But back at the start, Kanye wasn't just a budding superproducer who, like Dre and Puffy, rapped as a sort of sideshow.
#GHOST WRITER RAPS HOW TO#
They sit there and they talk what they’re going to do, what they did, and how to make the music better.Īrguably, Kanye's latest reliance on co-writers is a worrisome sign that the man and his talents are stretched thin. They talk about yesterday, the next day, and the present," he said during an interview at the Red Bull Music Academy. "They get up every morning and eat breakfast together-his whole crew. According to RZA, the album was very much a group effort. MBDTF features some of the very best rapping of Kanye's career, and those songs aren't diminished by my knowing that not just one, but several geniuses work-shopped them into being. RZA, Nicki Minaj, Rick Ross, Mike Dean, Justin Vernon, and Amber Rose variously contributed to the songwriting, production, and overall inspiration of Kanye's most critically acclaimed album. Kanye's recording sessions for My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy were a famously star-studded and collaborative affair. Contrast this simple billing with the liner notes from, say, Kanye's Yeezus or Drake's If You're Reading This It's Too Late-two albums that credit as many as six writers and three producers per track, with bits of vagueness as to the extent of any one collaborator's involvement.
When the Quentin Miller story exploded Wednesday morning, my colleague Angel Diaz pulled up the liner notes from Jaÿ-Z's debut album, Reasonable Doubt, and noted that most of the songs are listed with only three or four credited songwriters: the rapper, the producer, and the artist(s) sampled. There's a couple decades worth of ghost-producer controversies as well. Not only do Dre, Puffy, and Kanye employ a rotating cast of ghostwriters they employ ghost-producers, too.
The Notorious B.I.G., Ma$e, Sauce Money, Loon, Rick Ross, and others have written for Puffy. From College Dropout through Yeezus, Kanye West has worked with Malik Yusef, Consequence, CyHi da Prynce, Lupe Fiasco, Pusha-T, and most recently Travis Scott. Dre has workshopped songs with Ice Cube, the D.O.C., MC Ren, Eminem, Royce da 5'9", Kendrick Lamar, and even Jay Z. The successful rappers that are most famously supported by ghostwriters are, ironically, producers. The real creative shift is in rappers' willingness to extensively credit their co-writers in liner notes, and in public. Rappers have employed ghostwriters since 1979. Even lyrical titans Nas and Ghostface have confronted rumors of ghostwritten verses and otherwise uncredited influences. More than a quarter century after Biz Markie dropped "Vapors" and "Just a Friend," Big Daddy Kane spoke at length to Combat Jack about ghostwriting many of the Biz's rhymes. It never is. As I've noted in earlier discussions, the very first hit rap single, the Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight," features uncredited lyrics that Big Bank Hank stole from Grandmaster Caz. As a matter of art, however, the reference track isn't a game-changing revelation. Since Hot 97 host Funkmaster Flex leaked Miller's reference track for Drake's "10 Bands," the dramatic value of this controversy has taken on new undertones, and a new life. Instead, Quentin Miller has bylines and headlines to his credit. If Miller were a ghostwriter in the truest sense, he'd be a rumored contributor with no public record of his involvement with these songs. Miller is credited on all the songs he's co-written with Drake, including six tracks from If You're Reading This It's Too Late as well as Drake's verse on "R.I.C.O." from Meek Mill's Dreams Worth More Than Money. Quentin Miller isn't Drake's ghostwriter.
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