Rick Rubin: The Invisibility of Hip Hop's Greatest Producer

right [Music] thankful to be here all good rick rubin is perhaps the most important record producer of the past 35 years with a career that is now the stuff of legend he founded def jam recordings in his dorm room and took hip hop mainstream in the late 80s with a staple of influential artists like public enemy the beastie boys and run dmc today he is a multi-grammy award-winning producer for dozens of artists as diverse as johnny cash system of a down neil diamond jay-z the dixie chick slayer the red hot chili peppers adele lady gaga and kanye west just to name a few rick's interest and curiosity isn't limited to a specific genre or to what's popular on the charts and he spent his entire career getting the best out of artists by helping them step outside of their comfort zone rick is most recognizable for his long white impressive beard he's often seen walking around shoeless in a white t-shirt and black shorts he has a mystical quality about him which goes a small way toward explaining why so many people refer to him as a guru that beard man is it's powers in that beard you could tell every time you scratch it magic was flying in the air i seen it you're so goddamn free [Music] i think i'm free but you're on a whole nother level of [ __ ] free reuben is a non-traditional producer he doesn't play any instruments and he can't operate a mixing board or pro tools setup in 2007 rick told esquire magazine quote i don't know anything about music my job has very little to do with music it has more to do with taste and culture and balance end quote reuben operates as part fan and part philosopher he's best known for his talents as a listener with his ability to offer skilled notes on how artists can improve their songs along with providing them a safe space to make music without commercial or external pressures rick knows what he likes and senses what the rest of the world will like as well even if you're not in the business of making music there's a lot you can take away from the life of rick rubin a man whose vision has consistently been light years ahead of his contemporaries [Music] [Applause] [Music] frederick j rubin was born on march 10 1963 to michael and linda rubin his father sold shoes and his mother was a housewife rick grew up in long island new york in a household where music was always playing the beatles was the first thing when i was probably five years old four years old five years old six years old the beatles was the beatles and the monkeys were sort of the thing and then i probably stopped listening to music by the time i was seven or eight i got into magic and i started learning about magic and being a magician rick would take the train from lido beach into manhattan and hang out in magic shops he said quote when i was 14 i had magician friends who were 60. i learned a lot from them i still think about magic all the time i always think about how things work the mechanics of a situation that's the nature of being a magician end quote when he was 14 he went to see a pediatrician because his neck was hurting him the doctor told him it was stress and that he needed to learn to meditate thanks to this encounter rick has been practicing transcendental meditation since he was very young early in high school rick got into hard rock groups like ac dc and aerosmith and then gravitated to the intense and angry sounds coming out of the punk rock genre soon he was playing guitar in his own punk band called the prix at school rick said he felt like a loner like he didn't fit in like he wasn't a part of anything that was until he noticed the black students at his school listening to a new and energetic type of music called rap his high school was about seventy percent white and thirty percent black the white kids were into led zeppelin yes and pink floyd which were groups that were all completely over whereas the black kids were always waiting for the latest rap or scratch record to come out he found it fascinating that people could be so musically progressive that they'd want the newest thing love it and forget everything that came before it rap was like the hardcore punk movement except the black teenagers actually accepted new music and rick did too although he'd play in another punk band called hoes rick was becoming increasingly enamored by rap music it wasn't shiny it wasn't polished it was raw and felt more poetic and personal no one got into hip-hop at that time thinking it was going to be their road to success [Music] rick was encouraged by his parents to be a lawyer and enrolled at new york university in 1981 as a philosophy major with the intention of going to law school choosing nyu proved to be one of the most important decisions of rick's life because it placed him exactly where hip-hop was happening every night he'd go to local hip-hop clubs where he was the only white person in attendance [Music] i didn't take any classes before three in the afternoon because i knew i wouldn't wake up i would go to these clubs like negril and the roxy and see what was going on there and the the records that were coming out didn't reflect hip-hop hip-hop was a whole interactive culture and the dj the reason in the def jam logo the dj is big is because the dj was a key piece of the hip-hop world but the records at the time didn't reflect that so really the goal of making records was more almost like a documentarian of like i'd go to these clubs i'd hear this incredible music then i would buy the records and they wouldn't be anything like it and just from the fan point of view of wanting records that sounded like what i heard at the club i started making them one of rick's first friends in the hip-hop scene was dj jazzy j who spun at the hottest clubs and would give reuben advice on which records to buy in 1983 the pair decided to make their own record with jay's brother t lorac called it's yours this track took off in new york's hip-hop clubs and rap radio stations during the spring of 1984 and led to russell simmons reaching out to meet rick russell was already notable on the scene for being the manager of popular acts like run dmc and curtis blow when the two first met they vibed right away because they both liked all the same records rick told russell that he wanted to start an independent record company and wanted him to be his partner but simmons was hesitant because he wanted to make a deal with a major label but rick was insistent he didn't want to do it at first and uh and i said i'll make the records and i'll do all the work and you'd be my partner and the more i got to know rick the more i felt that my efforts should go into the partnership and not into a separate company because i already had run dmc and houdini and jimmy spicer and curtis blow in the fields four i was managing a lot of acts i had a lot i knew that if he was involved it was a real label whereas if i was doing it myself it was a kid in a college dorm so while he was still student at nyu reuben borrowed 5 000 from his parents to start the def jam label with russell simmons in late 1984 their first release was a 12 inch single of ll cool j's i need a beat and it sold 120 000 copies def jam's next single was a bc boys track called rock hard which had massive crossover appeal and showed the label was on the right track these two records did well enough critically and commercially to have columbia records give him and his partner a seven figure distribution deal for their def jam label reuben broke the news to his parents that he was going into the music business by sending them a photo of the first check he received under the columbia agreement it was his way of telling them they shouldn't think he was throwing his life away just because he was skipping law school the amount of the check was a cool six hundred thousand dollars and the rest is history mmm def jam became a symbol of adventure and independence in the music world and rick established himself as a producer whose name on a record was a virtual guarantee of quality in a 1986 interview with the village voice a then 23 year old rick rubin said quote def jam is a unique label in that we're in the music business whereas all the other record companies are in the banking business they loan money you make a record you pay it back with your sales and they take a piece from then on they look at it as selling something it's really disgusting end quote from the very beginning of his career rick never focused on trying to make a hit instead his goal is to make music that excites him and the artist we didn't make them thinking oh this is going to change the world or i can't wait for everybody to hear it was more like i know my friends will like this and if you know if 500 people hear it that's amazing you know if we can sell enough of these to get to make another one we've succeeded by maintaining a sincere approach to the art rick incidentally changed the face of music forever during his time at def jam he produced seminal hip-hop albums like ll cool j's radio run dmc's raising hell nbc boys licensed to ill with the bc boys rick combined his three favorite styles punk rap and heavy metal into one and despite its offensive nature it became the first rap lp to top the billboard charts reuben also produced slayer's 1986 album rain and blood which is now considered one of the greatest heavy metal records ever this album includes dark lyrics pertaining to death insanity and murder and it was considered so outrageous that columbia records refused to release it so they had to bring it to another label at the time rick was quoted saying who said rock and roll was supposed to be nice rock and roll is about going against the rules end quote in a few short years daft jam had become one of the most significant music labels in the world but rick and russell were no longer getting along they weren't aligned from a music or a business standpoint there was no real falling out it was really and i can remember going after lunch with russell and saying you know i feel like we'd be better friends if we weren't partners you want to leave the company he's like i don't want to leave it's like okay i'll leave it was like as simple as that a lot of people would have stayed at def jam in rick's position because it was so profitable but he's not too attached to things he didn't find the partnership fun anymore so in 1988 he left fgm and headed across the country to los angeles where he started his next record label deaf american recordings [Music] rick didn't plan on moving to california permanently but once he got to la he never left with his new record company he changed gears and signed hard rock bands like slayer and danzig and made several comedy records with controversial comic andrew dice clay oh mother hubbard went to the cupboard to get her old dog bone she bent over rover took over she got a bone of her own i don't know rick said quote after my initial success in rap i started making rock records and people said why would you do this i made a comedy album and they said why this pretty much every step of the way people tried to talk me out of what i was doing next the label's first major commercial success came with the black crow's 1990 debut album shake your money maker and two years later the group's follow-up the southern harmony and musical companion gave deaf american its first number one album in 92 rapper sir mixolot earned a number one hit with the song baby got back as well as a platinum selling album called mack daddy heavy metal act slayer also enjoyed commercial success with several gold certified albums in 1993 rick changed the label name to american recordings he chose to drop the word def after seeing the word added to the dictionary where it was defined as a slang word meaning excellent to him the word had become mainstream and meaningless so he held a mock funeral for the word on august 27 1993 we had a funeral at the hollywood fervor cemetery before the word death al sharpton was the minister presiding over the ceremony [Music] the purpose of the event was to acknowledge the mainstreaming of the underground and it ended up being a mainstream news story which was funny because it was such a ridiculous idea to begin with around this time rick gained more notoriety when he produced the red hot chili peppers fifth studio album blood sugar sex magic which gave the band their first hit give it away which won a grammy award and became the band's first number one single on the rock charts [Music] reuben was impressed when he first saw the peppers on stage at the greek theater in 1989 but was even more impressed by their potential the producer felt the peppers were limited in the way they saw themselves as a funk group with rap lyrics he knew they could play rock on a much wider scale if he could break down the walls in their own imagination we were a great live band when we had a power that was really unique and every time we got in the studio it all changed all of a sudden the studio you can't just go play you have to get all these buttons lined up and you have to do this and this and always just didn't sound like us it was just stiff weird we got with rick and it was like get in a room put up mics and start playing music that should be the vibe like what you just brought yeah it is so hard because there's so little time in each thing but just keep them really simple bottom [Music] ruben's productions tend to be paired down and powerful he goes about making music instinctively and pushes artists to find the inner them to look at what they might be or didn't know they could be and letting it all flow out from there rick encouraged the chili peppers to think in wider terms and would meditate with band members before each studio session he said quote there's a great deal of [ __ ] that people think about when they make music things that don't matter meditation kind of wipes that away and you focus on the real job at hand as opposed to thinking about what the management wants or what the record company is saying or what somebody at a radio station might think end quote reuben would go on to produce six albums with the chili peppers and it'd be one of the most successful collaborations of his career [Music] starting in 1993 reuben entered a creative partnership with country legend johnny cash that turned into a magical 10-year run back in the late 60s and 70s johnny cash was one of the biggest rock stars of his day he had multiple best-selling albums his own popular tv show and performed in large sold out arenas but the cash that rick first met backstage in february 1993 was in a much much different position cash hadn't released a top 10 country album since 76 his longtime record label colombia which he helped build dropped him in 86 and he was now performing in small dingy clubs for all intents and purposes he was washed up but rick was looking for a new set of challenges as a producer instead of working with more young and established rockers he wanted to connect with someone who was quote great and important but wasn't doing their best work i wanted to see if i could help him do great work again end quote cash was skeptical when he was told a rap producer wanted to work with him but didn't have anything to lose i can remember having a conversation with johnny cash saying on our first album saying we're gonna make the best album you ever made and he looked at me like i was insane like like how like how could he even think that way he felt like he hadn't made a good record in probably 25 years and had been discarded you know at the time that i met him he was playing at dinner theaters and had been dropped from two labels and nobody cared so the idea of reframing the experience to to not not just well let's just get in let's just do an album but let's do whatever it takes for it to be the best album we've ever made reuben and cash began recording on may 17 1993 rick set up simple recording equipment in his house and asked cash to play some of his favorite songs this went on for weeks the two shared music and stories and formed a close bond in the following months the pair recorded over 70 solo acoustic demos that they narrowed down to 13 songs on the album that reuben named american recordings upon release it became cash's best-selling album since 1971's man in black and won a grammy for best contemporary folk album in 1995. reuben and cash would go on to make several more albums which led to hits like the man comes around and hurts a cover of a 9-inch nail song that may be the most powerful record of both of their careers their partnership and friendship continued until cash's death in september 2003 because rick was willing to look past age and commercial viability he resurrected johnny cash's career and brought the world a ton of great music that can be enjoyed forever i feel like it's really uh an issue with our society that we really discard good things before their time just because they get old or look a little ragged i don't think age in any way took away from johnny's greatness and in many ways as he got older and even as his voice may have gotten um weaker it somehow was able to convey emotion in an even deeper way in the new millennium rick found himself working with some of the most charismatic and talented artists of all time starting with jay-z rick ain't normal i don't give a [ __ ] i know all producers have their idiosyncrasies meaning you know quirks and weird [ __ ] but he's just strange by strange standards while we was downstairs doing hardcore rap records and [ __ ] upstairs he had a bunch of people having koala leaves and doing some type of tibetan freedom concert planning [Music] when was the last time you seen a bison in a [ __ ] studio next to the johnny cash rails yeah yo this thing had a grammy i told you i was upstairs and they got 100 [ __ ] he had a grammy for the best uh producer of the country out who him is this chilling jay was working on the black album which was set to be his final album before retiring and he brought in rick to produce the song 99 problems i want to hear that yeah because i want to fill in i want to fill in it yeah i'm thinking maybe we start acapella with um if you're having girl problems i feel bad for your son i got 99 problems butter [ __ ] ain't one hit me bomb right into the store i got the rap patrol yeah that's that's money moments like this one with the jay-z acapella suggestion have created rick's unshakeable myth it's how he developed an aura that every musician wants around them while they work in the past two decades rick has produced some of the most famous and diverse musicians alive including rage against machine slipknot weezer neil diamond dixie chicks justin timberlake adele and lana del rey rick said quote i really like the challenge of working with different kinds of music working with different artists makes for interesting experiences i feel like they helped me at my craft by helping me push the boundaries of what i've done if all i ever did was make hip-hop records it would get old i think that both my ability to do it and the integration that i bring to it would wear out end quote one of my favorite reuben produced projects is kanye's classic 2013 album jesus before rick got involved with the project kanye came over to play him the album he originally came over and said hey i want to complete my new album and i thought we were going to listen to a finished album and then we listened to about three hours of music most of which didn't have vocals and um and at the end it's like wow so what's you know what's it gonna be i'm thinking it's a year away and he's like well you know i'm putting it out and uh i think it was like six week five was coming out in five or six weeks like really it's like i i said you know i have another album that's a lot further along than this and it's not coming out for probably five months yeah and uh and it's like really it's just a funny conversation after the meeting wes asked rick if he'd be willing to take all the raw material and strip down the sound to help him finish the album three weeks before deadline the pair worked furiously to cut down and reassemble the album rick said quote we ended up working probably 15 days 16 days long hours no days off 15 hours a day we talked a lot about minimalism my house is basically an empty white box when he walked in it he was like my house is an empty white box too end quote rubin said kanye was recording two days before jesus needed to be complete with five songs missing vocals and a couple more without lyrics rick remembers kanye saying quote don't worry i will score 40 points for you in the fourth quarter end quote in the two hours before kanye had to leave to catch a plane to milan he finished all the lyrics and performed them flawlessly in the end we are left with a minimalist ten-track album that is aged like fine wine reuben is the producer that artists trust most when they have too many ideas and need to make most of the music disappear jesus turned out incredible because rick did precisely that uh would i didn't reduce it rick ruby reduced he's not a producer he's a reducer the number of production credits that rick rubin has at this point in his career is truly mind-boggling there's no question he's one of the great music producers of our time but to really get to the core of rick's essence and his mystical creative process we have to go to his iconic malibu recording studio shangri-la [Music] located in the california hills above zuma beach is shangri-la one of the most famous recording studios in the world surrounded by a lush yard with the sound of ocean surf in the backdrop the space allows artists to remain connected to the natural world which is a stark contrast to most dark recording studios it was originally built in the mid-1970s for bob dylan but ever since reuben purchased the property in 2011 shangri-la's allure has ramped up by his own allure when he got the property he had almost every surface painted white minus the pink tile countertops in the kitchen and bathroom the studio's director of operations told architectural digest quote generally speaking the creative process is subtractive you have to remove as many distractions as possible one of the things that shangri-la does really well with its minimalist design is taking away the distractions of clutter there's not a television there's not a clock telling you what time it is it's like a blank canvas end quote the goal is to create a setting where an artist can be completely vulnerable and feel completely free to be themselves a hundred percent with no no shame or feeling of needing to perform a certain way or and no expectation the only you know just really a safe place to be naked basically back in the summer of 2014 mac miller was on tour in europe and hit a low point his drug addiction was getting out of hand so he drunkenly gave rick a call up to that point the pair had only met a few times at shangri-la i went over there a few times and then um you know me we hang out three times you're not my best friend right so i'll call you and i when i'm depressed so i was just drunk and thinking about life and i was like you know what i would love to when i got home is like get my [ __ ] together rick rubin you have your [ __ ] together you're still alive um let's do this getting clean doesn't just happen not even within the safe confines of shangri-la part of his detox was from recording music max said quote i'd just go to rick's house every day and just sit and play the keyboard before then i never really played music unless i was recording it for two to three years i was just numb so when you're coming out of that it's all gonna come out at once i was crying every day end quote that summer rick helped mack focus on living again and going outside and getting his priorities right he never did get a hundred percent sober but after their summer together mack's outlook on life seemed much more positive reuben helped give mack an extra four years of life where he'd go on to make the best music of his career this is one story but it seems that rick's primary role today has shifted more to a therapist than a traditional music producer some artists need help with their material while others might need to be talked off the ledge to get out of bed in the morning and rick can do both today he has some of the most profound interviews on youtube with icons like kendrick and pharrell and he currently hosts an audio podcast called the broken record where he sits down with the most influential artists alive i want to play you a clip from this conversation with andre 3000 which is one of my favorite interviews ever it provides us a glimpse at the type of therapy rick offers through mere conversation i haven't been making much music man my my focus is not there my confidence is not there um i'd like to but it's just it's just not coming i think you make a lot of you start making a lot of things with no thinking of what it's supposed to be or who's it for what anyone else is going to think but just get in the habit of making a lot that's what i got to get back to yeah just make a lot and then at some point in that process you'd be like hmm i really like this it did and you didn't know like through that whole process you don't know when that's gonna happen yeah it's not a decision you make and it's not an intellectual idea where i have a vision and i'm gonna make this thing it doesn't it doesn't happen like there rarely happens like that it happens more just having fun making things no stakes [Laughter] rick rubin is responsible for countless evolutions in music over the last 30 years from founding def jam to working with the bc boys to reviving johnny cash's career to being brought in to save jesus last minute he is behind hundreds and hundreds of beloved records yet somehow even after absorbing the entire history it's still difficult to explain the legacy of a man who doesn't appear to do much while doing everything at the same time perhaps if you push everything aside rick's superpower is simply his willingness to listen if you really listen to what people say usually they tell you everything i just really pay attention to what people say and through that i can then reflect back thoughts that they've told me about themselves that they don't know about themselves and um allow them to unlock those doors to to get to the places they want to go artistically a lot of answers are already within us it just may require saying things out loud or having someone say it back to you for it to stick music producers come from different backgrounds and that usually determines the kind of music they make rick approaches his craft from the perspective of a fan and the fact that he's a fan of lots of different genres gives him an edge over others for example most famous hip-hop producers only exist in the rap genre and use the popular sounds and textures of the time these producers want to make sure their imprint on the track is obvious so they advertise themselves with loud producer tags oh lord justin made another one rick rubin takes the complete opposite approach he tries to take himself out of it as much as possible and the lack of any specific rick imprint is actually what makes him so significant and rare there's no one that listened to the new strokes album the new abnormal that could tell that it was produced by rick rubin and that's the entire point and it's been this way from the very beginning reduced by rick rubin is written on the back cover of ll cool j's 1985 debut album radio the bearded super producer's ethos has always been reduction minimalism and total stillness in rick's mind the more invisible the better he is at his job you're sort of an absence in a way i try to be it's i try to be as my goal would be to be able to produce an artist and have it be their best work and never meet them or speak to them that would be the ultimate version of it i've not gotten there yet i haven't reached that level of skill yet the true magic of the creative process is that there's no magic you simply set aside time and start working it's like fishing you know you can you can go out fishing but you can't say i'm gonna catch three fish today you know it's like there's we have very little control over this process it's magic really i think if your goal is to be better than you were it's a more realistic place to be and if you write a better song than you wrote yesterday every day then you continue to get better and better and better and it really is small steps and trying not to think too much it's more emotion and hard work than it is head work like that the head comes in after to look at what the heart has presented and to organize it but the initial inspiration comes from a different place and it's not the head and it's not an intellectual activity it's more inspiration [Music] you

Channel: Soulr

Views: 3,019,093

Keywords: #RickRubin, #RickRubinJayZ, #RickRubinYeezus, #RickRubinKanyeWest, #ShangriLa, #RickRubinDocumentary, #RickRubinMovie, #Soulr, #StoryofRickRubin, #HipHopDocumentary, #DefJamDocumentary, #JakeZeeman

Id: vabwGiTWRVo

Length: 33min 45sec (2025 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 19 2021