in your hiphop/RnB palaver. Even mixtapes by unsigned acts will credit dozens of producers, musicians, etc coming in and contributing - it's well known in hiphop there's a huge industry of unknown rappers writing rhymes for the more established, which at least explains why someone like Lil Wayne knocks out about an album a month. If I was getting intellectual about it, I'd say it refutes the widely accepted Western/Eurasian 'Auteur' theory of art (that theorises that a single person is responsible for a work, despite the numbers of people involved in it's production)) thats's held sway since Jean Luc Godard and Bob Dylan. But I'm not. So I won't.

Also at play is the ghetto ideal that when you make it, you take your mates with you. When Eminem got big, he took enormous pains to ensure his old crew of nomarks and hobbledehoys D12 got a shot.

It's not unusual for an album like that with so many producers to be worked on in a lot of different studios - hence the amount of people involved.

At least he lists everyone involved. A lot of the big 'corporate' releases don't always list everyone involved. For instance it's not unusual to find major artists, supposedly known for their creativity to have had help in the writing stage onwards. Especially if there is a shortage of 'hit' material. There are a lot of jobbing songwriters out there doing that kind of work. Pretty much anonymous but well paid!

(I'm not talking your Kylies or people like that, that you would expect to have a team of songwriters behind. No, it's the bands who supposedly have the talent to write their own material that you have to watch when the accountants are watching the bank balance)

... a certain unnamed, strangely popular amongst the younger generation, more famous for his drug habit than his songs, wannabe poet type of rock star (of whom there are many m'learned friends) got help from a former member of Pop Will Eat Itself in creating timeless classics.

It was just a rumor though...

... in so many ways.

Pete Doherty and Mark Keds here, right? Drug buddies who fell out badly. Keds got a co-write on the Libs 'Can't Stand Me Now'.