I've been recently reading 3 Kings, which essentially follows the rise of Dr. Dre, Jay-Z, and Diddy.

Dr. Dre being the oldest of the three was particularly fascinating to me once we put into perspective that there would be no NWA or Death Row without him.

He essentially helped introduce; Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, 2pac, Eminem, 50 Cent, and even Anderson .Paak to the public consciousness.

Yes, these artists had some degree of success already without him but he essentially catapulted these dudes into upper echelons of rap with the exception of Ice Cube who left NWA and started his solo career.

On the production side of things, Dre went from making sparse almost lo-fi beats, to G-funk, to the Shady/G-Unit era production of the naughties.

Compare that to Kanye West.

Kanye rose from a relatively unknown producer, to working on The Blueprint and helped Jay-Z reinvent himself. Then he helped popularize the chipmunk soul sound. Then he started an incredible run as a solo artist with breakthrough songs like Through the Wire and Jesus Walks that shouldn't have worked but did.

Then he evolved as time went on and got more commercially successfully. He helped put on Kid Cudi, Drake, Desiigner (lol), Travis Scott and I would argue even T-Pain.

On Donda, he's taken current artists like Lil Durk, Fivio Foreign, and Lil Yachty and made them sound like the best version of themselves.

So ultimately who is the better producer? And why?

Kanye

Kanye to me. Produced for a wider range of artists and genres. Also, a songwriter, beatmaker, video director, which helps in terms of creating a whole project, aesthetic, and product.

Both HIGH level a&r / team leaders too. The artists they were able to find / develop are crazy.

John Legend
Big Sean
2Pac
NWA
Kid Cudi
Kendrick Lamar
Eminem

Ye has developed his style over a longer period of time and has put on and influenced a larger pool of Talent than Dre. Ye got 6 or 7 different eras where as Dre got like 3, and as a personal preference I'd rather listen to a Ye produced joint in 2021 rather than a Dre one.

All due respect to Dre, He's still one of the best to ever do it.

This is my reasoning as well.

The dude that made still Dre and no diggity and got his drums bit off xxplossive and started the dudes whole style duh

Literally Kanye

Dre technically the best but ye has more range

Dre might have much cleaner sounds but Kanye is more inventive

Kanye

His production is more versatile, layered, and has more attention to detail.

Ye

Kanye but they’re both top 5 DOA

You heard of

Scott Storch

The Glove

Daz

Dj Quik

Dre got timeless records

Ye and it’s not even remotely close

Omari

So does Kanye lol

Ye may have influenced more but didn’t put more on. No one is competing with Dre’s track record of Ice Cube, Eazy E, DOC, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 cent, The Game, Kendrick Lamar and Anderson Paak. It’s not even fair

Dre more of an A&R exec to me than pure producer. Like a west coast Puff.

Dre definitely has put on more i'll give you that.

Kanye is a better producer then Dre overall, although Dre in the 90s and 2000s was incredible.

Damn then ye then i knew Scott storch produced on still dre but I was thinking he would at least produce no digitty

Scott Storch ghost produced a lot of Dres biggest records. Ye was a ghost producer for D dot in the 90’s.

I feel you but really he’s both. He has more of a signature sound/better artistic track record than Puff

the dude that got his style bitten by the other dude