🧘🏻♂️Rick Rubin: Music's Mystical Guru
Breaking down Music Industry's Super-Producer Rick Rubin, and his infamous saintly aura
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Happy Friday everyone!
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, and I couldn’t pick a better topic to push through the dog days of summer, than covering one of the most acclaimed and revered producers in the Music Industry- Rick Rubin.
Always found stroking his iconic sagely long white beard, Fredrick Jay Rubin, aka, Rick Rubin, made a name for himself starting out as a kid in Long Island trying to hack it as a band-member of ‘The Pricks’, eventually going onto to co-found ‘Def Jam Records’ whilst still in college- which would end up pioneering Hip-Hop as a genre.
With a career spanning over 4 decades, Rick hasn’t done too bad for himself 👇🏻
💰$250M Net Worth
🏆 9 Grammy Awards
🎧 MTV’s Most Important Producer of the past 20 years
🗺 Times 100 Most Influential People in the World
Having a career spanning over 4 decades, Rick has worked with a pool of artists as diverse as helping pioneer Hip-Hop in the late 80s with the Beastie Boys & Run-DMC, to reviving the career of legendary American country singer Johnny Cash.
With 8 Grammy awards under his belt- and 6 of them being for best album of the year, Rick is considered to have a Midas touch on elevating artists that he works with.
The Ringer explains in an article how the magic of Rick is in what he doesn’t do:
Even after you’ve absorbed the history—from Def Jam to American Recordings, from ubiquity to relative seclusion, from Grammys to Grammys to more Grammys, from hip-hop to metal and back again—it is awfully tough to pinpoint what exactly this person does, what makes him a deity, what makes him necessary.
This is all very much by design.
His reputation does not precede him so much as subsume him; his primary instrument is his own unfathomable myth.
Having worked on albums with Adele, Jay Z, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Kanye West, U2 and countless other “who’s who” of the music industry, it’s not tough to imagine why Rubin’s creative inputs are so revered across genres.
His most iconic contribution yet might have been the time when Rick was musing with Jay Z in the production studio while recording his hit single ‘99 Problems’, when suddenly he gets an idea on how to end a verse with a jackhammering sound 👇🏻
While this video has gone viral ever since, it’s just a snippet of how Rick influences artists and touches albums, a fact evident from his insanely long discography- which was literally too long for me to even attempt counting.
And it’s evident that the artists who work with him have nothing but respect for how Rick almost always takes their work to the next level.
Hip-Hop mogul Dr. Dre said that Rick is:
“Hands down, the dopest producer ever that anyone would ever want to be, ever”Natalie Maines, frontman of the Dixie Chicks, remarked:
“He has the ability and the patience to let music be discovered, not manufactured. Come to think of it, maybe he is a guru”
Last month, Rick also appeared on one of my favourite shows- The Lex Friedman Podcast, and really laid out how his creative process works; along with some stories for the ages including Johnny Cash, making a documentary with Paul McCartney & giving advice to those trying to hack it in the music industry.
Rick’s cultural significance is also shown in the multiple artists name-dropping him for material in their songs 👇🏻
Diddy, The Game - Standing On Ferraris
I got 'em lovin' the movement, Beard so long, I'm feelin' like Rick Rubin
Mac Miller - Grand Finale
And recreation, don't even know my address Self-medicate, self-education Rick Rubin showed me transcendental meditation
Jadakiss - Deadman
still Cuban (still) Connects still Cuban (ha) Me? I just stick to the music like Rick Rubin Hittin' the spliff movin' the whip, shit's movin' Two
Eminem - Rhyme or Reason
For the game your enthusiasm it hasn't; Follow you must, Rick Rubin my little Padawan; A Jedi in training, colossal brain and, thoughts
Logic - City of Stars
I'mma do it til I get it, fuck a nominated Bitch I dominate it Yeah, emails from Rick Rubin, dinner with No ID Chilling with B-I-G D-A-D-D-Y K-A-N-E
Dirty Harry- Benny The Butcher
My pen movin' like I'm improvin'; I deliver Def Jams, call me Rick Rubin
How about that for some weekend motivation? Have a good one folks 🍻
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