I think the "work" Rodney is doing is creating the final mixes for the songs or fighting a political fight to make the tracklist.
I remember reading a few years back how political the track selection process is on MJ albums. Every producer, musician, etc. fights and fights hard to make the final tracklist. This is not only an ego thing, to prove that your work was good enough, but also a money thing. The royalties made from being on a Michael Jackson album are huge.
It's been implied this is what negatively impacted the relationship between MJ and Bryan Loren years ago. Bryan worked tirelessly for three years on Dangerous, recording something like 25 songs together, only to see not one make the final tracklist.
Babyface once had similar beef with MJ on this same topic. He told Friedman back around when Invincible came out that MJ has bought the exclusive performing rights to dozens of the best songs that Babyface wrote, and never even touched them. Babyface was frustrated because he'd much rather see these songs go to himself or other artists who will actually record and release them.
unk:
