Comments on: Greatest Producers (You started it Grip)

By: Sayre

Sayre — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:20:30 +0000

I think Primo has made a million dope beats. Probably more dope beats than anyone. I think Rza has produced more classic songs/albums.

By: Proe

Proe — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:57:08 +0000

How the fuck is no one discussing SMITTY?

you fuckers have no taste.

By: Richie Cunning

Richie Cunning — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:02:03 +0000

I think you just posted it and covered all the comments.

By: mfshalem

mfshalem — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:43:11 +0000

Sayre- i respect your admiration for RZA, but when all is said and done and you listen to RZA’s body of work next to Primo’s I just like Primo’s more. It ultimately comes down to a matter of opinion/taste when discussing music. To each his own.

So it’s settled, Primo is the best of all time and JustBlaze is the best new guy. I’m right all the time, everyone go home.

How come there are NO good female producers in hip-hop?

Should we do a new post for GOAT female rapper? So everyone can talk about how Lauryn Hill is the best, barely beating out MC Lyte?

By: Rich C.

Rich C. — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:30:41 +0000

I did some research on the old web and if anyone’s interested, 99% of EVERYONE’S top hip hop producer lists have the same man at #1. The Sultan of Swing….The Barbarian of Boom Bap….The Emperor of the MPC….The one and only DJ Premier. The more you think about it, the more undeniable it is.

By: Sayre

Sayre — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:09:53 +0000

It is also criminal how much we are all over-looking Organized Noise

SouthernPlayalistic
ATLiens
Soul Food
Still Standing
The First Witchdoctor
The First Backbone
The Joi albums
etc.

By: Sayre

Sayre — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:08:14 +0000

Sha,

To my ear the first seven albums released by the Wu Tang Clan constitute the absolute best that hip-hop music has ever been. No crew, group or solo artist can boast a run of seven consecutive projects to compare with: 36 Chambers, Return To The 36 Chambers, Liquid Swords, Tical, Only Built For Cuban Linx, Ironman, and Forever.

More than any other factor, what sets these albums apart is the signature sound provided by Rza’s absolutely ingenious sample-based production. More than any other sample-based composer, Rza’s production highlights hip-hop’s multi-faceted relationship to its predecessors. RZA’s music compliments, critiques and complicates its source material.

Most of Wu-Tang’s classic songs are composed from samples of southern soul music from the 1960’s and early ’70s. These were the songs that served as the soundtrack of The Civil Rights Era in Black America. The theme music to a movement of people who truly believed “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Removed from that context, chopped, filtered, bent, stretched and reassembled into Wu-Tang instrumentals, the very same notes are stripped of that spirit. Rza’s production, especially on the albums listed earlier, conveys a tangible emptiness, a hopelessness born of Reaganomics, project living and the drug war.

By chopping, filtering, bending, stretching and reassembling the sounds of his parent’s generation, Rza “flipped” soul music until it sounded as dark and empty as the world he was living in. The brilliant contrast in tone that exists between Rza’s best work and his source material, illustrates the impact that the aforementioned “tragic ideological shift” had upon the collective psyche of black American youth with unparalleled depth and poignance.

And the Dre ghost-producer argument is such B.S. To believe that we would have to believe that Yella, Daz, Mel-Man, DOC, Hi-Tek, Focus, et. al just simply forgot how to be at all dope and/or interesting once they stopped working with Dre. Daz says he did Murder Was The Case? Let’s see does that sound more like “Cali Is Active” or “Dre Day?”

By: Rich C.

Rich C. — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 23:34:00 +0000

Shalem…while we do agree on the greatest flip of all time, my definition of flip does not require that the sample source be already used in hip hop. I think of a ‘flip’ as when a producer makes a beat out of any given song and goes so far beyond just looping it (i.e. chopping and rearranging) that the end product sounds nothing like the original and even producers are like “how the fuck he do that?!”. That’s the Cunny definition of “flip”.

By: mfshalem

mfshalem — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:51:45 +0000

and Dre always has co-producers that do the heavy lifting. sorry.

By: mfshalem

mfshalem — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:49:42 +0000

Sayre -you have it bad for RZA. You are going to have to defend placing him at #1 though. I have rarely heard RZA’s name mentioned as the GOAT. Primo has a longer track record, more hits, whole albums, signature sound, worked with the best Emcees ever (on everyones list), ill dj, i don’t see any category that RZA has him beat in.

How you can put RZA as #1?