How Rick Rubin Almost Destroyed Eminem's Career

across the history of hip-hop Chemistry Between Two standout artists has created no shortage of greatness from OG Duos like Eric being and rock Kim or timberin and Justin Timberlake through to recent du like Kanye and hoov or Metro boomman in 21 hitting that sweet spot between a producer and a rapper is like finding gold and as many have figured out you can't force that magic to happen even if you happen to be considered one of the greatest rappers of all time or one of the greatest musical Visionaries the culture has ever seen within their respective field of rapping and production each man is seen as playing a crucial role in pushing hip-hop towards mainstream dominance in Rick rubin's Case the 1984 hit it's yours that he produced for T Rock and Jazzy J was the seed for the creation of Death Jam records when a young Russell Simmons went on a quest to uncover who produced it from there he'd go on to not only found one of the leading rap labels in history but work with the slew of other iconic artists once he left fjam while in M's case he's quite simply the most successful rapper of all time and a household name in pretty much any corner of the world considering the prestige and track record both men have the two pairing up should have resulted in Magic but when this Dua linked up for two projects across 2014 and 2017 it resulted in the most lackluster music of M's entire discography in a major blotch on Ruben's track record but before we get there let's take a look at why Eminem would have sought out the services of reuin in the first place in essence Reuben is a Visionary in hip-hop revolutionizing how hip-hop records Sound by aiming to replicate the sound that resonated with him back during his days at NYU up until the creation of Death Jam pretty much most of the rap songs at the time were R&B records with people rapping on them he told NPR one of the things that separated our records from the the rest was that they had more to do with what the actual culture was like and that was only because we came as fans from this culture the goal was to capture the energy that you felt at a hip hop club and they weren't really clubs then they were more like hip-hop night at another club so if you went out and you saw DJs and MC's and the energy on that one night that was really what we tried to put into our records bringing that raw percussive sound of the streets to the studio Rick Russell Simmons and Def Jam would be instrumental in creating what we now know is commercial hip-hop through their work with LL Cool J Run DMC Public Enemy and the Bey boys among others where Russell handled the business side of things Rick was the man who helped to sculpt the sound in his unique Vision blessed with an understanding of what elevates a song into a near spiritual experience Rick is an interesting case and that he isn't even a musician or beat maker prolific in rock music as he is in rap super group guns and roses and Stone Temple Pilots once explain the process of Ruben and how it drastically differs from your average producer you just write a bunch of you record it he listens to it and he goes oh that thing's good why don't you work on that some more when he thinks you're ready he'll say all right let's make a record as a result people often wonder exactly how the supposed mest Touch of Rick Rubin manifests as in his own words he's incredibly Limited in terms of actually knowing how to play an instrument or construct a song from scratch do you know how to work a soundboard no they have no technical ability and I know nothing about music you must know something well I know what I like and what I don't like and I'm decisive about what I like and what I don't like paid for what he termed as a confidence and ability to express what he feels this method clearly works in certain circumstances when Ruben feels is energized by what he's hearing for example just look at how casually he gave Jay-Z a note that go on to shape one of his biggest hits of all time I'm thinking maybe we start Acappella with if you're having girl problems I feel bad for your son I got 99 problems but they one hit me right into the first up that's money all these records I used to listen to these guys are the creators of it the architects of what we do right now I'm just fortunate man never once accused of being a vulture like other white execs in hip-hop it's clear that Ruben has an immense respect respect for the culture and is every bit as excited to work with artists as they are to have him on board and once again The Black Album sessions which spawn 99 Problems shows us exactly how all struck he is by watching a mastermind in full flow just to see the way he writes and never say anything like it he doesn't ran anything down it just kind of sits there listens to the track writes a verse and then goes in does it in the words of Chuck D what Rick does isn't tangible in the way that what the bomb squad did for PE was but it was no less important in getting them to realize their potential on other occasions Rick is just the m you come to when you need help finding your direction this in a nutshell is what he did for Kanye and how he molded the sound of yeesus and he came over and listened to probably 3 and 1/2 hours of Works in progress it was like really a rough sketch these are cool things but it's a long ways off and assuming the record will come out next year he's like oh well it's coming out in 5 weeks and I said you know I have a record coming out in November that's a lot further along than this he like please help me would you be open to fixing it and shaping it and finishing it off I was panicked the whole time he wasn't at all so when new Surface that mem and Rick Rubin will be linking up it seemed like a match made in heaven when the first Snippets of their music leaked it seemed that Rick had augmented the sound that M found on tracks like Sing for the Moment beautiful and to a lesser extent White America from M's earlier music in essence he dove into a lane he'd first Showcase with beasy boys No Sleep till Brooklyn and leaned in on guitar driven samples to give the tracks an extra punch this was the philosophy that gave us the first track that surfac from the Marshall matters LP 2 and on the set of the music video Ruben explained how we got there and what their intention was I had met Paul M's manager a few years ago and we always talked about the possibility of getting together to work on something at some point down the road I think it's unlike any current hip-hop songs if you listen to what's going on in hip-hop this is not what this is we were in the studio working on a bunch of different ideas and this was one of the later ones to come up it started with a sample and the sample that we started with ended up not being in the record it started one way it kind of got Pro programmed and written to and then it changed into a whole different song I felt the track was really strong well as enthus as Rick sounded about it there might have been good reason as to why it sounded like nothing that came out while the initial response to the Marshall mats LP2 mainly focused on M's lyrical ability he' maintained into his 40s the criticism generally landed on Ruben's production and how he contributed to the lows of the album Marshall Mathers LP2 is the most confusing collection of Beats of the Year wrote the line of best fit Ryme reason awkwardly rides the zombies Time of the Season so far chops up Joe Walsh's Life's Been Good into second rate Mikey Clark and berserk is in everything in the kitchen sink boom bat mess of Beasty Boys and Billy Squire samples the worst part is that the supposed Guru Rick Rubin had a hand in all three build as an exceptional MC who doesn't have much of anything interesting to say over questionable production it was clear that Rick hadn't managed to provide the guidance that shady desperately needed at the time nor could he jail with M as he had with the likes of Dr Dre as for why the Reuben method didn't click for shady it might have something to do with the fact that he takes the polar opposite approach to Dr Dre in the countless interviews that have emerged in which collaborators break down Dre's approach to production he's painted as nothing less than a perfectionist a man who was in a Perpetual state of Readiness Dre and M's Dynamic was established in their first session and was pivotal to much of M's finest work I had this sample ready because I thought it was something he would sound good on I pushed play on the drum machine and he just immediately started with the hi my name is bam that was it and we recorded four songs that first night and three of them went on his first album just in that one session the two made record Rec that were more seminal than anything Rick and M concocted together while Dre is precise to the most painful degree Reuben his hands off and has even stated that his dream scenario is to produce an artist's best record without even needing to interact with them in person in fact most of the footage that you can see of him in the studio mainly features him lying on the couch given this kind of creative freedom as opposed to guidelines like those provided by Dre Eminem was left to his own devices and here we arguably saw the birth of M's rapid rap era meanwhile as em has said before Dre's eagerness to switch things up always forced him to stay on his toes I think Dre's process has gotten a little different Dre's kind of up for trying new things more so than I am I kind of try to stick to the same formula Dre's always updating how he does his Beats how he records I still use a booth because to me there's nothing like that and the intimacy of you and just the microphone but I do know that he's recorded some things where he's got the mic set up in the room where the mixing board is and don't even have a booth other than that our relationship hasn't changed our recording process hasn't changed this is a major reason why Rick Ruben's approach doesn't work for everyone including Eminem where Dre is on hand for every point of the process Ruben is closer to a DJ khed or Diddy in the sense that he doesn't actually construct any of the music instead curating its direction but with a much higher degree of care passive aggressively thanked by Muse for teaching them how not to produce and called more of a hindrance than a help by Red Hot Chili Peppers Josh klinghoffer the fact that you're essentially paying for his educated ear doesn't work for everyone and as a result his Guru status has rubbed some people the wrong way not least of all slip knots Cory Taylor Rick Reuben showed up for 45 minutes a week Rick Reuben would then lay on a couch have a mic brought in next to his face so he wouldn't have to move and then he would be like play it for me and he had shades on the whole time he would stroke his huge beard and try and get as much of the food out of it as he could played again stop do that over I respect what Rick Rubin has done but the Rick Rubin of today is a thin thin thin Shadow Rick Ruben that he was while Cory Taylor learned that Rick Ruben's methodology wasn't for him Eminem stubbornly doubled down likely inspired by the respect that he has for Ruben's Legacy there's every chance that shady saw him as the only man outside of Dre that could help him deliver a classic but as we all know the second time around the results of Rick Rubin as executive producer were even worse with the Dual choosing to up the pop sound and inadvertently turn in M's most clowned album of all time with Revival and the leadup to the album's release M revealed Rick Rubin produced three or four songs on Revival and had apparently worked on a lot of the album while Dr Dre had only mixed a couple of songs but by the time that the album emerged fans sincerely wished that things were the other way around where Dre would have likely pushed M out of his comfort zone and made him explore the new world of hip-hop headon ruin seemed to feed into his grievances giving him ideas that he had to deviate from what was popular in the genre for him mumble is a little bit of a culture shock because there's a new wave of hip-hop that's not really what he's about Reuben said ahead of its release so he was just talking to me about how that felt I could see he was frustrated by it he's fanatical to a point I don't think I've ever seen before in anyone just to his attention to detail he has a perfect memory of everything about the music and he gets inside of it and writes whatever's good or bad about it he wants the rhythm of the words to bounce off of the beat in a particular way with Ruben once again overseeing several tracks on the production side of things the reviews were less than kind in terms of the beats that he'd assigned to Shady in pitchfork's case they wrote that while the production as a whole was uninspiring Ruben's contributions are particularly embarrassing his rehash of hits from the rush Death Jam days heat and remind me suggest he's completely out of ideas meanwhile in a particularly scathing review consequence of sound wrote that Reuben being secure in his own bubble meant that he had aided an embedded M making a record that sounds seriously out of touch the production here is absolutely awful that someone this removed from the landscape needs someone more in tune than Rick Rubin to sample the cranberry zombie artlessly on in my head or lay a bad impression of Ry L's piano beneath walk- on water suddenly faced with more critical backlash than ever before it seems like M's need to pay homage to the past and Rick's willingness to co-signed his own Antiquated viewpoint on what modern hip-hop should sound like meant that mem overlooked the flaws in Ruben's approach thankfully it seemed like Revival may have been the final sign that shady needed to end the partnership once and for all as the two haven't worked together since ultimately Rick and Eminem clearly went into collaborating together with the best of intentions but were guilty of appealing to each other's worst traits as producer and rapper alike

Channel: HipHopMadness

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Id: UWiqZ1oRoo0

Length: 11min 30sec (690 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2024