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David Senra: The Simple Genius of Rick Rubin

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Rick Rubin grew up on Long Island obsessed with music — arena rock at 13, punk by high school, then hip-hop when it was still a street movement you could only hear at one club in New York City. The records coming out didn't sound like the club. They were made by professionals who didn't go to the club. So at 18, while a freshman at NYU, he made one himself — "It's Yours" with T La Rock. It sold 100,000 copies in 18 months. He put his dorm room address on the sleeve. This launched Def Jam Recordings. LL Cool J's first record came next. The Beastie Boys after that. His credit on those records didn't say "produced by." It said "reduced by" — a theological statement as much as a job title. His method has never changed: strip everything down until what remains has no place to hide, then protect whatever magic appears. He's applied it to Jay-Z, Johnny Cash, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eminem, The Strokes, Metallica, Kanye West, Tom Petty, and many other top artists. He describes himself as a lazy workaholic. The Zen exterior is real. So is the guy who spent the first 25 years of his career in a dark room 16 hours a day, seven days a week, waiting for a miracle to show up. Show notes:

David Senra: Five years ago, I read this biography of you. It's called "In the Studio." You and I were just talking about it before we started recording. One of my favorite ideas that I took away from that book, that I think about probably every week, is this concept that you have that less is more, but to get less, you have to do more. Can you talk a little bit about that? Rick Rubin: Yeah. If you're stacking a lot of things on top of each other, each one of those things becomes less important. So, if you have 10 things, each one of them is one-tenth as important as one by itself. Rick…

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