wow this is so bad

if people ever ask you “what does projecting mean?” just show them this video

It's really crazy. Dog, I hate that s*** like this never happens to me. I would love nothing more than to make one of these little Lord Farquaad niggas cry on camera.

LMAO

Tyler said he calls himself a musician. But because he was embarrassed to tell people he's a rapper.

In an interview with Vince Staples from a while back.

The falsetto on Honest says otherwise buddy

You really should've just quoted the part in their second link (Indeed source) that literally says "vocalists" includes "others who use their voice as an instrument, including rappers and throat singers."

Like you've been saying, the distinction between "vocalist" and "singer" that they're pushing ITT definitely isn't intended for casual use and it's very context dependent.

In popular music, "vocalist" is most commonly used to refer to a single performer within a larger group/band (e.g., lead vocalist, backing vocalist, contributing vocalist). And when talking about a group's frontman, "vocalist" and "singer" are used interchangeably. Singular performers are typically just referred to as "singers", "artists", "rappers", etc...

You'd be hard-pressed to find an agent, manager, financier, or label scout in the music industry today who would question the formal training of someone simply because you called them a "vocalist" in conversation.

Even "classically trained vocalist" is far less commonly used in commercial music compared to "classically trained singer". The term "vocalist" in this context is typically reserved for the label "performance vocalist" — derived from the vocal performance degree/field studied in academy — which describes people who have trained and perform in live stage productions (e.g., Broadway) as well as their original commercial material, usually recorded live and in collaboration with a certain composer or band from the live performance field.

Someone like Future calling themself a vocalist would be pretty insulting to a lot of people.

Here's the best answer I can give you that might help:

The term "artist" has been used universally in the music industry (and by the general public) for any commercial music act, singular or group, for ages. It's not the same as the generic word "artist" that could describe anyone who does any kind of artistic work — It's just shorthand for "recording artist". Even labels adopted this shorthanded a long time ago when "A&R" (artists & repertoire) became the industry-wide standard name for jobs involving talent scouting and project oversight.

A ton of people do call themselves musicians, including rappers, but the industry shorthand "artist" encompasses virtually all types of recording talent, from main artists to producers/engineers. You'll most likely see the term "musician" being used to describe an artist in promotional matters, like features/articles, interviews, TV spots, etc...

I'm not sure how commonplace this is, but I would assume "musician" in industry-speak would make some people think you're talking about sessions musicians — like how "artist" is shorthand for recording artist. But that's just me speculating.

People also do call themselves (and are labeled by others) as "vocalists", but it's just not nearly as common as "artist", "singer", or "rapper". The most frequent use of "vocalist" tends to be used colloquially when talking about the frontman for a group/band, or other individuals who contribute vocals in a group. Which isn't to say it's the most correct use of that term or anything, it's just common — and even in the context of a group, "singer" is still used more.

i like this answer

but i also commonly see a clear distinction that people separate “producer” from “artist”, or in other words, “artist” is nearly exclusively used to refer to the person providing vocals, not anyone else involved in the creation of the art

that’s why i really made this thread. it irks me that producers aren’t considered artists.

That's largely just a distinction made by the general public — whether its a conscious one or just more common for them to call performers "artists" depends on the person. Things like this involving common language used for specific parts of pop-culture are pretty much impossible to actively change, because they are usually just the result of a term being adopted into everyday conversation (and often used incorrectly or not as originally intended). If it does become commonplace for the average music listener to refer to producers as artists, it probably wont happen for a long time — even though it has become more prominent in recent decades with the rise of Rap in popular music and producer tags appearing on top charting songs.

But when it comes to industry language, producers are commonly considered artists alongside the main performers. You can go on most of the major record label websites, click their "artists" section, and scroll through the list of signed artists and see names of producers right alongside singers, bands, and rappers — with no distinctions or asterisks made.

Labels do have in-house engineers and producers that are typically separated from "artists" because they are salary employees and not signed talent. But when it comes to producers who make names for themselves in commercial music, labels will sign them as artists and display them as such on their company publishing. Metro, Hitboy, Southside, TM88, Dr. Luke, Young Chop, are just some of the more popular names who have appeared on labels' artist rosters.

I know your issue is with the general consensus on who and what is considered an "artist", but i think it's worth mentioning that is at least the case from the perspective of the people in charge of the artists' careers

Ironically, GOOD Music is the only label I can think of off the top of my head that has specifically created a division of signed talent, separate from their artist roster, just for producers (Very GOOD Beats). Its exclusive distributor, Def Jam, doesn't even do this.

@StoppingYou

Just to add:

If I had to guess, I'd say one of the major hurdles standing in the way of producers being considered as artists by the general public is that there still isn't any accepted expression that distinguishes a beatmaker/composer from the generic term "producer", which can several different things or roles. AFAIK there hasn't even been any proposed term of this kind.

"Producer" can mean a song's composer (which is the meaning you're using here), audio engineer, financial or creative overseer, or in some cases just a person who serves as a sounding board and gives artistic input without guiding composition or technical aspects (for example, Rick Rubin's role in several project over the past decade).

A ton of people, even on sites like this one, still don't know what makes someone an executive producer vs regular producer — and not by any fault of their own. Sometimes a project's executive producer can mean a person who composes all of the music, or it can just be someone who guides the overall sound of a song/album by saying they want this or that but not composing anything themselves (similar to a director's role in filmmaking). It can even extend to non-studio work like marketing campaigns and whatnot. The use of the term in the industry has to be taken on a case-by-case basis, and details are typically unknown until liner notes or full-length credits are released (and sometimes not even then).

I think there does need to be either a more specific variation of "producer", or even an entirely new term, to describe producer-artists who exclusively/primarily compose music for other artists.

We can't use "instrumentalist" because that's already used for session musicians in album credits (plus it sounds too technical to catch on in the public's vocabulary).

We can't use "composer" because it's already universally affialiated with classical music and tv/film scoring. Plus you'd undoubtedly have people like GeraldJohanssen scrambling to correct everyone by saying "Well acktshually, composers are classically trained musicians and Metro Boomin can't be a composer because that's insulting to a lot of people!"

I'm surprised there hasn't already been something like this tossed out into the ether already, not just because of how popular Rap producers have become in commercial music recently, but even with modern household names like Max Martin being celebrated and written about constantly, and still just generically referred to as a "record producer" or "producer". You'd think there'd be something else to call these kinds of people by now that gives the average person more of a distinction to consider them artists alongside main performers.

cause music/Art itself has alot of talents

Music alone, requires alot of specific seperated talents.

To be a songrwiter, u need to be great with words,rhymes,storytelling, how to structure a story, word choice, catchiness, bounce.rhymtn, how u pronounce words, harmonies etc... not even Kanye or MJ had all these qualities

For example on producer might be great at melodies(which again requires a whole set lof skills), others at drums, others at structuring, others at sound design, others at ideas etc...

and all these again requires specific talents,sets of talents....

These talents come from young, some talents
Like for example, recognizing pitch by ear othjers have to develop these
others write excellent stories,others develop

alot of ppl dont realize this ya know
thats why its so hard to label it ig there so much specifics

even findin samples etc...

Dont understand why niggas flipped out about this post but whatevs lol

Future aint a vocalist just off the fact bruh dont really sing.

There’s mad actual niggas in the genre I’d give the vocalist card before Fewtch cmon i know its a Hive on here but yall doing the most acting fake mad.

Session musicians

yea the industry, specifically for hip hop, definitely needs an overhaul of the vernacular used when referring to who does what, especially when it comes to production

i know “beat maker” is used pretty often to distinguish between a producer who actively works on the song with the vocalist vs. someone who just sends a beat over & that’s their whole contribution

“hands off producer” is also commonly used to describe the director type of producer who doesn’t create the beat but says what they want to hear in the beat for someone else to do — this is what Travis Scott does, along with some drum programming

but still, unless you get the specific roles of each person from somebody who worked on an album or if they’re posted to somewhere like Tidal, it’s nearly impossible to find exactly who did what on albums anymore, since physicals have become increasingly rare

(prod. ___) is so non-specific