Nigel Godrich
Samuel Dietz/WireImage
Some producers are simply there to bring an artist’s sonic vision to light. Others are brought in specifically to challenge the artist, push back against an artist’s ideas, and make them change their sonic in radical new ways. Working as an engineer and sometimes producer for Radiohead during their The Bends era, Godrich’s first proper full-length album produced was the band’s landmark masterpiece OK Computer, which pulled off the tricky balancing act of making techno-paranoia sound like a classic rock record. And Godrich managed to do it in style.
He produced every Radiohead record since, and even when the group tried to get outside of their “comfort zone” and try a non-Godrich producer, the resulting sessions didn’t click, forcing the group to bring Godrich back. The result? The legendary In Rainbows sessions. As Radiohead racked up critical hosannas, Godrich tried his hand working for other artists, forcing Paul McCartney to play all his own instruments again for 2005’s brilliant Chaos and Creation in the Backyard and bringing Beck’s lush heartbreak classic Sea Change to life. While Godrich has also manned the boards for Roger Waters, Arcade Fire, and every Thom Yorke side-project (The Smile, Atoms for Peace), Radiohead will always be his calling card — and for good reason. He’s only one of the best rock producers ever to live.
RZA
Brian Blueskye, Palm Springs Desert Sun via Imagn Content Services, LLC
In the world of hardcore hip-hop, few groups stood out like the Wu-Tang Clan. While the group is stacked with all-time great rappers like Raekwon, Method Man, Ol’ Dirty Bāstard, Ghostface Killah, and Inspectah Deck, Wu-Tang managed to cut through the rap radio soundscape due to Bobby Digital’s (a.k.a. RZA) dynamic productions. Never one to turn down a sample he didn’t like, RZA became notorious for speeding up and pitch-shifting old recordings to get a new emotional timbre over his booming snare thuds. Before long, a new generation of producers like Kanye West and Just Blaze were making their own variants of his style.
While RZA continues to produce to this day, it’s his run in the mid-’90s that saw him hungry, creating unnerving, beautiful, and downright cinematic beats that helped define the careers of his many collaborators. Interspersing his dark melodies with dialogue clips from films, his early work with Wu-Tang is perhaps only rivaled by his production with the horrorcore fantasies of the Gravediggaz, Method Man’s Tical, and of course, the debut solo outings from both GZA and Raekwon, which are often in the discussion of not just the most beloved Wu-Tang offshoot records, but some of the best rap albums ever made.
