The Wisdom of the Illiterati


	music by email Last week The Rhapsody blog held a roundtable discussion (via email, no doubt) with a batch of hip-hop producers: Tricky Stewart, Danja, J.R. Rotem, DJ Toomp, and others. If you need hints as to what's wrong with modern record production, and how confused even those who are successful at it are at the moment, you can find plenty here. Besides the usual complaints about falling budgets, shifty A&R people, the T-Painization of the top forty, and performers who expect writing credit "because they ask for more volume in their headphones", there's also the issue of how records are actually made. This statement from Tricky Stewart sums up the situation nicely: "The other day, me, Dream, and Ne-Yo did a record together and we weren't even in the same place." As DJ Toomp points out, most producer's are only too aware of how this hurts what they're trying to accomplish: "It takes away from what we really worked hard to get to. Tip, Jay-Z, and cats who been in the game for at least five years or more understand being in a room and vibing. But this new generation came in just [emailing] tracks. Some new rapper who never heard of a MPC, never has really been in a true studio, and has never seen a record being mixed, that's how they think it comes together." They worry about the situation, but there's also some ambivalence. These guys are businessmen, after all, and they've seen the future, and though they may not like it much, they're trying hard as they can to figure out how to make money off of it. For the most part, the solution comes down to going into A&R themselves. They all want to be Diddy, even if that seems to mean working against their own principles. Toomp, for instance, cites Mr. Collipark--who actively promotes the sort of rappers (Soulja Boy, Hurricane Chris, V.I.C.) Toomp complains about--as an example to follow. And the future of the album? There isn't any. Stewart pronounces the CD dead, and predicts that artists will start releasing a half-dozen tracks every six months instead of waiting to release an album. And though he considers it unfortunate, Stewart himself has no interest in making anything but singles: "If you call me and I could get the single on a lesser artist than being on a big artist's album, most of the time, you take the single on the little artist because you're going to get the spins and airplay, and that's where the producers are making their money. If me and Dream do a record, we only want the single. We don't even give records up unless they're the single." To these guys, the future seems to look a lot like the 1930s, before lps were invented. As Colione of J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League puts it, with artists making big money on singles and ringtones, but being lucky to sell 50,000 lps, what sense does it make to produce albums? Put out a new single every couple of months (or even every month, as many artists did in the 30s and 40s), and let your audience compile them in any way they see fit. It's an interesting concept, if only because it comes with the implied admission that lps have become little more than marketing schemes that have outlived their usefulness. But it also sounds like they're looking for any way they can to protect themselves from the hordes of bedroom rappers and producers who are sure to follow in Soulja Boys' wake. I mean, what record company is going to pay these guys $100,000 a track when they can be outsold by some teenager with a laptop and a rhyming dictionary? \| [Archives] Search entries:		top ten 1966 top ten OTHER OCCASIONAL RAMBLINGS Hail Blogoslavia! ~~100~~ 45 or so things about JSM The Saga of the Lone Biscuit OTHER BLOGS Blogroll Me

music by email

Last week The Rhapsody blog held a roundtable discussion (via email, no doubt) with a batch of hip-hop producers: Tricky Stewart, Danja, J.R. Rotem, DJ Toomp, and others. If you need hints as to what's wrong with modern record production, and how confused even those who are successful at it are at the moment, you can find plenty here. Besides the usual complaints about falling budgets, shifty A&R people, the T-Painization of the top forty, and performers who expect writing credit "because they ask for more volume in their headphones", there's also the issue of how records are actually made.

This statement from Tricky Stewart sums up the situation nicely: "The other day, me, Dream, and Ne-Yo did a record together and we weren't even in the same place." As DJ Toomp points out, most producer's are only too aware of how this hurts what they're trying to accomplish: "It takes away from what we really worked hard to get to. Tip, Jay-Z, and cats who been in the game for at least five years or more understand being in a room and vibing. But this new generation came in just [emailing] tracks. Some new rapper who never heard of a MPC, never has really been in a true studio, and has never seen a record being mixed, that's how they think it comes together."

They worry about the situation, but there's also some ambivalence. These guys are businessmen, after all, and they've seen the future, and though they may not like it much, they're trying hard as they can to figure out how to make money off of it. For the most part, the solution comes down to going into A&R themselves. They all want to be Diddy, even if that seems to mean working against their own principles. Toomp, for instance, cites Mr. Collipark--who actively promotes the sort of rappers (Soulja Boy, Hurricane Chris, V.I.C.) Toomp complains about--as an example to follow.

And the future of the album? There isn't any. Stewart pronounces the CD dead, and predicts that artists will start releasing a half-dozen tracks every six months instead of waiting to release an album. And though he considers it unfortunate, Stewart himself has no interest in making anything but singles: "If you call me and I could get the single on a lesser artist than being on a big artist's album, most of the time, you take the single on the little artist because you're going to get the spins and airplay, and that's where the producers are making their money. If me and Dream do a record, we only want the single. We don't even give records up unless they're the single."

To these guys, the future seems to look a lot like the 1930s, before lps were invented. As Colione of J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League puts it, with artists making big money on singles and ringtones, but being lucky to sell 50,000 lps, what sense does it make to produce albums? Put out a new single every couple of months (or even every month, as many artists did in the 30s and 40s), and let your audience compile them in any way they see fit. It's an interesting concept, if only because it comes with the implied admission that lps have become little more than marketing schemes that have outlived their usefulness. But it also sounds like they're looking for any way they can to protect themselves from the hordes of bedroom rappers and producers who are sure to follow in Soulja Boys' wake. I mean, what record company is going to pay these guys $100,000 a track when they can be outsold by some teenager with a laptop and a rhyming dictionary?