It true. This is not even an opinion. I’m kickin’ straight facts. If you have a problem with what I said, you can DM me on my Instagram, we can met up somewhere, and you can catch this fade.
Don’t tell me about Nas’ Illmatic, or B.I.G.’s Ready to Die. The universe is full of rare occurrences. But by and large, if you want to increase the odds of your album being memorable as a whole and not just peppered with a few hot singles between a bunch of filler bullshit tracks, have it produced by one beat maker.
I’ve always felt this but of course Jay-Z’s 4:44 confirmed this again for me. It’s just a solid piece of art that’s nice to listen to from beginning to end. Most albums produced by one producer are. This was not so unusual once upon a time but somewhere along the line, labels got so desperate to get a hit record that they hired every hot hip hop producer they could afford to insure that they got a hit record somewhere on the album.
If you need examples of the many consistent producer/artist collabs and noteworthy albums, I’ll present to you exhibit A,B,C,D, and the rest of the entire alphabet…
Dr.Dre’s work with N.W.A .and his solo album The Chronic produced memorable hip hop classics.
Organized Noise production relationship with Outkast
RZA and the Wu Tang crew.
DJ Premier and Guru (Gangstarr)
The best albums A Tribe Called Quest are known for were produced by Q-Tip
Almost anything produced entirely by Madlib (MF DOOM, Freddie Gibbs, etc…)
Blu and Exile – Below the Heavens
The Bomb Squad with Public Enemy
9th Wonder and Little Brother
J Dilla and Slum Village
I’ll even throw Kanye’s first couple of joints in the mix. And I can go on and on.
See, whether or not you like every song on an album produced by a sole producer is not what makes the work appealing. It’s the fact that the album feels like a book written by the same author as opposed to a book of short stories by different ones. Also the artist seems to come out of these unions with his or her own unique sound. Something that is quite rare these days. I get excited about artist/producer team-ups. They rarely disappoint. The same can probably be said about albums of other music genres as well. I’m not sure why those in the industry keep ignoring this obvious formula for quality hip hop albums.
