Discovered, Not Manufactured: Rick Rubin&Kanye West - a podcast by Alan Philips

People are so different. It’s almost like you need to go through the process, discover and unlock what it is that makes that band that band. And a lot of times they don’t know it.

—Rick Rubin, music producer

In early 2013, Kanye West asked legendary producer and Def Jam Recordings cofounder Rick Rubin to help complete his new album, Yeezus. With only days to meet West’s deadline and a rough cut of sixteen unfocused and unfinished tracks, the task appeared nearly impossible. West couldn’t seem to create the sound he’d imagined, and his process bordered on perfectionism. Though he was certain it would come to him, he had no idea how or when. He needed something, or in this case someone, who could reveal his vision.

When Rick Rubin showed up, the album’s rough cut ran nearly three and a half hours. In the studio, the two began deconstructing the tracks, unveiling the “edgy and minimal and hard” sound West had been searching for. The duo worked for sixteen days, fifteen hours a day, with no time off. With just two days left, five songs still needed vocals, and two or three of them still needed lyrics. In a final flurry of remarkable creative collaboration, West and Rubin finished those songs and the album in one two-hour session. The final cut of the album featured ten songs for a total length of forty minutes— less than 20 percent of the original three and a half hours of music. Rubin had broken down West’s compositions to their simplest form, leaving only the essence of his ideas, and the results were epic.

When Yeezus was released, it debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 and eventually went platinum. Yeezus was the most critically acclaimed album of 2013, appearing on sixty-one Metacritic top ten lists and named #1 on eighteen of them. Critics commended its brash direction. When asked about their collaboration, Kanye said, “Well, I didn’t reduce it. Rick Rubin reduced it. He’s a reducer, not a producer.”

Rick Rubin

Rick Rubin grew up in Lido Beach, New York, not far from JFK Airport. His father, Michael, was a shoe wholesaler, and his mother, Linda, a housewife. In 1982, during his senior year of high school, he founded Def Jam Recordings and formed a punk-rock band called Hose. Using his high school’s equipment, he recorded a Hose track that would eventually become Def Jam’s first release. Hose played punk clubs in New York City, the Midwest, and California, but broke up as Rubin’s interests shifted more toward hip-hop. In 1994, Rubin and DJ Jazzy Jay of Universal Zulu Nation coproduced Rubin’s first hiphop single, “It’s Yours,” for the rapper T La Rock. As the song started getting played in clubs and on the radio, Rubin’s music found a fan in Russell Simmons, who was making a name for himself as an artist manager and concert promoter. Rubin convinced Simmons to join him at Def Jam, and the pair was soon holed up in Rubin’s New York University dorm room, sifting through demos of aspiring rappers in between Rubin’s classes on philosophy and film.

In late 1984, Def Jam scored its first hit with LL Cool J’s song “I Need a Beat,” selling over 100,000 copies. The rapper’s first album, Radio, would be the first Rubin “reduced,” and it would go platinum. Next would be the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill. It would go ten times platinum, selling over ten million copies, cementing Def Jam’s reputation.

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