A “producer” as a musical term has different meanings depending on the context. There is the producer in the traditional industry sense, as in George Avakian was a producer for Miles Davis. Then there is the modern use of the word as a hip-hop or electronic music producer. In this modern instantiation, producer means musician. In many cases the producer is responsible for the entire arrangement; how could the producer not be a musician? Pete Rock, Dilla, etc., are all “producers”, but could anyone say that they aren’t musicians?

The second issue is with “equipment” vs “instrument”. I don’t think anyone is contending that an instrument is not an instrument because it is electronic or digital in nature. A drum machine is just an electronic drum, and any drum certainly qualifies as an instrument. It is a relatively new instrument, but the trap set itself is less than a century old. Synths are undeniably instruments as used by Worrell and others in the 70s. Auto-tune? Used as an artistic tool (e.g. T-pain), how is this any different than the talk box used on “Computer Love” in the 80s?

We talk about a producer making beats on his equipment, but this is a fairly recent expression that appropriated industry terms. A producer that creates music is a musician. Compressors, mixing boards, and microphones are equipment; but drum machines, synths, and samplers are musical instruments, even if they are completely digital.