interesting topic
all have them have a minimal level of writing or modifying songs but they mainly buy,some like the original light music guys write and have started to buy too in order to have a different writing or the fact being a leader in drc nowadays automatically means bigger relax time
in terms of conception except songs which are fully started in studio,most leaders do not witness the artistic/melodic birth of the song (except guys like koffi wazekwa fally to some extent who are guitarists and who already come with a shape of the song),what happens is that sometimes the songs are bought with a melody already since more and more writers pre-record songs with guitar before selling it,then leader would either give a direction like transform this song into for example the structure of one of his older songs then he'll go out shopping chilling and so on then when he wants he'll come in studio and say okay now you do this this this then when he wants he'll come to do his lead
which gives a different perception from the musicians and the leaders, musicians will moan to people in private that they do most of the hard work for peanuts,while technically its the few moments where the leader is there which define everything,arrangers of studios have often a bigger chance to have an opposite opinion accepted than the band members themselves,
it happens that for exemple somebody like kakol has his ideas considered in terms of chorus style and things like that or kibens or in general the other artistic directors but its often based on matching already what leader likes
