the song was the top free download on Apple's iTunes U website in early March. Its catchy beat and universally recognizable narrative theme have made it immensely popular on college campuses across the country.
"I was impressed," 9th Wonder says. "People want to hear something different, and he has a different sound. I think he's gonna stick out like a sore thumb," which is not a bad thing in today's crowded music scene. The rest of the video clip bears out his observation. After the first few bars of "Cooler Than Me," the sound engineer turns off the speakers, and, as if nothing has happened, the crowd continues to sing along for nearly a minute more. They know every word.
It's tempting to characterize this moment as something of a culmination for Posner, who began making hip-hop beats in his suburban Detroit bedroom at thirteen. But he doesn't view it that way at all. His moves are deliberate, and, while he admits to taking a few moments to enjoy his success, he is quickly on to the next step. After recording his parts in 9th Wonder's Durham studio, he boarded a plane to New York to meet with Jay-Z, arguably the most powerful man in hip-hop. The two spent hours discussing a possible record deal. Posner ultimately decided to sign with J Records, a subsidiary label of Sony Music Entertainment, in July and will release his first commercial album early next year.
This means that a little more than a year after beginning to perform and promote his own songs, Mike Posner, Class of 2010, is on his way to becoming a major recording artist while still an undergraduate. His ascent is owing to a convergence of forces—available technology, resources on campus, and a changing music industry among them—combined with a creative drive that makes him eschew socializing in favor of late nights in his dorm room, working on beats. He is a self-described white kid from the suburbs who produces and performs music that many classify as hip-hop, though Posner prefers "pop," because it is more inclusive. He views his work as a bridge between members of his increasingly postracial generation. Mike Posner, confident in his abilities, has gone viral—and if you asked him, he'd say it was merely a matter of time.
Posner remembers wondering, one day in his early teens, where the musical tracks or "beats" playing behind the lyrics in hip-hop songs came from. Soon after, his parents bought him a keyboard, and he was online, soliciting advice on how to go about producing beats. In hip-hop music, more often than not, a rapper does not compose his own beats. They come from a producer, who draws on various musical traditions—generally R&B, soul, funk, and other hip-hop —and mixes together the instrumental track, which the rapper then uses as a backdrop to writing and performing his lyrics.
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