nb a weird thing to note about dancehall producers is that the term producer has different meanings - often it's used to refer to the person who financed the production rather than who acutally built a beat, but i'm going to ignore that for now (!)
Logos said:
One thing I've always wondered: what is the status/role/position of producers in dancehall? Are they well known or do they operate in obscurity? Is there a big pool of talent or are there just a few major players?
the big ones are very well known and their productions are usually guaranteed hits. obviously the quality of a riddim is subjective, but there are lots of examples of the success of a riddim being more to do with who produced it than how good it is. sort of a good example of this is the scoobay riddim, which was billed as being produced by tony matterhorn (a famous selector) simply to get some hype behind it, after the real producer's first riddim was a complete flop. it became one of the biggest riddims of 2004. this sort of isn't a good example, as matterhorn wasn't a famous producer, but it does illustrate the importance of linking a riddim with someone famous. oddly, often wicked riddims produced by artists are overlooked - i guess maybe dancehall patrons think that artists shouldn't become producers (?) - this is true of productions by red rat, buccaneer and goofy to name but three.
Logos said:
I know a lot about jungle/grime/dubstep, where producers are to a greater or lesser degree very visable. Would people say the dancehall prodcuer stands in a similar relationship to the music and the scene as in, say British urban/dance genres or is their position subtly different?
i don't know enough about jungle/grime/dubstep really to answer this, but yes dancehall producers are very visible
Logos said:
I know a lot more about Timbaland/Neptunes - and don't really follow US hip hop or rnb that much.
hard to avoid pop culture innit
Clubberlang said:
There are no producers in Jamaica (or basically anywhere else) as big as Timbaland/Neptunes/Lil Jon
yeah but that's just cos us hip hop /r'n'b is much more well known and a bigger commercial deal than dancehall. but within dancehall, people like dave kelly, steely & clevie, bobby digital, don corleon are as big as timbaland and the neptunes are within hip hop/r'n'b
it would be equally true to say of jamaica that 'there are no artists as big as 50 cent/jay-z/mariah carey', but that doesn't mean that the roles of, say, elephant man, vybz kartel and lady saw are any different in dancehall to the three americans mentioned.
the people in dancehall with the control are really producers - they generally run their own labels, own their own studios, they give artists their big breaks (hence any new artist would cut off their own leg to get on e.g. a dave kelly riddim). artists often don't make money from releases; producers do. (this has been going on ever since - witness duke reid (treasure isle) and coxsone dodd (studio 1) who kept the rights to all the stuff released on their labels and collected royalties etc when artists and musicians just got a one off fee
ps last year wasn't really an 'aberration' with regards the dominance of singers, this is something that comes around every few years or so e.g. johnny osbourne, cocoa tea, little john, sanchez, garnett silk, sizzla, jah cure, warrior king were all big dancehall/roots singers that appeared on the scene and dominated things for a while from the early 80s throughout the 90s and up to the 00s
