Single Producer Albums vs Albums with several Producers

Blisterman

Which is better, having a single producer produce a whole album, or having a selection of different producers, across the whole album?

Examples of the Single producer Albums:
Kanye West's Albums, Clipse-Hell Hath No Fury (Produced by The Neptunes), Snoop Dogg - Doggystyle (Produced by Dr Dre.

There's really not that many of them. Most mainstream rappers seem to employ at least 2 or 3 different producers for their albums. The advantage to this, is that they can try out different sounds, pick producers suitable for each song, and maintain a high quality for each song. Some of the best albums in rap history were made this way.

The disadvantage is that the albums end up being less cohesive. Particularly if the producers have a very different sound. The album seems less like a single work of art and more like a collection of songs.

Personally, I like one producer albums. I like to listen to albums the whole way through, and I like it when thought has gone into how an album works as a whole, how the different songs fit together to tell a kind of story. Kanye West - Graduation is a good example of this.

What are other people's opinions?

Boom_Bap

I'm also all about albums with one producer. When an album has too many producers it tends to sound more like a compilation rather than a body of work. A trend that i've also noticed is that when there are more than one producer, there are more then a handful of featured artists on the record. This again gives the complation sound to the album. I prefer a more cohesive rolling sound to an album.

An example of this would be C-Rayz Walls, most of his releases mostly have a different producer per song and at least one featured emcee per song. This even goes back to his Def Jux releases. But he released an album with all production handled by Sharky (Monster Maker) and it was streets ahead of anything else that was released. c-Rayz may not be an ideal example as he tries to get other producers and rappers a bit of spotlight.

But, there is another side to this. Say for example if an rapper from a group is releasing an album andthe production is handled in-house, Wu-tang early solo projects for an example, these work very well. Further examples of this would be Def Jux, Rhymesayers, Doomtree, Nature Sound etc.

And another side (how many sides is that now ), there are albums that work really well, Vast Aire's Look Mom is a great example, a fantastic album with production handled many different people.

godspal

I am in two minds about this:

Albums with single producers (Only Built for the Cuban Linx, Doggystyle etc.) have this cohesive, cinematic quality...
However this is not essentially all inclusive as some of the great albums (Illmatic, The Infamous etc.) had more then one producer and the quality and cohesiveness of these albums are pretty amazing.

BLITZ_Molloy

There are incidences of great albums with multiple producers, but I think that's probably because 90% of mainstream hip hop albums have loads of different beat makers.

I much, much prefer albums that are produced by one person and there are precious few of them sadly.

Boom_Bap

I think that some artists want a track from all the 'hot' producers of the moment to boost album sales and to win points in the popularity stakes.
That to me is not making an album, its a compliation of singles....most times you wont see a song on an album by Timberland, Neptunes, Scott Storch etc as being a non-single.