Your job as a producer is to make suggestions without putting your ego in front of everything else. Also, I think you want to focus on that artist's best qualities and really highlight them.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'm obviously really opinionated, but as a producer, you don't necessarily want the person you're working with to try to impress you - you want them to just be themselves. Then you can edit or mess around with what they've come up with. But you have to allow the artist that space.
When you're a producer and an artist you're very critical of yourself. I like to produce other people, but I'm not that good at producing myself.
I used to have sort of mixed feelings about a producer whose only skills seemed to be going into the studio, schmoozing the artists and making them feel good. I can see now that in some cases, that's what you have to do because that's the only way you're going to get them to produce.
Part of your job as an artist is to push yourself and make sure your creative juices are flowing.
More than anything, I think the best thing you can do as an artist is just stay as true to yourself as possible and hope that your fan base will appreciate that.
I think of myself as a producer who tries to bring the best out of everyone, whether that be an artist, songwriter or a publicist.
In general, I don't feel artists should need producers.
All I tell artists is, 'Do what you love. Never let anybody talk you into changing what your musical idea is just to try to get a hit, because you're chasing your tail that way. It's not going to happen, and if you're successful, you have to do it the rest of your life. Stay true to it and do it for the sake of the art.'
A producer should only be there to enable an artist to be himself.
As a producer, you're pretty much creating a body of work that an artist has to stand behind.