Producers not getting respect.............

[Cold Truth]

alright man..... i was at church last nite and the youth pastor came up and was like "hey when are you going to do that turntable-mixing thing that you do for the youth?" and i said.. that i dont "mix", i dont even HAVE turnatbles and that i am a producer. i make beats...... and then oter friends of mine are like, hey, did you "mix" this? did you "put this together" "what did you take this from".......things like that.....

i'm getting to a point where i want to respond, like, "i made that whole f@#$ing thing myself." it pisses me off.... people dont really respect producers all that much as artists and act like all we do is string things together from other people, and that all hip hop is a sample that we "stole" from someone else. im just ranting here but its getting really old.......

[MadScientist]

I feel you because I dont sample. Everything I do is original and all played by me.

[HaZwaiOh]

the producer is always the bad guy. people think we are some money sharks because we charge money for beats. people ignore the fact that an mc only needs a mic to work. we need all kinds of gear so it´s only right to charge, but people just don´t see that...
when attending freestyle sessions people know who used to rap on that instrumental beat they´re just rapping on, but in most cases have no clue who did the beat ...

[hardboiled]

ain't it the truth...producers put mad heart,effort, and money into making music...and let's face it..unless your some real rapper such as a 2Pac who could write lyrics without being inspired by a beat..you rap to the beat..the beat isn't made around the rhymes...so what's more important..some cat blabbing away making no sense or point whatsoever or the beat?people even dance to dance music which has no lyrics...so why don't producers get the real props they deserve?i dunno you tell me..

[drew_petti]

ya'll are crazy, and making me laugh my ass off...

I get my respect.... :evillaugh

LOOK, the pastor respects you, because he asked you to work with the youth. that's respect and trust.
and until you get that house, ferrari, and jewelry..you aint a money shark...you just trying to pay bills, and get by...

and I've never known an emcee that didnt know his favorite producers.

bunch of funny business up in here...

:headscrat

[Cold Truth]

um... you missed what i was getting at. HIP HOP PRODUCERS.... in general do not get the same regard as "real" musicians. it had nothing to do with wether HE respected ME, it was an example of HOW PEOPLE IN GENERAL PERCIEVE HIP HOP PRODUCTION. i wasnt talking about mc's or people in hip hop. i will never have the ferrari or the jewelry.. or the "house".. that's all worthless to me... and besides, what did that have to do with anything? how did money get involved? what i find funny is when people chime in and are way off the mark with their response..............

[Cold Truth]

lets see......................well, i didnt know what you were referring to about the money, but you still missed the point. so "my bad" about the money issue. other than that, well, its not that serious.

[Guevara]

WOW i thought i was the site grouch, dont u people ever get tired of this "i play all my shit original, i never sample" shit...but as not to start another sampling Vs. the "almighty originality" conflict, im just gonna leave it as a question, just to add an opinion, u do seem to bitch a lot TRUTH, that gay alarm shit is FUNNY!!!!!!!

[Cold Truth]

who said anything about this being "playing my own vs. sampling"? if you read so many of my posts you would know that i am ALL FOR sampling. all i was saying was that people act like it doesnt take any talent to do what we do, and a lot of people assume that EVERYTHING is a sample. so in answer to your question, "dont we ever tire of this i play everything myself, i never sample", well, i dont know. ask the people who keep making it a debate, because i never said anything about it here.

[dacalion]

Truth, It comes from a lack of knowledge. People that aren't involved in music production don't truely know what it consists of. A good example is...you go to a club and the #1 song comes on, almost everyone in the club will know who sings/raps it but hardly any will know who produced it. So I feel what you're saying. I feel that production just isn't a BIG part of the lime-light to the public eye yet.

--dac

[Guevara]

whoah truth, i was referring to mad scientists comment, relax "B".

[Cold Truth]

man, i must be irritable today, or something..... i dont know what my problem is!!!!!! sorry, guerva...................

[mike kilo]

i know wht you mean, man!
but most people also don´t understand that there´s so many ways
to create beats.
and sampling is an art, too! not only taking a 1:1 loop and program a beat over it but combining that different types of samples of all kinds in
one composition.
peaZe

[Cold Truth]

yup.... seriously, if you put most people in front of a sampler and spell the whole thing out for them, with something basic......they are still clueless and clumsy. its not like you just up and have a good beat (thats actually album worthy) without some serious work put in... of course you will have an occasional fluke, but just what goes in to a beat, sampled or unsampled.. its not like a guitarist who just does his guitar part or the drummer who does only drums... granted those are both highly skilled parts to a band, but we have to learn to entire arrangements, beatmatching, finding the best drums to use, plus most serious producers need some engeneering knowledge, and then you factor in working with a wide array of artists.... its not like bands that have the same core group recording and learning each other over time. a lot of times its a session or two, or developed relationships with several artists, catering to each artist's particular style, i mean damn.... there is so much that goes into this whole thing and people dont realize.....

[hardboiled]

yo dec is right..it's bout ignorance..like when the black man came here on slave ships..white people didn't understand their cultures and ways so they just thought them as less than human and enslaved them..the same thing with the native americans, except they just annihilated them...it's a lack of people trying to learn and understand..in the same token people don't give producers much thought cause it's the most complicated part of production and no one,except for other producers, understand what it is..that's why the "artist" is put in the showlight and makes more money..it's alot easier visually to understand someone who's spittin on a mic rather than watching someone fiddle around on a computer or MPC.

[SpLitPerSonaliT]

I get more respect for producing than i do for rapping, so do all my boys.. maybe its just you

[Cold Truth]

Split, no, it's not "me" as you suggested. i am not talking about personal respect for my work, because everyone i show beats to asks for a cd of them and i get harrassed by several freinds who play instruments (trumpets, guitars, saxaphone) and want to play to my beats. and besides, i was talking about hip hop production in and of itself. you do not get that respect, i dont care what you say. hip hop circles aside, THE GENERAL public, general people do not highly regard hip hop production very highly as an art, and as we discussed in the last few posts, it is due to a lack of knowledge of the form and the process. we are not discussing personal respect here. i am well respected for my beats and i was honored to be asked to do some tracks for the youth (we have a growing number of kids who spit ) and in fact i have also been approached to score an animated short for my church as well as a few inquiries for a few independent fim makers (JUST starting out, nothing major, mind you). this isnt me trying to brag (that isnt my character, and besides,i havent posted anything in here, so it would just make me look stupid.) my "beef" was that i was tired of the assumptions that people make in regards to how things get done and the stereotypes that surround them. i am certain that you and all your boys are not special in this regard, because it is the artform itself that gets scrutinized, not the artists per se (as far as the topic of this thread)

[inrctyhoodmusic]

I would have to say that since hip hop is a hevaliy sampled type of music it gets flack from older people as not original everything is sampled hip hop producers can't read music or create their own so they sample and try to make it sound different...It's not ture there are a lot of original producers out and on this site...It's Kind of like the boy who cried wolf they automaticly thought that he was playing when he cried the first time and when there really was a wolf no one bothered....after all the sample heavy songs going mainstream .. was hip hop crying wolf to the older people..and when they hear anything they think it's automaticly a sample...Even younger people that know nothing about producing look at this the same way

[Beatz 101]

I think we getting more respect due to the popularity of timbaland and the Neptunes....but not enuff

personally yall may get respect. But as a whole, we lackin respect fo'real..

slowly but surely we're going to be heard. Soon actually

[Cold Truth]

yes, thats exactly what i was sayin, beatz!!! i think the neptunes get jocked for the fact that they have a consumeable sound... and the fact that they do have a well documented musical background does help, but lets be realistic, for all that training most of their tracks do not reflect that. at least someone is getting their just due from the outside world. now the Roots..... THOSE guys get respect. i dont think that there are many people-from all walks of life- that do not respect their respective and collective abilities.. but they do all play live, so that is very much a part of why the get the universal props that they do get, which is much deserved. and then you have D'angelo and Raphael Saddiq... there are a few in the spectrum that know acoustic instruments... thats where i want to be, personally..

[Freakwncy]

When it comes to the rap game... producers vs. rappers, it's a two way road.....we can sell w/o rappers but how many people just listen to instrumentals, beside us(producers) and real music lovers....and how many times have I wish for a rapper to bust over one of my new beats just to get a feel for what type of flow would work with it....Its a team effort like GangStarr....they're the prefect team in my eyes...

[vitaminman]

Hey,

Thought I'd chime in here...

It's the same thing in the techno community, everyone thinks that techno music is made BY computers, like someone sits down, turns the gear on, hits the 'Make Club Track' button and it does the rest of the work. It bothered me to no end that people got on my case about me not 'playing' my instrumets, that I was letting the synths do the work.

You guys have brought up some interesting points:

1. For the most part, electronic musicians go light years further than traditional musicians when looking for new sounds. I'm not talking about the technical ability to whip out some crazy solo or scale runs; I mean either creating sounds from scratch or taking existing ones and messing with them until they're completely new ones.

Guitarists I think are the worst at innovation. It's still just a guitar, a mic and an amp, and it has been for the past 60 or so years. The design of the electric guitar hasn't changed much at all, people still look for that fuzzy overdriven sound that makes my ears hurt in bars.

2. Electronic musicians also have to learn about other sides of audio production, such as programming, recording, engineering, mixing, arranging, etc. And computers!!! A lot of traditional musicians are only good at performing with their instrument, they can only play with a group or with someone else's music in front of them. And how many of them even know how to use a computer?

3. Electronic musicians tend to try to push the boundaries of their gear as well as the genre of music they work in. This is why I find older hip hop so exciting; there were all sorts of new styles being created, all sorts of classic stuff being released. It seems though nowadays hip hop has taken a step backwards...

4. Electronic music is relatively new and not as accepted as a 'real' form of music because traditional music has revolved largely around the performance. There's not a whole lot of performing in hip hop, most of the time it's a couple of guys in the studio hitting away at buttons. This will change as people's ideas about music change.

5. People don't understand fully what electronic music is. Case in point, the preacher's comments about the whole 'record-player mixing thing'; he's a preacher, his job is to be God's representative on earth, not to know the in's and out's of turntables and samplers. As far as he's concerned, they're all one and the same because there aren't any pianos or guitars in it. I've tried time and time again to explain to my dad what a 'remix' is, he still doesn't get it!

My two cents,

Nick

[Cold Truth]

yep........... well, you hit the nail on the head right there vitaminman.......... so my next question is- what will be done to change that perception? what can be done? i think that it needs to be. i know for myself, everyones eyes grow wide when they find out that a lot of my tracks are done by myself, with the only musical knowledge i have being learned as i go by picking up on little things that i was screwing around with to begin with... then i get props. i am not perticularly LOOKING for that type of praise, but it feels good to be looked at in the same light as a guitarist, because my drum machine, my sampler, and y sound module are unique instruments that most people i know have know clue how to operate!!! any one can learn how to use these things, the same as "traditional" instruments, but it takes the same skill levels to use them in their respective ways.......

[vitaminman]

Hey,

Not a whole lot except time will change that. Remember when only black kids from big cities listened to rap while the white kids were all listening to metal? Now look who the hottest artist is today...

If people give you grief about it not being 'real' music, tell them that you get more satisfaction out of listening to 'fake' music and that they're probably too stupid to get it; they DESERVE their Celine Dion and Sting albums...the more they see you getting wound you up, the more they will mess with you.

And don't even put yourself in the same category as guitarists unless you spend Friday nights playing in some dive bar for $50 to help pay the bills that their Denny's job doesn't cover. There are a SQUILLION guitar players out there...

Take care,

Nick

[Cold Truth]

yeah thats very true......... i do know quite a few that are actually going places, in different areas.... as far as the comparison, i do not think that there is one- partially because i will learn that art at some point, and as a producer i want, and need to be (for my own personal ambitions) a man of many pieces of the music. i dont get wound up when people make refrences to the "assembly" of electronic music, but it sure does eat at me o my own time SOMETIMES.

[raider]

Yo, I know what you guys are saying .. it always used to bother me when people would say listen to the tracks of my group and act as if the MCs were soley responsible for the track. The way I always saw it, is the beat is what moves most people - hype lyrics with wack beats just don't get many fans, except for the most hardcore lyrical heads.

But at the same time, I don't think this is a problem that exclusively affects hip-hop and electronic music. Think for a minute .. apart from the Rock bands who write their own ish, most famous songs out there are known only by their performer. Who wrote Michael Jackson's "Bad", or "Thriller" or "Billy Jean" ... these are all ridiculously famous songs, but apart from the serious fans, who really knows who wrote these songs? I mean, anyone singer can perform the songs - the true genius is the song-writer. Don't get me wrong, there are some very famous songwriters out there (e.g. Babyface), but their numbers are limited.

The fact of the matter is, people look to the performers since they are the ones who brought the art to the audience. Who wrote the script to your favourite movie? Do you know? Maybe you do, but how many people would be able to answer that question? We might make the magic, but because we are not out there performing, we are usually confined to being behind-the-scenes. If anything, many hip-hop and electronic fans make a point of knowing the producers of their music, more so than most other forms of music. This may not be enough for some of us, but it might be something we have to live with ...