of course he's never won Producer of the year like Quincy Jones, Jam & Lewis,Babyface and Pharell the elite, but do u consider him as a great producer or average?

absolutely!

grantevans said:

Troll

yo mama a troll this a serious question

funkman88 said:

He was by a very long way, the best producer for Prince.

It depends what you are looking for. If you wanted the undeniable and reconizable Prince sound...he was great at that.

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Prince was very good at injecting various artists with his Minneapolis sound. He was good at making less talented folks level up to where he was at. It was like a purple pixie dust he sprinkled on those he produced. Like, Mavis Staples was sounding all (love)sexy whilst singing "God is alive!"

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He wasn't a producer who allowed others to find their voice or flourish without him. Everyone came out sounding like Prince, for better or worse.

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Lastly, Kanye West is not an elite producer. Do some research into it and you'll see an army of co-producers that hold him up and support and breathe life into his creative efforts.

[Edited 11/22/21 10:41am]

lovitzj said:

funkman88 said:

of course he's never won Producer of the year like Quincy Jones, Jam & Lewis,Babyface and Pharell the elite, but do u consider him as a great producer or average?

Omg way beyond anyone

I agree.

Although, what he sometimes did for his own side projects certainly was pretty low in production imho ;

(someone's gonna bash me for this list)

- Bria valente

- Carmen Electra

- Andy Allo (Superconductor)

- TC Ellis

- Judith Hill

- Liv Warfield (The Unexpected)

- Larry Grahm

- Mayte (CHild Of The Sun)

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But most others were absolutely fantastic;

- The Family

- Eric Leeds

- The Time

- Madhouse

- Jill Jones

- Sheila E

- Vanity & Apollonia 6

- and songs for Madonna, Mavis, Patti, Brownmark, Sheena, Paula, etc.

funkman88 said:

of course he's never won Producer of the year like Quincy Jones, Jam & Lewis,Babyface and Pharell the elite, but do u consider him as a great producer or average?

What does an "Elite Music Producer" do?

He was elite unto himself. WHen he produced others, they sound like him. Nelson George said it best that when you work with Prince, you get a Prince production. He could write songs in other people's styles, but it was always a Prince song. Even legends like Larry Graham or Chaka Khan still sounded like they were on a Prince record.

Every other producer named has produced tons of other people. Prince didn't, really. The associate acts are just people singing over his music. That's not really the same thing we're talking about here. I mean, who showed up and said, "Hey, produce my record?" He worked with folks, but he never really produced other people like Jam & Lewis, Darkchild, Q, Timbaland, LaFace, or whoever did. And some of those folks have a definite way of producing, but it was still that artist doing their thing with that producer.

And in reality, people like Darkchild, Timbaland, LaFace, and dare I say even Jam & Lewis learned from Prince in the way they produced. They understood a producer has a sound as well, and people will flock to get that on their record. No one goes to Darkchild to do an EDM record. They want a Darkchild production. Prince was really one of the firsts to really establish that mentality. (The only other real "sound"y producer I can think of would be Phil Spector.)

A great producer is supposed to pull the best out of an artist and enhance what's there, arrange it so it's strong, etc. Robert Lange did that with Def Leppard's Hysteria. Some of those songs we know so well on that record weren't quite as hooky or catchy when they were first writing them. Mutt got in there and honed it, like sharpening a knife, or carving a bowl from a hunk of cedar. His versatility shown not only on a Def Leppard record, but hearing an artist like Shania Twain, who put out three versions of her records sometimes: Country, Pop, and International. All mixed by the same producer. Could Prince do that? Well, maybe, but he believe so much in the gift of the song itself that it probably left little room for him to remix something for a different market. Songs like "With You," "Purple Rain," and "Right the Wrong" could've been remixed for country stations, but they weren't. Prince couldn't see doing that. Mutt could.

So that's not him not being elite. It's just him being Prince. I'm honestly not even sure Prince could produce someone else and not sound like Prince. Is that a strength? A shortcoming? A blind spot? Elitism? Not sure. He's still Prince, of course.

Prince was an elite artist, we know that. And production is definitely included in all that. So I guess he was elite - but unto himself. Because we never really got to seeh is production on another person's work.

I mean, you went to him for a Prince sound, he wasn't getting hired as an engineer or to sort out someone else's creative needs he was more of a song creator than producer and by all accounts he was about the music more than the production. It was about Prince's creativity.

He obviously could have been a straight up producer, but he didn't like to work that way. I think some of the work with Patti LaBelle shows him as a more formal producer and it's about the same as all the music she was making around that time with producers that were just producers, and it doesn't exactly stand out as her best work.

Not really in my opinion, he excelled at songwriting , but far too impatient and pushing himself into too many directions to really focus on a project and polish it to be even better. The product still ended up sounding superior to 90% of what other artists were releasing. I think the point was made in the Alex Hahn book by someone in his fold that Purple Rain the album was enhanced by the fact Prince's movie tie-in allowed him to spend more time enhancing the music as it was one big project, it shows, and I would argue this is his best produced work.

runningbear said:

Not really in my opinion, he excelled at songwriting , but far too impatient and pushing himself into too many directions to really focus on a project and polish it to be even better. The product still ended up sounding superior to 90% of what other artists were releasing. I think the point was made in the Alex Hahn book by someone in his fold that Purple Rain the album was enhanced by the fact Prince's movie tie-in allowed him to spend more time enhancing the music as it was one big project, it shows, and I would argue this is his best produced work.

I agree as well.

Still, for a guy working THIS FAST, he did an extreme good job, basically always.

Like you say, he was undoubtly a great sound producer, and a strict on others as he was with himself.

As mentioned here by most, his oh so recognisable 'sound' stood out in his production.

The Prince touch.

Still i would give him credit for being amongst the greats concerning elite producers if you like.

There are other elite producers who also must've worked with predictable limits (record company presure, studio availability, limits of the artists/band, technical, etc).

So for that, Prince was basically never limited, he just rushed through every project.

He was even a wizzard on simple gear - take for instance the linn drum device.

Vannormal said:

runningbear said:

Not really in my opinion, he excelled at songwriting , but far too impatient and pushing himself into too many directions to really focus on a project and polish it to be even better. The product still ended up sounding superior to 90% of what other artists were releasing. I think the point was made in the Alex Hahn book by someone in his fold that Purple Rain the album was enhanced by the fact Prince's movie tie-in allowed him to spend more time enhancing the music as it was one big project, it shows, and I would argue this is his best produced work.

I agree as well.

Still, for a guy working THIS FAST, he did an extreme good job, basically always.

Like you say, he was undoubtly a great sound producer, and a strict on others as he was with himself.

As mentioned here by most, his oh so recognisable 'sound' stood out in his production.

The Prince touch.

Still i would give him credit for being amongst the greats concerning elite producers if you like.

There are other elite producers who also must've worked with predictable limits (record company presure, studio availability, limits of the artists/band, technical, etc).

So for that, Prince was basically never limited, he just rushed through every project.

He was even a wizzard on simple gear - take for instance the linn drum device.

they should rename the linn to the Prince drum machine

I agree with some comments here. I consider Prince a great producer, versatile, full of ideas and did great production work in some albums/songs. But, he was a great producer for himself. He made everyone sound like him.

It´s different from a guy like Rick Rubin, who could produce Red Hot Chili Peppers and Black Sabbath. Or Brian Eno.

[Edited 11/23/21 9:17am]

runningbear said:

Not really in my opinion, he excelled at songwriting , but far too impatient and pushing himself into too many directions to really focus on a project and polish it to be even better. The product still ended up sounding superior to 90% of what other artists were releasing. I think the point was made in the Alex Hahn book by someone in his fold that Purple Rain the album was enhanced by the fact Prince's movie tie-in allowed him to spend more time enhancing the music as it was one big project, it shows, and I would argue this is his best produced work.

.

Agree, While, in one hand, it´s great that he worked so fast and gave us many songs, I never bought the ´Prince was a perfectionist´ completely because of that. I believe he had high standards most of the time, but the kind of perfectionist that spends a week on a single song, no.

nayroo2002 said:

funkman88 said:

of course he's never won Producer of the year like Quincy Jones, Jam & Lewis,Babyface and Pharell the elite, but do u consider him as a great producer or average?

What does an "Elite Music Producer" do?

make hits duh

"...Prince. This producer's producer." - Brian Eno in 2001 when asked to name his favourite producer.

Most of what he produced sounded just like Prince music, but there were a few exceptions like Ingrid Chavez and Judith Hill. Even though they had Prince contributions, they seemed different.

The other stuff that he produced . . . The Time, Vanity/Apollonia 6, Sheila E., The Family, etc. all seemed like just extensions of himself.

NOW - that's not to say that other producers don't do the same thing. I can spot a Flyte Tyme production just by hearing it once, and when Teddy Riley produced MJ's Dangerous, same thing - it was almost a Teddy Riley album IMO. Pharrell, Timbaland, etc. . . same.