Producer > Artist? Why Have Producers Been Getting Co-Billing on Albums?

Producers have shared the spotlight with artists in Hip-Hop and R&B on albums more and more over the years. DEF|Y|NE Media explores the history behind the trend.

Four of the better rap albums to drop in the past year - Future and Metro Boomin’s We Don’t Trust You, Common and Pete Rock’s The Auditorium Vol. 1, Larry June, 2 Chainz and The Alchemist’s Life is Beautiful, and Saba and No I.D.’s From the Private Collection of Saba and No I.D. - all have something in common: each lists the albums’ respective producer as an artist along with the MC.

This is the latest example of an ongoing trend of rappers collaborating with producers and beatmakers for a whole project, often a one-off, and the producer being included as the co-artist. Why is that? Jay-Z’s 4:44 didn’t have No I.D. on the front. Missy Elliott’s Supa Dupa Fly didn’t have Timabaland on the front. Yet, albums like Freddie Gibbs and Madlib’s Bandana, Blu and Exile’s Below the Heavens, and 21 Savage, Metro Boomin, and Offset’s Without Warning all list the producer as if he’s also one of the performers.

In the 21st century, the role of music producers has evolved, and many have moved from behind the scenes to taking on a more prominent and visible role as front-facing artists. While a crucial part of a recording, a listener wouldn’t see the producer’s name on a record until reading the liner notes. However, seeing a producer on the front cover has become more prominent for nearly three decades.

The definition of a music producer is as vague, elusive, and debatable as ever, particularly for Black music. Previously, a producer’s job was to help guide the thematic and sonic direction for a record and/or an artist on a song or album. He/she would be tasked with choosing and coaching the musicians for a session, helping to pick the material, and setting the sonic tone for the engineers. Today, it’s murky what constitutes a producer’s role.

As the years go on, technology has afforded producers to become more self-reliant on their own musicianship. Session players have dwindled sufficiently as the lines between producer and composer have blurred. Thanks to samplers, keyboards, synthesizers, drum machines, and computers, the producer is a band unto himself. While you’ve seen artists like Prince and Stevie Wonder morph into one-man bands and de facto producers, the pendulum started swinging the other way in the 1980s. Today, beatmakers and programmers call themselves producers, and producers are called executive producers.

There was a time when one person would produce an entire album. Today, getting one person to produce a whole project is rare in Black music. As a result, a producer’s notoriety for making hit records is far more illuminated than it was in the past. This has led to many producers branching out to be artists themselves or to be listed as an artist on collaborative albums.

Some producers, like Timbaland, Swizz Beatz, Mike-Will-Made-It, and many others, have made albums under their own names. Others are opting to share top billing with artists such as Zaytoven, Knxwledge, and Metro Boomin. Although the trend is fairly heavy these days, other groundbreaking producers planted the seeds for this phenomenon years before.

Quincy Jones, regarded as arguably the greatest music producer ever, started crafting his own albums in the 1950s as a big band conductor, arranger, and composer. With 1969’s Walking in Space, he started to focus more heavily on production. By the time he released albums like Sounds…and Stuff Like That, The Dude, and Back on the Block, he used his featured guest vocalists as instruments as much as the session players.

As a result, albums like The Dude and Back on the Block became the prototype for producers to be the main artist for an album, without lifting an instrument and barely singing a note, particularly in hip-hop.

In 1992, Dr. Dre released his solo debut, The Chronic. While he rapped on most of the songs on the record, he realized that he didn’t have to be featured in the song vocally for it to still be considered his work. This was even more the case for his 1999 follow-up, Chronic 2001. By the 2000s, producer-as-artists became more and more normalized with albums like Timbaland’s Shock Value, Swizz Beatz’s One Man One Band, and Mike Will Made-It’s Ransom 2.

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Since the 1960s, it became more prominent for producers to compose some of the music and vice versa. At Motown Records, for instance, production teams like Holland-Dozier-Holland, Ashford & Simpson, Norman Whitfield & Barrett Strong, and others were responsible for producing the songs they composed for the artists.

In 1965, The Temptations released The Temptations Sing Smokey, an album fully produced and composed by Smokey Robinson, featuring hits like “My Girl” and “The Way You Do the Things You Do.” Two years later, The Supremes released The Supremes Sing Holland–Dozier–Holland, the same concept and the same result of hits like “You Keep Me Hanging On” and “Love is Here and Now You’re Gone.” Like today, Robinson and Holland-Dozier-Holland were prominently pictured on the album covers.

The example Motown set in the 1960s increased in the industry well into the 1980s and 1990s with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Teddy Riley, LA Reid and Babyface, and others.

As the years go on, technology has afforded producers to become more self-reliant on their own musicianship. Session players have dwindled sufficiently as the lines between producer and composer have blurred. Thanks to samplers, keyboards, synthesizers, drum machines, and computers, the producer is a band unto himself. While you’ve seen artists like Prince and Stevie Wonder morph into one-man bands and de facto producers, the pendulum started swinging the other way in the 1980s.

In addition, producers began sharing the load with the artists they worked with. Nas hit a new gear over the past three years thanks to his collaboration with producer Hit-Boy on his dual trilogies of Kings Disease and Magic, respectively. While Nas is on the cover, the albums are publicly acknowledged as a collaboration. The precedent for a producer-rapper duo dates back to Hip-Hop’s golden era with Eric B. & Rakim, Gang Starr, Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth, and Kool G. Rap and DJ Polo.

In the 2000s, albums like Madvillainy (with rapper MF Doom and producer Madlib) paved the way for more one-off producer-rapper collaborations like NxWorries (Knxwledge and Anderson .Paak), Usher and Zaytoven, PRhyme (DJ Premier and Royce Da 5’9’’), and Danger Mouse and Black Thought.

Some may attribute this new paradigm of producers-as-artists as a way to come from behind the scenes to claim the spotlight. But it may be a more strategic decision than just vanity. Well, one could argue that the producer does as much work as the artist, if not more. The producer crafts the beats, molds the sonic vision, and in some cases, formulates hooks and choruses. Meanwhile, the rapper is responsible for their two 16-bar verses and their charisma.

Another issue to consider is that in the age of streaming, producers-as-artists are more economically prudent. As streaming became the primary distribution model for music, monetary compensation drastically changed. Producers and songwriters get a chunk of the publishing rights for songs and albums. Therefore, by also being one of the lead artists, they will get additional money.

A proven producer with a great track record could get paid a flat fee for a song or beat that they set for the artist and/or record label. On top of that, they could also negotiate publishing for the songs that they write, which are often more than just the artist. But to also get a piece of the artist fee for being listed as the artist for an album would give the producer another revenue stream.

So, producers have even more of an incentive to be the artist, even if they don’t say or sing a single word on the album. Producers today are providing more elements of a song than ever in history. So, it’s a justifiable and understandable era where they are taking advantage of opportunities to be listed as artists.

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