- Courtesy of Thelonious Martin’s Facebook page
- Thelonious Martin
Kanye West isn’t the only local hip-hop artist receiving a degree this month. Chicago producer Thelonious Martin is in the middle of his final week of classes at Columbia College; with the exception of a single summer course he’s aiming to take online, he’ll have his degree in music business very soon. It’s the latest milestone the 22-year-old has achieved in recent months. In December Martin dropped his debut full-length, Wunderkid, which features Curren$y, Domo Genesis, Mac Miller, Ab-Soul, Joey Purp, and Smoke Dza, among others. Wunderkid is a proper album—it’s available to purchase from digital retailers, and this past winter Martin released the vinyl version. Last month a short version of the video for “Corners of Your Mind,” a spectral cut featuring vocals from Nylo and KSRA, debuted on Adult Swim between a block of commercials.
He’d upload tracks and mixtapes to the web, and his 2010 beat tape, Dusty Cartridges, caught the ear of Save Money rapper Vic Mensa. “We connected, and he realized I had Chicago ties, and it kind of just all came together,” Martin says. “Vic’s like a year younger than me. It’s like, ‘Who is the kid young as hell spittin?’ I think that was a little bit after he put out the Straight Up EP, and the rest is history, cause we ended up working together.”
