Danielle Ponder remembers the day she quit her job. It was 2021, and the Rochester, New York, attorney had paused her weekend to hop on a Zoom call with Q-Tip.
For nearly a decade, she’d juggled both a law and a music career — taking criminal cases by day and stages by night.
“It was an insane life,” she admits, “just like constantly on the go.”
But the meeting with the legendary rapper — set up by a DJ who’d passed along her music — was a turning point.
“He had so many inspiring things to say,” she remembers. “It just became so clear to me. This is the moment. There’s nothing to stick around for. I felt pretty confident that something was going to happen.”
She was right. Something did happen. Within a year, she’d signed to Future Classic record label and made her television performance debut on “Late Night with Seth Meyers.” And last year, she made another leap, leaving her hometown for Stone Mountain, just outside of Atlanta, in hopes of propelling her singing career even further.
“I’ve been in a lot of spaces where I’m the only Black person. And for me, Atlanta presented an opportunity to be in the arts but to also be surrounded by Black culture, and that was something that really drew me here,” says the R&B and soul singer.
Ponder, 43, is among the countless artists who’ve migrated to the ATL, which has long been known as a magnet for creatives. According to a 2022 report on creativity and innovation, Atlanta has the country’s highest number of talent and creative outlets per capita — a statistic Mayor Andre Dickens has bragged about online. With more than 130 recording studios and a slew of rehearsal spaces, performance venues and music organizations, Atlanta fuels creativity and opportunity.
And, of course, the city knows how to breed global superstars. Outkast is months away from being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Killer Mike swept the 2024 Grammys, winning every award he was nominated for. And Usher “turned the world to the A” during his Super Bowl halftime performance, one of the most-watched in history.
The foundation
If you ask DJ Big X, Atlanta’s music scene had been buzzing long before a major record label ever opened an office here. While companies, including LaFace Records and So So Def, helped catapult Atlanta into mainstream media in the 1990s, it was the indie labels and local artists that set the foundation.
“When you start the history at LaFace, you discredit everything that happened in Atlanta before that,” he said. “You discredit Peabo Bryson, Mother’s Finest, S.O.S. Band, Cameo. The city has always been rich in talent.”
Big X, who’s worked as a talent manager, producer and media personality, remembers listening to WIGO and WAOK in the 1970s and 1980s to hear the latest from Black musicians creating in Atlanta. And if he wanted to see live performances from emerging rappers and singers, teen clubs like Shyran’s Showcase, where he often deejayed as a kid, were the move.
Fellow Atlantan Divinity Roxx remembers those days. In the 1980s and ’90s, the bassist, singer, rapper and producer grew up competing in rap battles and at open mics. She was often surrounded by music executives and other up-and-coming artists.
“I did this talent show,” she remembers. “And you know who had won the week before? Usher.” It wasn’t long before Usher signed a record deal and Roxx and her rap group were opening for De La Soul and The Roots.
For many natives, Atlanta has created a supportive and infectious environment for Black musicians to express themselves freely and connect with like-minded creatives.
“Atlanta was always built on that,” Big X said.
From law to lyrics
Despite the city’s reputation as a cultural hot spot, “Atlanta wasn’t on my radar,” Ponder says. As a pastor’s kid, playing secular music was a no-no, “but music was always in our house,” she said.
Every Sunday, she watched her father sing and play the piano in church, and the music bug bit her. By the time she was a teenager, Ponder, the sixth of seven siblings, was the lead singer of the family band.
Then, they had a “devastating” experience when her brother was sentenced to 20 years in prison, because of New York’s three-strikes law, for robbing a bar.
“It was just so shocking. Even now, when I tell people, they think it was a murder. They think it was something really egregious,” she said. “Seeing someone get that much time is like watching someone be buried alive. It’s almost like they’re taken from you, even though they’re still living.”
The incident inspired Ponder to enroll in law school in 2008 so she could fight with families like hers. As a public defender, she managed as many as 50 cases a day, according to CNN. Most were minor, she says.
“I had a client who was arrested for not having a bell on their bike, and he was only 16 years old. He had to spend the night in jail for that,” she recalls. “I knew I wanted to do direct service work. I tried to represent everyone as if they were my brother.”
Despite a grueling schedule, she never stopped singing, sometimes weaving real-life stories about the criminal justice system into her lyrics. She continued to play in bands, booking gigs throughout the state and even Europe. She took full advantage of paid time off, often leaving work for a week or two at a time to perform overseas.
Ponder tried to leave the courtroom behind sooner, but the COVID-19 lockdown decreased performance opportunities, and she returned to law. Luckily, the lull afforded her additional time to meet more executives and artists in the industry. So when her music made it to Q-Tip, she was well-connected.
She later followed her brothers to Atlanta, realizing the relocation could further her music career.
“My brothers moved down and said, ‘Atlanta people will support you’ ... My family being here was a big piece of it, but I think also I wanted culture to be centered.”
Moving on
Roxx left Atlanta nearly 10 years ago. Now she’s just a train ride away from New York City.
“Atlanta started to feel stifling,” says the genre-bending artist. “I needed to be free musically to create whatever I wanted.”
After touring the world for years with greats like Victor Wooten and Beyoncé, the two-time Grammy-nominated musician returned home but now felt out of place. What had been a haven for various forms of creativity started to become a hub for only hip-hop, she says.
“And I love hip-hop. I am hip-hop, but hip-hop was diverse,” said Roxx, who’s also lived in Los Angeles.
Credit: Ogata Photo
Credit: Ogata Photo
What changed? She attributes the shift partially to the exit of LaFace Records, which launched the careers of TLC, Outkast, Toni Braxton and others in the 1990s.
“When they left, hip-hop music and just straight up rap started to become more prominent, and all of the fusion music was not getting signed and commercially placed,” she said.
In fact, LaFace’s departure in 2000 affected Atlanta’s music infrastructure overall. Deals for distribution, publishing, marketing and brand collaborations were sealed primarily in New York and Los Angeles. With top executives no longer cutting checks in Atlanta, touring became one of the only ways for artists to make a living while staying in the city.
“Creatives can’t walk down the street and go to Universal to get a job,” says Celeste Debro.
Debro, a music supervisor at Tyler Perry Studios, moved to Atlanta from Nashville in the early 2010s. From talent manager to strategic consultant, she’s held a variety of positions and seen homegrown talent come and go.
“Across the board, there are artists who have been here, cut their chops and left,” she said. “If you talk to anybody that moves to L.A., they’ll tell you they love Atlanta to death, but they couldn’t stay.”
That’s certainly true for Roxx.
“I’m from Atlanta. Period,” she laughs. “I would not change anything about my experience in Atlanta as a musician ... but Black excellence thrives in diversity of Black people operating in all levels of government and education, where the meekest and lowest among us have access to elevate themselves.”
‘Change the narrative’
Today, Big X is intentional about opening doors with New Music Mondays, a weekly showcase at Stankonia Studios for independent artists across the country to receive real-time feedback from Atlanta’s most influential DJs. And it’s not unusual for some of hip-hop’s biggest stars to stop by unexpectedly. Rick Ross, Trinidad James and Big Boi have all made surprise appearances.
Created by Coalition DJs, a marketing and promotion company cofounded by Big X, the platform gives artists a chance to connect and be heard through the collective’s network of strip clubs, lounges, studios and other spaces.
“The people got to like it. The girls got to like it. The bartender got to like it. The hookah girl got to like it,” Big X said. “We want to help you pick that one song that’ll get you to the next level.”
He’s masterminding tech ideas, too, with hopes of building an app that would make it easier for acts to upload and sell their records online for even wider visibility.
Credit: NATRICE MILLER
Credit: NATRICE MILLER
Debro is also creating more spaces for Atlanta artists. Her latest venture, FRSH WAV, is a catalog management company that helps clients license their songs for film, TV, advertisements and other media projects.
“I want to change the narrative. It’s too much opportunity. It’s a blank slate. It is the wet paint. It’s Harlem in the 1920s. You can literally build what you want,” she said.
Lawmakers are getting involved, too. Senate Bill 182, introduced by state Sen. Sonya Halpern, D-Atlanta, proposes the creation of a Georgia Music Office to support and promote music production, attract music-related investment and provide workforce development opportunities.
The proposal is comparable to the Georgia Film Office, which has made the state a top filming destination. Policymakers predict that increasing the presence of music businesses, manufacturers, record labels and talent agencies could yield similar results.
“The bottom line: Music is economic development,” Halpern said during the subcommittee hearing. “Georgia has the talent, the history and the momentum, and we cannot afford to fall behind other states that are already investing in their music industries.”
On her own terms
The verdict is still out on whether Atlanta has boosted Ponder’s music career. “I’m new, so it’s hard to say,” she admits. But she’s approaching her one-year anniversary with a lot to celebrate.
She’s the voice of Apple’s iPhone 16 campaign, and she sings the theme song for the Apple TV+ series “Manhunt.” She’s circulated the festival scene, including Atlanta’s ONE Musicfest, and she’s working on the follow-up to her debut album, “Some Of Us Are Brave,” which is partly being recorded in Atlanta.
During the Atlanta stop of her tour with Grammy winner Gary Clark Jr. in March, she confessed to the audience at the Eastern she was surprised to learn about Stone Mountain’s racist history when she moved to the area.
“That wasn’t great to find out,” she said. “But what I love is, despite this being ground zero for the KKK at some point, it really is now a Black community.”
“I love coming out to my very Black neighborhood,” she said. “I was the only Black attorney in my office when I started. So even something as small as visiting my dentist’s office, where everybody who works there is Black, I’ve never experienced that in 40-something years.”
For her, that makes Atlanta worth it.
While she would love Grammy recognition or other big-time accolades, she’s already a success, she said.
“I do music full-time, and I can pay my bills and then some. That is all I need,” Ponder said. “People say, ‘You can be this, and you can be that.’ I can be all of those things, and if I’m never any of those things, I’m very content where I am.”
ABOUT THIS SERIES
“Atlanta: America’s Black Mecca?” is an original content series from UATL that explores that question with data-driven, thoughtful reporting that prioritizes the voices of locals and transplants who call this city home. These stories will appear in the paper, UATL.com and AJC.com each month through January 2026.
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