So AmbrosiaForHeads is conducting a bracketed tournament style completion to determine the G.O.A.T. hip-hop producer of all time.

Check it! It's cool!
http://ambrosiaforheads.com/2017/02/...roducers-goat/

Last I saw was the top 8. They are as follows:

A Tribe Called Quest
DJ Quik
DJ Premier
Dr. Dre
J. Dilla
Kanye West
Pete Rock
RZA

This is one instance where I really could not bring myself to pick Kanye. Is he probably my favorite? Yeah. But DILLA is the greatest. Kanye wouldn't have his sound without Dilla. Lots of rap acts wouldn't have found their best sound without Dilla.

UPDATE: Here's the final four

DJ Premier
Dr. Dre
J Dilla
Pete Rock

"Fresh Air" and "Incredible" are some of my favorite songs so far.

None of the songs are better than the best songs on Monster though ("Codeine Crazy", "Throw Away", "My Savages" and "Hardly").

That list is spot on. But Dr. Dre is overrated. Where is Madlib?

"KENDRICK LAMAR REVEALS INFLUENCE BEHIND NEW ALBUM"

http://www.rap-up.com/2017/03/01/ken...ind-new-album/

My thoughts exactly. There are a few others I was thinking of too. Shadow? Eh? Anyway, Dre is way overrated. Dilla is the obvious choice, isn't he?

Yeah. And personally I'd have Organized Noize ahead of DJ Quik too.

Hold on, Just Blaze and Pharrell/Neptunes as well.

Timbaland had some amazing production in his prime but he's more of a pop/R&B producer.

Yeah, I read. God and stuff.

Not really something to get excited about yet, in my opinion. He probably won't drop his proper TPAB follow-up until 2018.

Wait, are we talking for the final four? Because I agree that they're both great producers, but Kanye puts 'em both to shame.

For top four, if not Kanye, then I'd be happy with the list as is win Madlib instead of Dre. I actually think Kanye is more versatile than Madlib, and I think he also is influenced by Dilla pretty obviously without sounding uncomfortably like him at times, like Madlib does. But I'm a Kanye dude... any list about hip hop could have him at the top and I wouldn't complain.

But with this one, IT'S FUCKING DILLA, Y'all! It's sooo fucking Dilla.

Watch... Dre will probably win. Which will be a goddamn shame. Dre certainly belongs on the list somewhere. Not on a hip-hop in general list, and certainly not on an emcee list, but as a producer he's up there. But he's not as good as people make him out to be, and his production output has been scant and sporadic compared to everyone else on the list. Pete Rock? Fuck man, what hasn't that guy done? He's sill tearing it up, and it's been decades!

Wait wait... let's think this through.

Is Madlib really a better producer than Rza? I know Rza has disappointed us all in the past, but his style was just as influential on Kanye's as Dilla's was. Looking at everything he produced during his golden period, he's like the Phil Specter of hip-hop. ALL those og Wu and Wu solo albums? He practically made his own sub genre.

Oh no, I just meant that I prefer them over Dr. Dre and DJ Quik.

Dilla IS the greatest for me.

Also, I think Timbaland qualifies, for sure. Yeah, he may produce a lot of pop and R&B, but so has Kanye, and so has Dilla!!! Also, it's worth mentioning that Timbaland helped bridge the gap between rap and R&B by bringing a hard, weird, uncompromising aesthetic to his R&B productions in the '90s.

Look at "Supa Dupa Fly" ... Missy may be more of a borderline R&B/pop artist than a straight rapper, but that song was fucking insane, and definitely more rap than R&B. It wouldn't have been shit without Timba.

And listening to "Are You That Somebody?" even today is a revelation. I didn't even know I liked R&B (beyond Badu and Fugees and shit) when I heard that. The production is totally whacked and fucking weird, and it goes hard as hell, but it came out in 1998... the year of Britney Spears! When R&B was supposed to mean "lightweight bullshit." It certainly was not lightweight bullshit. It's a fucking masterpiece.

Timba needs to be on the list. Maybe not in the top right or four, but certainly SOMEWHERE.

I think the most outstanding thing about RZA's production is that his sound cannot be emulated. No other producer managed to do what he does.

Yeah he also did "Big Pimpin".

His peak was with Aaliyah/Missy and then he found JT/Nelly Furtado in the 2000's and made more classics with them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J3vgcE5i2o

Still brilliant and fresh to this day. Those synths come in like a fucking lightsaber.

Right. Sure. I probably do too if I had to pick. I do love Quik, but I tend to prefer soul-inflected or totally whacked out production over that boom-boom-pat boom-boom-pat West Coast stuff that's more just beat programming (at least in Dre's case) than actual production.

But that leads me to another question: What about No ID? Eh? No ID has had such a massive influence on hip-hop, even though it's been mostly behind the scenes and unheralded. I mean, he's Kanye's mentor. He worked on Resurrection, TPAB, Blueprint 3, and more and more. Isn't he often called the "king of Chicago hip-hop?" Seems like he belongs.

My personal top four would probably be:

RZA
Pete Rock
Kanye West
J Dilla (winner)

Unless I'm forgetting someone or something, those are the producers that either directly made or shaped my what I love about hip-hop.

Yeah.. I was hoping for more information about, y'know, the actual music. But it's good to know that he's working on an album.