HOLLER hollerin' away? — Page 2

Newintown,

As someone who used to listen to a LOT of hip-hop (I find it pretty boring these days), I see where you're coming from in terms of the label of Producer vs. Composer. As has been stated already, typically in the Hip-Hop world the "Producer" is understood as the person that COMPOSED the beat/track that the lyricist is rhyming over.

Any while it's true that many hip-hop producers don't have a background in composing, or even music theory (not that that has stopped song-writers in other genres), there are DEFINITELY hip-hop producers that UNDERSTAND music through intuition and practice.

That's why people like Dr. Dre, Timbaland, Pharell (of the group N.E.R.D....who wrote the popular song "Happy"), Missy Elliot, Outkast, and reaching back further to folks like Pete Rock, DJ Premiere, RZA, and a prolific producer named J-Dilla (whom I consider to be the greatest hip-hop producer of all time, he died of Lupus many years ago), have had such long and varied careers. These people have an understanding of and respect for music, and were usually heavily influenced by jazz, R&B, rock & roll, and soul music of the generations before them. Listen to Andre3000's "Love Below" album, or Mos Def's "Black on Both Sides", and while they are definitely hip-hop records, there's a LOT of musicality (Andre's album even includes an uptempo instrumental cover of "My Favorite Things").

It's off-topic but I did want to throw in my two cents--as rapper Talib Kweli once said, there's a difference between someone who makes music vs. someone who just "makes beats".

Okay, enough thread-jacking :)

Updated On: 6/25/14 at 02:59 PM

All good points, Blactor, although Andre Benjamin has proved himself an adept real composer with his totally musical movie Idlewild, and several theatrical projects that (I believe) never came to full production. (I mean "music" here as extensive and more varied use of pitch, prosody, etc. in addition to rhythm.)

And there are vocal (sung) lines in Holler that are not attributed to anyone as far as I can tell, even Shakur. (There is no "music" credit at all on the title page of the Playbill.)

Did they? I never saw it - I remember that thread, and the last I recall, no one could find music credits. Perhaps I stopped reading it too soon.

Were those credits on the title page, or buried in the back?

EDIT: I just went through that thread - no photo of a music credit, but there was one comment from Whizzer: " I found a "music credits" page in the back in small print. The first song, My Block, has EIGHT people credited for writing the music. All lyrics are by Tupac."

You may disagree, but I think music (in a musical) deserves more visible credit.

Updated On: 6/25/14 at 03:21 PM

Would this be eligible for best original score? If the music is all new, but the lyrics are previously written, would that count as 50% of the material being new? (I'm not sure if all the music is new anyway)

---

Regarding the music credit, the music is hidden in the Bullets Over Broadway playbill in the same way. Not that it's okay, it's terrible, but it seems to be a trend.

Easy to. say retrospectively, but thus was a bit mad to take one of Broadway's biggest theatres, should of gone off Broadway all along.

"But what if all the people credited for writing/producing these songs all came together and had written this set of 22 numbers originally for the show? Like they all sat down at a roundtable and collaboratively wrote the score (or different groups of them wrote different numbers). They would have all be eligible for best score then, no? "

I would think so. Working had six different composers, all of whom were listed as nominees in the best score category.

And when one considers the numbers of producers who traipse up on stage as winners of Tony Awards, it would seem, the more the merrier!

Sounds like he has been involved for 5 years, and came up with the whole concept to some degree. So, he's not just a hired hand as a director on this one.

Rich producers that believe in this show waaaay too much.

---

Has not anyone made the producers aware that we have done the financial analysis and decided they should have closed a week ago? Why do they continue to defy us like this?

^ I know. What's their problem?

^^ Or January 4.

http://www.ticketmaster.com/holler-if-ya-hear-me-new-york-new-york-01-04-2015/event/03004C7CC8B8B59C?artistid=1980906&majorcatid=10002&minorcatid=207&tm_link=search_msg-0_03004C7CC8B8B59C

I think that bit is meant to show the upcoming performance schedule, but the Buy Tickets link above it goes to Ticketmaster.

Like the show, a lot of the action depicted on the website happens elsewhere.