The 25 Best Rick Rubin Songs

As the cofounder of Def Jam celebrates his birthday, Complex counts down the productions that made him a legend.

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As the cofounder of Def Jam celebrates his birthday, Complex counts down the productions that made him a legend.

I don’t remember who I was recording, or what year it was exactly, but I do remember Rick Rubin dropping by a session I had booked at Hollywood Sound.

“I really shouldn’t be here,” Rubin deadpanned as he stared down at the huge Neve mixing board. “My doctor says I’m not supposed to be around a lot of heavy electronic equipment.”

I have no doubt that one of Rick’s homeopathic doctors counseled him this way. And I also have no doubt that Rick found this ironic and incredibly funny given his line of work. It was even funnier to trot out in conversation, and, moreover, useful as a way to escape sessions in which he had no interest. Like mine.

I worked for Rick Rubin for seven years, in the 1990s—the time after his departure from Def Jam, in which he built both a new label, Def American Recordings, and his independent production career. And though I don’t claim to know the man as well as many, this is the Rick that I knew, and that I think is essential to understanding what makes him one of the greatest and most influential record producers of all time—from his roots in punk and hip-hop, to his forays into heavy metal, straight-ahead rock, alternative, techno, country, folk, and spiritual music


 

From his roots in punk and hip-hop, to his forays into heavy metal, straight-ahead rock, alternative, techno, country, folk, and spiritual music.


 

The Rick Rubin that most people know is the one who looks like the carefully cultivated image they see—serious, taciturn, enigmatic. It’s the image that fits his manifest brilliance as a producer, which draws on his love of the pure and raw and natural.

The side they don’t see, however, is his peculiar sense of humor—sarcastic, mischievous, and slightly misanthropic. Rubin’s ultimate gift as a producer is his ability to combine light and dark, serious and playful, sweetness and acidity, divine and diabolical, beauty and ugliness.

Rick was all about the element of surprise. To look ferocious and then speak softly. To put people at ease and then make them really uncomfortable. This was the guy who—when I told him that I couldn’t make a great music video for $5,000—gave me $20,000 and said, “But now you have to make four videos.” This was the man who was asked by his new partner, Warner Bros. Records, to give the keynote address at its yearly convention—and then had the president of a rival record company read the address while Rick stood behind him, nodding in agreement.

That’s the Rick I wish people could see, but I don’t think even Rick wants to remember it. While interviewing him for my book, The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop, I reminded him of a few of these moments.

“I can’t believe I said that,” he replied softly, shaking his head.

But that was the key thing that gave Rick Rubin his unique gift: Clarity and noise, a study in contrasts and surprise.

Rick doesn’t push that envelope like a 20-year-old anymore, which is natural. The older Rick Rubin aims for the heavenly, not the marginal. Because of this, the following list of Rubin’s 25 all-time best productions has a slight early Rubin bias. Still, his best work could well be ahead of him.

A few words about the choices that follow:

First, what do we mean when we say “producer”? To many in hip-hop and dance era, a producer is the person who makes the beats. But a record producer, in the classic sense, is analogous to a movie director. He’s not the guy moving the camera; not always the guy who wrote the script. He’s the guy with the overall creative vision. Rick did not have to be in the studio when songs were “tracked,” because he was there during rehearsals, when the structure and arrangements were shaped.

But what we aren’t counting here is the stuff that Rick Rubin “executive produced” (like Public Enemy) or simply signed (like Slick Rick), or slapped his name on after the fact (like The Black Crowes). With heavy heart, I am leaving out some unreleased gems, like the Beastie Boys’ remake of The Beatles “I’m Down” and Rick's sessions with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

What we’re looking for, in the songs that follow, are the works that changed the man, the music, and moved the world.

RELATED: Pigeons & Planes - What Does Rick Rubin Actually Do?

Written by Dan Charnas (@dancharnas)

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25. T La Rock and Jazzy Jay “It's Yours" (1984)

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Album: "It's Yours" 12 inch
Label: Partytime Records, Def Jam Recordings
Producer: Rick Rubin

This was the song that started it all. “It's Yours” was not the first record Rick Rubin ever produced, but this was the one in which Rick Rubin first established his voice and his authority.

Rubin became a fan of early hip-hop as a high-schooler on Long Island, collecting 12-inch records that he heard from fellow students and on DJ Mr. Magic's weekly radio show. But when Rick matriculated as a freshman at NYU, moved to Manhattan, and saw rappers on stage for the first time, he was shocked by the disparity between what he saw live versus what he had been hearing on wax. Hip-hop, in person, was so much more exciting, compelling, and rocking than anything he ever heard on a 12-inch. Rap records, by comparison, sounded like disco records with rhymes thrown on top of them.


 

When Russell Simmons finally met Rick Rubin in person, he had a moment of disbelief that the person who made 'It's Yours'—the 'blackest record ever,' as he put it—was white.


 

Then he heard Run-DMC's first single, the Russell Simmons–produced “It's Like That/Sucker MCs,” which revolutionized hip-hop production in stripping away most of the music and focusing on the bare beat.

“This is the real shit,” Rubin told his roommate, Adam Dubin.

Then he added: “I could do this better.”

T La Rock & Jazzy Jay's “It's Yours” was the result.

Rick's very first rap production ended up being the song of the summer of 1984 in the streets of New York City. Russell Simmons went bananas when heard the track, which refined and purified his own production ethos so incredibly. When Simmons finally met Rick Rubin in person, he had a moment of disbelief that the person who made “It's Yours” — the “blackest record ever,” as he put it — was white. “It's Yours” was the record that convinced Simmons to go into business with Rubin, to buy into Rubin's nascent label, called Def Jam.

The rest is, as they say, history.

24. The Cult “Love Removal Machine” (1987)

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Album: Electric
Label: Beggars Banquet
Producer: Rick Rubin

Rick Rubin's effect on the bands he worked with was not always universally lauded. The Beastie Boys were a respected local punk band with some hip-hop leanings—and a female member, to boot—before Rubin remade them into a full-on, track-suit-wearing, all-male rap trio with frat-boy appeal. Some people felt that Rick Rubin dumbed the Beasties down. That statement alone is a facile one—the Beasties would likely be known by no one if not for Licensed To Ill, which in reality only pretendsto be dumb. But it is also true that the Beasties became more sophisticated and complex after they broke free of Rubin; and made a pretty good career for themselves at that.


 

In producing The Cults third album, Electric, Rubin remade the punk rockers as a straight-forward metal band. For some folks, it worked. For others, it was a travesty.


 

Just as controversial was Rubin's sonic intervention with the British punk band, The Cult. In producing their third album, Electric, Rubin remade them as a straight-forward metal band. For some folks, it worked. “Hands down one of the best hard rock songs ever,” said Evan Forster, who worked at Immortal/Buzztone (home of Cypress Hill et al.) in the 1990s. For others, it was a travesty. “Please don't forget how he destroyed The Cult on Electric,” says Brian Coleman, author of “Check The Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies.” “That was shameful. I loved the Cult, until he fucked with them.”

For myself, I am partial to Rubin's re-remake of The Cult as a proto-techno group in “The Witch,” the track recorded at Hollywood Sound in L.A. while I looked on, for the soundtrack of the animated movie “Cool World.”

23. Beastie Boys “Girls” (1986)

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Album: Licensed to Ill
Label: Def Jam
Producer: Rick Rubin

“Girls,” from the Beastie Boys album Licensed To Ill, comes up a lot when I talk to folks about Rick Rubin's production. Which is surprising in a sense because there's almost nothing to the song save a plunky toy piano-esque synth figure and an oom-pah-pah drum beat. Geoffrey Weiss — who shepherded American Recordings' product through the Warner system before Rick's departure, and is now a Senior VP of A&R at Hollywood Records — puts it best: “Because it's so spare and empty and shouldn't work at all, and sounded amazing when it was new, and sounds classic now.”


 

It's so spare and empty and shouldn't work at all, and sounded amazing when it was new, and sounds classic now.


 

“Girls” is indicative of Rubin, who initially portrayed his role as “reducer,” not “producer.” 1980s music had a lot of needless flourishes and additives. Rubin's mission was to boil off excess and serve the essence. Rick is often portrayed as a producer who does almost nothing to the music he touches. Which isn't to say that he does nothing. The opposite, in fact, is true. Like a great chef, he chooses the best ingredients and lets them speak for themselves. The genius is in the selection and arrangement of those ingredients.

In the case of “Girls,” it's one part drums, one part piano, and four parts asshole.

22. Queen “We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions (Ruined by Rick Rubin)” (1991)

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Album: CD, Single
Label: Hollywood BASIC
Producer: Rick Rubin

Rick played this remix for me the first night we hung out.

I hated it. I remember smiling stiffly as it went on, thinking, "I'm not going to tell one of the greatest rap producers of all time that I do not understand this record, nor do I think that anyone else will."


 

I remember smiling stiffly as it went on, thinking, 'I'm not going to tell one of the greatest rap producers of all time that I do not understand this record, nor do I think that anyone else will.'


 

Rick got his hands on the Queen multi-tracks after our mutual friend, David “Funken” Klein was picked by Rick's former lawyer, Peter Paterno, to start a new rap label for Disney called Hollywood Basic. Funkenklein was the man who signed Pharoahe Monch to his first record deal as part of Organized Konfusion. And since Disney controlled the Queen masters for reissue, he also had the opportunity to revision how they might be repurposed.

He wanted Rick Rubin to “ruin” Queen. And many people actually agreed that that is exactly what Rick did.

But I listen to this today, over 20 years later, and I hear a gleeful desecration that's almost political: The use of the Blackest breakbeats to fuck with a white classic rock staple; the beats falling in crazy places; the transformation of “We Will Rock You” in to a breakbeat itself in the extended vamp.

Lord forgive me. I love it now.

21. Andrew Dice Clay "Hour Back...Get It?" (1990)

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Album: The Day the Laughter Died
Label: American Recordings
Producer: Rick Rubin

During his last days at Def Jam, Rick signed a young comedian named Andrew “Dice” Clay. Since his appearance on a Rodney Dangerfield HBO special, Clay had quickly become a sensation on the touring circuit. When Rick left Def Jam, he took Clay with him, and the comic's self-titled debut album became Def American's first Gold-certified record in 1990. That same year, “Dice” became the first comedian in history to sell out Madison Square Garden.

As popular as Clay was, he was also widely reviled as crude, racist, sexist, and misogynistic, playing to disaffected young white males with his vulgar takes on nursery rhymes (“Hickory dickory dock,” began one of them, “your wife was sucking my…”).


 

Working with Rick, I came to understand that 'Dice' was a character, played by the real comedian, Andrew Silverstein. Think Archie Bunker on crack.


 

I didn't get Clay myself—he seemed to be a relic in the era of multiculturalism—and I certainly didn't understand how the same mind that birthed hip-hop's greatest brand, Def Jam, also sought to include Dice's voice.

Working with Rick, I came to understand that “Dice” was a character, played by the real comedian, Andrew Silverstein. Think Archie Bunker on crack. Much like Carroll O'Connor's character on the groundbreaking TV series All In The Family, a lot of folks took Bunker at face value, thinking that the show was playing to racists when it was actually a lampoon of racism. And “Dice,” I think, did willingly play to those elements. But there was also something else, something more complex, going on.

That was exactly what Rick loved about “Dice.” Like Rick's own racist character “Vic” in the Run-DMC movie Tougher Than Leather, Clay tried to convince you that he was the worst bigot in the world; then again, there was something about the person delivering it that made you… unsure. Like Abbott & Costello—with whom Rick was obsessed—Silverstein combined base impulses with sophisticated form. Rick's college friend and mentor Ric Menello called it “high-low,” a combination of lowbrow and highbrow: art that seems aimed at the cheap seats but has a higher concept at work the whole time.

What convinced me was Clay's second album, The Day The Laughter Died. If all Rick and Clay wanted was to get paid, they would have made another album of nursery rhymes. Instead, Rick asked the most successful comedian in the world to walk into a nightclub, stand on stage, and not tell a single joke all night. For two excruciating discs, “Dice” sighs, smokes, vents, yells, and basically does everything he can to alienate his audience. He accuses a man in the audience of having sexual fantasies about his daughter, who is sitting uncomfortably next to him. The person in the audience who laughed the loudest and the longest all night was Rick Rubin himself.

One brilliant moment that comes at the end of the album: When “Dice” says “This could take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour,” he then quickly blurts “Back! Get it?” You can almost hear the audience squinting to understand the joke. “Dice” just keeps going and going, becoming more manic as he does. “Hour! Back! Get it?” Then, after a few dizzying minutes, he looks out into the crowd and says: “You don't get this bit. Do you think I do?”

You understand, in that moment, that telling a joke and being funny are not the same thing at all. And it's that jewel that Rick saw clearly, buried in all the bullshit.

20. Red Hot Chili Peppers “Californication” (2000)

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19. Adele "He Won't Go" (2010)

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Album: 21
Label: XL, Columbia
Producer: Rick Rubin

Rick Rubin's tenure as co-CEO of Columbia Records has been controversial. Shortly after Rick took the job, the move was heralded in the press as the salve for the ills of the music business (Lynn Hirschberg's fawning 2007 New York Times Magazinepiece didn't include one bit of history about Rick's previous struggles with his role as a record executive). Then, when Columbia got what it paid for—a true subversive-in-residence—the coverage turned ugly.


 

They were putting out all kinds of records without any thought to whether they were good or not. I think we stopped that now. But it's been very painful.


 

When I asked Rick how things were going, back in the summer of 2008, he looked tired, and sounded a familiar refrain from my days at American: “They were putting out all kinds of records without any thought to whether they were good or not. I think we stopped that now. But it's been very painful.”

After a number of rumored “imminent” departures, Rick seems, at least from an outsider's vantage point, to have settled into his role at Columbia as chief producer/guru. Nothing symbolizes that role better than Rick's involvement in the Adele album, 21, for which he produced four songs and one bonus track.

“He Won't Go” is a particularly emblematic production for Rick. It's an irony of his career: Rick is all about putting soul in music; but he's rarely tackled soul music. Another great example, from Justin Timberlake's FutureSex/LoveSounds album, is “(Another Song) All Over Again.”

18. Slayer “Angel of Death” (1986)

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Album: Reign in Blood
Label: Def Jam
Producer: Rick Rubin

Rick Rubin always envisioned Def Jam as a multifaceted label producing records in a number of genres, whether rap or metal or comedy. It just had to be the absolute best (and also, in Rick's parlance, “the worst shit,” meant as a superlative). Remember, too, that Def Jam's first releases were punk records.


 

The album and its lyrics so spooked the folks at Def Jam's distributor, Columbia Records, that they simply handed the record back to him and said, in effect, 'We don't care where you take this record, but take it out of here.'


 

Rick's signing of established speed metal band Slayer in 1986 was indicative of this drive.

When Rick finished his first full-length collaboration with Slayer, called Reign In Blood, the album and its lyrics so spooked the folks at Def Jam's distributor, Columbia Records, that they simply handed the record back to him and said, in effect, “We don't care where you take this record, but take it out of here.”

Where Rubin eventually took it was to David Geffen and his Geffen Records, who released the album under the Def Jam logo.

Upon its release, Reign In Blood—Rick Rubin's very first rock album—was counted by critics and fans as one of the best metal albums of all time. And still is.

One side note: “Angel Of Death,” the most dynamic track on a dynamic album, will be familiar to rap fans owing to its slower, middle section, which provides the guitar-soaked loop for Public Enemy's song, “She Watch Channel Zero.”

Another great Rubin achievement with Slayer: 1990's “Seasons In The Abyss,” from the Def American album of the same name.

17. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers “Mary Jane's Last Dance” (1993)

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Album: Greatest Hits
Label: MCA
Producer: Rick Rubin

After his work with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rick Rubin turned his attention to a new partnership with an established rock icon, Tom Petty. Their work together throughout 1993 and 1994 at Ocean Way Studios in Los Angeles would yield a great album, Wildflowers.


 

Petty was middle America personified, but with one listen to the opening boom-bap, you understood that Rick was simply bringing his Beasties-meet-John-Bonham sensibilities to bear on a new canvas.


 

Petty was the furthest Rick had travelled inland from his roots at the edges of musical propriety. The Peppers, at least, had been a crazy punk party band before their journey into the mainstream. Petty was middle America personified. But with one listen to the opening boom-bap of “You Don't Know How It Feels,” you understood that Rick was simply bringing his Beasties-meet-John-Bonham sensibilities to bear on a new canvas.

Curiously, the greatest production out of that initial collaboration did not end up on Petty's album, but rather his greatest hits compilation. Appropriate: “Mary Jane's Last Dance” was a great song; but Rick coaxed it into the realm of the American classic by evoking equal parts of Beatles and CSNY.

Says DJ Brainchild, co-host of Gordon Gartrell Radio and Questlove's partner-in-crime: “I'm slightly biased because the song takes place in my home state of Indiana, but it's easily one of Tom's best cuts of the '90s and also one of my favorite Rubin-produced tracks. The opening guitar riff is unforgettable, the hook is irresistible, and the video is fantastically creepy.”

16. Dixie Chicks “The Long Way Around” (2006)

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Album: Taking the Long Way
Label: Columbia
Producer: Rick Rubin

The country music establishment turned viciously on the Dixie Chicks after singer Natalie Maines publicly disavowed President George W. Bush as he prepared for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

When many of their fans and industry friends had abandoned them, Rick Rubin stepped in.

And what an album he created. It's hard to choose a standout track, but the one that Rick himself is the proudest of is often the first. The title track, “The Long Way Around” is great because it incorporates Rick's sense of increasing intensity without overshadowing the musical voice of the artist.

It was a great, mature work from the former wonder child, now the lion of the record business. Rubin was awarded his first Grammy for Producer of the Year for this record and others including Red Hot Chili Peppers and Justin Timberlake.

15. Danzig "You and Me (Less than Zero)" (1987)

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Album: Less Than Zero
Label: Def Jam
Producer: Danzig, Rick Rubin

Rick Rubin enlisted the talents of Glenn Danzig as a songwriter during the making of the Less Than Zero soundtrack. Danzig penned “Life Fades Away” for Roy Orbison and another song called “You And Me (Less Than Zero),” ostensibly the movie's title track.

Rubin reportedly was looking to match this song, with its Motown-style chorus, with a female vocalist. But he eventually went with Glenn Danzig's own demo of the track. Def Jam's first employee, George Drakoulias — who ended up discovering and producing The Black Crowes — played bass.

“You And Me” is significant in that it shows for the first time what Rick was able to do with real resources at his disposal. I think this song was the first time Rick worked with string section, and he layered in something very dark and beautiful.

14. Roy Orbison “Life Fades Away” (1987)

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Album: Less Than Zero
Label: Def Jam
Producer: Rick Rubin

Associated as he was with hard rap and heavy metal, Rick Rubin's tastes also leaned to the traditional. While he was an ardent follower of artcore bands like Flipper and punk icons like Henry Rollins, he was also a fan of The Beatles and Led Zeppelin.

As Rick thrived as a producer, his success allowed him to begin working with his heroes. And when Rick was offered the chance to executive produce the soundtrack album for the movie Less Than Zero, he seized the opportunity to make a record with a rock-and-roll demigod.


 

'We used to listen to Roy Orbison songs and cry,' Rubin's friend and mentor Ric Menello said of their time at NYU's Weinstein dormitory.


 

“We used to listen to Roy Orbison songs and cry,” Rubin's friend and mentor Ric Menello said of their time at NYU's Weinstein dormitory.

Emotion aside, Rick's choice of Orbison seemed, from both an artistic and commercial standpoint, to be a dead end. In the late 1980s, Orbison was as irrelevant and washed up as a rocker could be, in declining health and increasing obscurity. But the song that Rubin produced, “Life Fades Away”—written by another of Rick Rubin's growing stable of rock artists, Glenn Danzig—perfectly played on those perceptions in its melancholy, haunting hailing of death. In so doing, it completely upended Orbison's career. In the next couple of years his rock-and-roll resurrection was complete—featured in other timely soundtracks and a member along with George Harrison and others in the rock-and-roll supergroup, the Travelling Wilburys.

Even though this comeback came just before Orbison's death in 1988, I believe Rick took particular delight in bringing back a great artist's career from the dead. It was a Good Work, in the Divine sense of the term: Taking a human being who had been devalued by the marketplace and by fickle fans, and returning him to Glory.

The experience of this victory would be very helpful to Rick years later when he considered working with another music business outcast, Johnny Cash.

13. Red Hot Chili Peppers “Breaking the Girl” (1992)

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Album: Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Label: Warner Bros.
Producer: Rick Rubin

Geffen Records unceremoniously dropped Rubin's Def American label in 1990, a swift reaction to controversy caused by Rubin's release of the label's first rap record, by The Geto Boys. The sudden break allowed Rubin to shop for a new deal at an opportune time—in the midst of Def American's first pop hit with The Black Crowes.

Warner Bros. Records offered Rubin a lucrative joint venture—one that, Rick said, would allow the label to grow as big as it needed to, with no creative interference from the larger partner.


 

From the Zeppelin-esque flutes to the clanging percussion breakdown, the song evokes the familiar even as it provokes with the novel.


 

Ironically, the first days of this new venture were marked by a friendly bidding war between Def American and Warner for the services of a new free agent, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Of course, Rubin couldn't match the terms his own parent company was able to offer. But Rubin and Warner came to a nice accommodation wherein Rubin would produce the Chili Peppers new album for Warner proper. Everyone was, after all, family now.

During my first trip to California in February of 1991, I accompanied Rick up Lauren Canyon Blvd. to scout the mansion in which he planned to record the album that would become Blood Sugar Sex Magic. By the time I returned in August, it was done. George Drakoulias played the advance cassette for me in one shot during another long, winding drive from Hollywood to Rick's house in Malibu: the most amazing way to hear a most amazing album.

Of all the songs on the album, “Breaking The Girl” is perhaps the best example of Rick's creative handiwork. From the Zeppelin-esque flutes to the clanging percussion breakdown, the song evokes the familiar even as it provokes with the novel.

It should be noted here that Brendan O'Brien, who engineered this record, went on to play a huge role in sculpting some of the greatest works of alternative rock and grunge, producing landmark albums by Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, and Rage Against The Machine.

12. Danzig “Mother” (1988)

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Album: Danzig
Label: Def American
Producer: Rick Rubin

Rubin led a few of punk's children back to rock-and-roll, none more portentously than Glenn Danzig. Danzig had been the leader of the “horror punk” band Misfits in the 1980s. By the time Danzig and Rubin met, Misfits had long since broken up, and Glenn Danzig had started a new band, Samhain.


 

Because Danzig's style was still very much beyond the fringes of American rock radio, 'Mother' remained the rock classic that wasn't


 

Rick basically told Danzig, “You're the star,” and offered to sign him as a solo act to Def Jam. And Glenn basically told Rick, “not without my band.” The compromise came in the form of a band name change to simply “Danzig,” focusing the attention on the muscular, brooding lead singer with a voice like a gothic, evil Elvis.

“Mother” was the standout track from Danzig's 1988 Rubin-produced debut album, one of the first on his newly-formed Def American label. But because Danzig's style was still very much beyond the fringes of American rock radio, “Mother” remained the rock classic that wasn't…

That is until 1993, when Danzig's live version, “Mother '93,” became an MTV hit.

11. Jay-Z “99 Problems” (2004)

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Album: The Black Album
Label: Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam
Producer: Rick Rubin

When Rick left the recording sessions for L.L. Cool J.'s “Going Back To Cali” and “Jack The Ripper” in 1987, he essentially left his hip-hop production career behind him. For the next decade and a half, Rubin pretty much didn't touch rap—aside from a Geto Boys remix here and a Cool J/Chili Peppers collaboration from Howard Stern's Private Parts soundtrack there.


 

The savage simplicity of Rick's track was refreshing precisely because nobody had produced a record anything like it since, well, Rick produced one.


 

I'm not sure why Jay-Z's Black Album provided the clarion that called Rubin back to the beat—perhaps a combination of Jay-Z's stature and his branding of the album as his final project before retirement; or perhaps his renewed association with Def Jam as his American Recordings entered the Universal Music division run by Lyor Cohen.

But “99 Problems,” recorded in the basement of Rick's house off of Sunset Boulevard, picked up right where he left off—with the hottest solo artist in the game at the top of his lyrical ability. The savage simplicity of Rick's track was refreshing precisely because nobody had produced a record anything like it since, well, Rick produced one.

You can see some of this process in Jay-Z's documentary, Fade To Black. There's a moment that's pure Rick—him suggesting to Jay that they begin the song a capella, and then coming in, WHAM!, with the track. An old move from an old hand, for sure. But, like a well-told story that you've heard many times before, it never fails to make you smile.

10. Beastie Boys “The New Style” (1986)

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Album: Licensed to Ill
Label: Def Jam
Producer: Rick Rubin

“The New Style” represents the zenith of Rick Rubin's hip-hop production technique. If Rubin's ethos was a repudiation of the typical rap arrangement's unwavering sameness, then “The New Style” was a study in unpredictability: Three distinct movements colliding with one another, followed by a startlingly slow fourth. The song presented a sonic surprise around every corner.

Such a complex creative effort is hard to top. But another Beasties' song, “Hold It Now, Hit It,” comes very close. This was the song that broke the Beastiesin the hip-hop market, the song that made Black fans surprised that the Boys were, in fact, white.


 

To this day, it's difficult to name hip-hop tracks that contain the level of musical thought that these two songs do, save for the work of Rubin's production progeny, The Bomb Squad.


 

To this day, it's difficult to name hip-hop tracks that contain the level of musical thought that these two songs do, save for the work of Rubin's production progeny, The Bomb Squad.

Something important to note here: Rick Rubin and the Beasties in many ways co-produced this record. Adam Horovitz, Adam Yauch and Michael Diamond don't often get credit for their own vision and contributions to their first album; I think even Rick wouldn't contest that the record was in many ways a collaboration.

But if you want to understand what Rick Rubin brought to the studio, just compare Licensed To Ill to any of the Beasties albums that followed it. As creative as the rest of their career has been, The Beasties never wrote better songs nor stronger choruses than they did on their first album; they never quite had such a focused, consistent musical framework; and they never again had Rubin's sense of dynamics and drama.

9. System of a Down “Chop Suey!” (2001)

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Album: Toxicity
Label: American
Producer: Rick Rubin, Daron Malakian, Serj Tankian

Rick Rubin missed the grunge era almost entirely. His label, American Recordings, was cold when Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains were hot. A passionate foray into techno proved unfruitful, and the critical acclaim of his Johnny Cash records weren't enough to convince American's distributor, Warner Bros. Records, to pony up for Rubin's joint venture at anywhere near the rate they previously had been.


 

One of Rick's greatest moments as a producer of edge- and envelope-pushing rock music—all his creative hallmarks are present: noise collapsing into nothingness, sinister-yet-subtle lyrics, and beneath it all, the big beat.


 

Rick and his label jumped ship to Sony Music's Columbia Records just as American won a bidding war for a Los Angeles-based group called System of a Down, which Rick's A&R executive Dino Paredes then described as “kind of an Armenian Rage Against The Machine.”

This would not only be Rubin's first record for Sony; but fatefully, Rick would be producing it himself, for his own label — a rarity during the Warner Bros. days when Rick was much more likely to be off making records as a freelancer.

The combination of Rick's production and System of a Down's power and passionate, prepped fan base landed their debut album at #1 on the Billboard Top 200, and gave Rubin's American Recordings its first rock hit in years.

The musical apex of Rubin and System of a Down's partnership came on “Toxicity,” the group's second album. “Chop Suey” is, I think, one of Rick's greatest moments as a producer of edge- and envelope-pushing rock music. All his creative hallmarks are present: noise collapsing into nothingness, sinister-yet-subtle lyrics, and beneath it all, the big beat.

“Upon first hearing it was utterly confounding,” says Geoffrey Weiss. “But [“Chop Suey”] reveals a brutal and muscular logic that still seems really original.”

8. Beastie Boys “Fight For Your Right” (1987)

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Album: Licensed to Ill
Label: Def Jam/Columbia
Producer: Beastie Boys, Rick Rubin

You could look at “Fight For Your Right To Party” as Rick Rubin's most contrived song—with its pop-rock three power-chord riff and whiteboy rallying cry—an attempt to leverage the Beasties' white privilege for a shot at pop stardom. Or you could look at the song as a something honest, another facet of Rubin's and the Beastie's innate and diverse sensibilities, which ran the gamut from punk to pop to hip-hop and back.


 

Like the best of Rick's work, the song is stupid in the best possible way. Self-consciously stupid and stupid fresh.


 

Both viewpoints are correct.

“Fight For Your Right To Party” was the song that turned the Beasties into multi-million sellers. It was the song that turned Def Jam from a boutique label into a serious business victory for its distributor, Columbia/CBS Records. It was the song that made people in the pop world—record companies, radio programmers, MTV—really notice Rick Rubin. Without the song, history might have been very different.

It helps that the song, like the best of Rick's work, is stupid in the best possible way. Self-consciously stupid and stupid fresh. The “worst shit.” Again, here's that Rubin high-low: Satisfies those who take it at face value, entertains those who notice the nudge and the wink.

7. The Bangles “Hazy Shade of Winter” (1987)

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Album: Less Than Zero
Label: Def Jam Recordings
Producer: Rick Rubin

Rick didn't always see eye to eye with artists in the studio, especially in the early days when he held to his vision tightly and was often willing to walk away from a project if things didn't go his way.

During the recording of the Less Than Zero soundtrack, Danzig bassist Eerie Von left the studio after Rick insisted he play the bass a certain way. And the final product of another recording session for Less Than Zero left Rick feeling so alienated that he ultimately took his name off of the record as producer.


 

The final product of another recording session for Less Than Zero left Rick feeling so alienated that he ultimately took his name off of the record as producer... Rick wanted the song to rock a bit harder.


 

The idea was to have the all-girl group The Bangles remake Simon & Garfunkel's “Hazy Shade of Winter.” Rick wanted the song to rock a bit harder.

“We recorded the song and I was really happy with it,” he told Bob Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times. “We had an energetic, exciting, youthful record, a naive energy.”

But after the “tracking” was finished, and Rick heard the mixes that the group had done in his absence, the song ended up sounding a lot softer, more “processed.”

Rubin chose not to fight for his version because it meant that the song wouldn't have made it into the movie and onto the soundtrack. But when it came time to release a single, Rubin decided he didn't want credit.

Rick deserves it, despite his youthful perfectionism. Maybe “Hazy Shade Of Winter” could have sounded better, but it sounded good enough to become Rick's first bonafide hit rock record, rising to No. 2 on the pop charts.

So big, in fact, that when Rick turned his focus to Public Enemy, a incredulous Russell Simmons responded, “Why are you messing with a Black punk rock group that will never sell any records when you're making hit records with The Bangles?!”

6. Johnny Cash “Delia's Gone” (1994)

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Album: American Recordings
Label: American/Sony
Producer: Rick Rubin

“Rick is going to sign Johnny Cash.”

That was the word around the Def American Recordings offices in the waning days of 1992. It seemed, at first, to be another Rick vanity signing. We were releasing so many of his passion projects back then, like the Flipper album, records that seemed to take up a lot of creative oxygen but yielded little in the way of critical or commercial impact. Johnny Cash, like Roy Orbison, had long since washed out. The country music industry had basically left him for dead, assigning him to the antique shelf and writing him off as irrelevant. I think even John was mystified about what this hot, 20-something record producer wanted with him.

Rick, as usual, saw that things were not what they seemed.


 

A guitar strummed and we heard a voice, as familiar as that of our own father, sing: 'Delia/Oh, Delia/Delia all my life/If I hadn'ta shot poor Delia/I'da had her for my wife…' We knew Cash was gangster, but gott-dayum!


 

Rick brought in two Alesis “ADAT” machines (then the state-of-the-art for home recording, which allowed multitracking onto video cassettes), and converted his placid living room above Sunset Boulevard into a placid recording studio. Johnny Cash would come to the house, take out his guitar, and Rick would roll tape.

Over the course of a few months, Rick quietly encouraged Johnny Cash to play, and write, and trust the simplicity of the arrangements. He exorcised Cash's self-doubt and evoked a kind of creativity that the artist himself hadn't seen in decades.

But the recording process comprised only half of Rubin's cunning—the other was Rick's realization that Cash was no longer a country artist. He was now a folk musician who could be marketed as a core artist in the burgeoning genre of “Americana,” supported by the growth of “triple A” radio: Adult Album Alternative.

Thus, the rebirth of Johnny Cash was as much a marketing play as it was a musical one. And Cash's album would be the eponymous, flagship release of Rubin's rechristened record label, American Recordings.

As if that wasn't statement enough, the first bit of music we heard from this album made everything make perfect sense. A guitar strummed and we heard a voice, as familiar as that of our own father, sing: “Delia/Oh, Delia/Delia all my life/If I hadn'ta shot poor Delia/I'da had her for my wife…”

Wasn't that Rick? The toeing of the lyrical line at the fringes of violence and misogyny? The mix of heaven and hell, high and low? Wasn't it The Beasties, Dice, Public Enemy, and Slayer rolled into one? My God, we knew Cash was gangster, but gott-dayum! And who played Delia in the video? Kate Moss.

The whole project was brilliant. It was meaningful. It was fun. And it won a Grammy.

5. Johnny Cash “Hurt” (2003)

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Album: American IV: The Man Comes Around
Label: American Recordings, Universal Music Group
Producer: Rick Rubin

After Rick Rubin's groundbreaking first album with Johnny Cash, there remained more musical territory and creative concepts to explore. Rubin hit upon the idea of covers: If Cash could be appreciated by a new generation of fans—whose own music embodied many of the dark and brooding qualities of Cash's original work—then it followed that Cash might do well to interpret some of that new generation's work in his own fashion.


 

That Rubin forged such a fruitful relationship with an American legend like Cash—longer than his partnerships with the Beasties or Run-DMC or LL Cool J—showed just how far Rick had come, and how important he had become as a producer.


 

The first such remake was Cash's cover of Soundgarden's “Rusty Cage” on his second album, Unchained, which also included a cover of Beck's “Rowboat.”

But the epitome of this cover concept came on American IV: The Man Comes Around, Cash's fourth album with Rick — in a remake of Nine Inch Nails's song “Hurt,” written by Trent Reznor.

“Hurt” would become the most well-known product of Rick Rubin and Johnny Cash's decade-long partnership, in part because the song became Cash's de facto elegy when he died shortly after its release. That Rubin forged such a fruitful relationship with an American legend like Cash—longer than his partnerships with the Beasties or Run-DMC or LL Cool J—showed just how far Rick had come, and how important he had become as a producer.

4. Run-DMC “Walk This Way” (1985)

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Album: Raising Hell
Label: Profile Records
Producer: Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons

Rick Rubin's partnership with Russell Simmons yielded an immediate benefit for Rick; he got to work with Simmons' main clients, the most popular and groundbreaking rap group of the day, Run-DMC. Remember, folks, that Rubin was still a college student when Simmons enlisted him to pitch in on a few tracks for their 1985 album, King of Rock.

By the time Run-DMC got to work on their next album, Rick Rubin was crew. He had made his bones with L.L. Cool J.'s first album, Radio. And he put his creative stamp on the entirety of Raising Hell.

 


 

Angry callers flooded rock radio stations that dared play the song, which they saw as a desecration and a threat. But the racists lost.


 


 

Run and DMC say that they themselves produced the tracks that comprised the album. Rick recalled to me that he was in the studio “every day.” And those two realities aren't necessarily incongruent: Rick's production value was in his ear for arrangement as much as it is in programming a beat. But there is one song on Raising Hell that could not and would not have happened without Rick. And it is the song that sold the album and changed the world.

Aerosmith's “Walk This Way” was not only a childhood favorite of Rick's, it was also a staple of Run-DMC's early lives—albeit in a different way. Run, Dee and Jay were familiar with only the first four bars of the song, a bare drumbeat that Jay and other DJs would often loop via turntables for MCs to rap over. Rick managed to unite these two ways to savor “Walk This Way” — as a song and as a beat. He invited Steven Tyler and Joe Perry to collaborate, and they were game. It was Run and Dee who needed to be convinced.

But the session yielded one of the most iconic and successful collaborations in all of American music. Run-DMC's version of the song actually sold more copies and rose higher than the original, thanks to MTV and a brilliant, iconic video that made a huge statement about rap's power to break down white racism. Real life, of course, was stickier: angry callers flooded rock radio stations that dared play the song, which they saw as a desecration and a threat.

But the racists lost. The song triumphed, as did the album—which became the first rap record in history to be certified multiplatinum at 3 million units sold.

“Walk This Way” was Rick Rubin's very first pop hit, hitting No. 4 on the pop charts in September 1986.

3. LL Cool J “Going Back To Cali” (1988)

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Album: Less Than Zero and Walking with a Panther
Label: Def Jam
Producer: Rick Rubin, LL Cool J

In 1987, while Rick Rubin sojourned in Los Angeles, recording songs for the soundtrack to Less Than Zero, he began to lose his New York-bred disdain for the Southern California life. Sunset Boulevard was alive with nightclubs featuring new and exciting rock bands like Guns N Roses. The recording studios were amazing, the town seemed set up for making music. The rock radio stations were amazing. And he met and began dating a porn star, Melissa Melendez.


 

The man who broke hip-hop down to just the bare beat now fleshed it out with a horn section. The producer who encouraged the loudmouth now bid him hush.


 

When it came time to return to New York, he wasn't sure he wanted to go. But he wasn't sure he wanted to stay in California either. That ambivalence continued after he and Melendez came back to stay in Rick's apartment above Def Jam's offices on Elizabeth Street. And it continued into a recording session he booked with L.L. Cool J., and informed the chorus of the song that came to be called “Going Back To Cali.”

What's so striking about this song is how Rick broke with many of the conventions he himself espoused. The man who broke hip-hop down to just the bare beat now fleshed it out with a horn section. The producer who encouraged the loudmouth now bid him hush. The “worst shit” was still there — the jarring, discordant guitar chord thrown, ugly and raw, into the quiet, dueling with a lone horn. But the most jarring thing about “Going Back To Cali” was how different this record was from anything that came before it. And, frankly, from almost everything that came after it.

Oh, and the b-side—that was important, too. “Jack The Ripper” was wrathful where “Cali” was calm. L.L. Cool J's riposte to Kool Moe Dee became not only one of the best MC battle records of all time, but a staple of DJ battles, too. “Jack The Ripper” was another musical departure for Rick Rubin, in the opposite direction: Completely dependent on one repeating musical loop, in the growing fashion of sample-based hip-hop.

And just like that, with a one-two punch, Rick Rubin killed himself off, annihilating his particular brand of “beat box” hip-hop—first with a record that said there was nothing more for the beat to say, that music was the answer; and the second a symbolic handing of the baton to folks who deserted the beat box for the soul of real drums, looped.

Then he flew back to California, leaving most of his possessions behind—including his half of Def Jam—and never came back.

2. Red Hot Chili Peppers “Under the Bridge” (1992)

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Album: Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Label: Warner Bros.
Producer: Rick Rubin

“Under The Bridge”—the Red Hot Chili Peppers' biggest hit and perhaps their most well-known song—would not have been possible at all without Rick Rubin.


 

Rick began flipping through Kiedis's notebooks and found a poem the singer had written about his period of drug addiction—including a reference to his lowest point where Kiedis found himself under a bridge in downtown L.A. trying to score heroin.


 

As Rick told the story, he dropped by the home of Chili Peppers' lead vocalist Anthony Kiedis frequently during the rehearsal and pre-production period for Blood Sugar Sex Magik. During one of these visits, Rick began flipping through Kiedis's notebooks and found a poem the singer had written about his period of drug addiction—including a reference to his lowest point where Kiedis found himself under a bridge in downtown L.A. trying to score heroin—and addiction's lonely aftermath, where even his bandmates continued to get high while Kiedis tried to stay clean.

Rick pretty much goaded Kiedis into surfacing the lyrics for his bandmates to write to. Write they did. Guitarist John Frusciante's elegant guitar work proved the perfect accompaniment to Kiedis's melancholy story, and Rick's escalating, intensifying arrangement—particularly in putting the explosive refrain at the very end of the song—created something delightful and rare.

1. LL Cool J “Rock The Bells” (1986)

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Album: Radio
Label: Def Jam/Columbia
Producer: Rick Rubin, LL Cool J

The signature record from the first album that Rick Rubin ever produced, LL Cool J's “Rock The Bells” remains the ultimate representation of what Rubin brought to the music world that didn't exist before him.

Why “Rock The Bells”? Because you can name that producer from the very first jagged guitar chord. It's the subconscious memory of the first time you heard this chord that Jay-Z's “99 Problems” tries to evoke, the sound that makes us hear it and know, instantly, that Rick Rubin produced it.

That one chord is a great example of Rubin's thought form: the desire to surprise you with a sudden contradiction.


 

This DJ here? He's the new guitar god. This music here? This is the new rock and roll. And we didn't have to lighten the beat or play a guitar to do it. 'Rock The Bells' was the angry death knell of the old musical order, a call to arms from Rubin's new label, Def Jam.


 

That ugly guitar chord? What's that doing there? That record being scratched? That's not supposed to happen!

The song comprises his entire high-low production ethos. Lots of loudness punctuated by brief, stark moments of silence. Insults delivered from the mouth of a baby-faced cherub. The infantile suffused with an unwitting political message:

This DJ here? He's the new guitar god. This music here? This is the new rock and roll. And we didn't have to lighten the beat or play a fucking guitar to do it. “Rock The Bells” was the angry death knell of the old musical order, a call to arms from Rubin's new label, Def Jam. And you hated Michael and Prince all the way ever since.

It changed the world. Think not? Remember this year's Grammy Awards? LL Cool J, the 16-year-old kid discovered by Rubin, now the host of the entire show. And at the podium, accepting the award for Record of The Year? Adele, who thanked Rubin for showing her the meaning of “quality control” while Rubin's first artistic progeny looked on, smiling.

Adele, the singer, might not have made it to that stage without the rapper standing beside her. Ain't that a bitch? Rick Rubin may belong to the world now. But before he did, he belonged to hip-hop.

And this, for all y'all that don't know the time, is Rubin's finest work. A completely original musical thought.

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