Rick Rubin

Rick Rubin was born in 1963 on Long Island, New York. While still a student at New York University he co-founded Def Jam Recordings with Russell Simmons in 1984. The early catalog he produced, including LL Cool J's "Radio" (1985), the Beastie Boys' "Licensed to Ill" (1986) and Run-DMC's "Walk This Way" collaboration with Aerosmith (1986), helped carry hip-hop from New York clubs into the mainstream. In the same year he produced Slayer's "Reign in Blood," an early sign that he would ignore genre boundaries entirely.

After leaving Def Jam he founded Def American, later renamed American Recordings. His range widened to rock, metal, pop and country. He produced the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" (1991). With Johnny Cash's "American Recordings" (1994) and the series that followed, he reframed a veteran artist's late career around little more than a voice and an acoustic guitar. He later worked with artists as different as Jay-Z, Adele and Kanye West. He served as co-president of Columbia Records from 2007 and won the Grammy Award for Producer of the Year. Much of his work has been done at Shangri-La, his studio in Malibu.

Rubin has said openly that he has little technical skill as a musician or engineer. He describes his contribution as taste, attention and confidence in his own reactions. In 2023 he published "The Creative Act: A Way of Being," a book of short meditative chapters that turns decades of studio practice into principles for anyone who makes things, inside or outside the arts. He also co-hosts the conversation podcast "Broken Record" with Malcolm Gladwell and others.