Joe Rogan Experience #1881 - Rick Rubin

Rick Rubin tells Joe Rogan how he stumbled into producing hip-hop as an NYU student documenting the raw sound of downtown clubs, and how records like It's Yours and Walk This Way were efforts to prove rap was real music. He argues all great art comes from being true to your own taste rather than imitating what's already successful, drawing parallels between music, stand-up comedy, and Andrew Dice Clay's career. He shares his creative process working with Jay-Z, the Chili Peppers, and System of a Down, and explains how his book The Creative Act became a guide to a creative way of being. Rubin recounts a near-death house fire whose only silver lining was relief that the book was finished, his 22 years of veganism that left him at 320 pounds, and the high-protein diet, cold plunges, and training with Laird Hamilton that transformed him. The conversation closes on his surprising obsession: watching 11 hours of pro wrestling a week and once funding his own real-wrestling league.

• Rubin's century-old Texas house burned to the ground; he went back to sleep after his wife screamed fire, then nearly died crawling through black smoke before neighbors got him out.
  02:06:25
• As he was losing consciousness in the fire, his main thought was relief that his book was done and his information would live on.
  02:06:56
• Days before the fire Rubin did Lex Fridman's podcast and was unexpectedly asked if he feared death; the clip dropped right after the fire happened.
  02:10:35
• After 22 years as a vegan Rubin ballooned to 318-320 pounds, then lost 130 pounds in 14 months on a high-protein, low-carb diet.
  02:16:15
• In the 1990s Rubin funded his own real pro-wrestling league, Smoky Mountain Wrestling, with Jim Cornette because mainstream wrestling had gone soft for kids.
  02:54:18
• Rubin describes Jay-Z recording 99 Problems with no paper, humming for 20 minutes then delivering a complex verse entirely from his head.
  01:12:29
• Walk This Way with Run-DMC and Aerosmith was conceived to prove hip-hop was music, and it both broke Run-DMC mainstream and revived Aerosmith's stalled career.
  00:13:45

• A record-label executive courting early Def Jam told them, 'after all it's not music' — hip-hop wasn't even recognized as music at the time.
  00:13:14
• Radio stations initially played Public Enemy's instrumentals without Chuck D's vocals because he didn't sound like other MCs.
  00:25:14
• Anthony Kiedis writes lyrics by singing nonsense words over music, then assembling the good-sounding phrases like a puzzle.
  01:15:37
• The high-point bridge lyric in System of a Down's Chop Suey came from randomly opening a book and using the first phrase the singer saw.
  01:53:45
• Rubin couldn't do a single push-up when he met Laird Hamilton, who broke the movement into pieces until Rubin could do 100 consecutive.
  02:23:28
• During lockdown in Hawaii, Rubin worked up to 30-minute cold plunges at 39 degrees before even getting in the sauna.
  02:25:03
• Rubin met Andrew Dice Clay at Greenblatt's deli right after a Laugh Factory set and they started making comedy records together.
  00:46:14
• Joe Rogan got pulled into comedy after a coworker reenacted a Sam Kinison necrophilia bit in a gym parking lot.
  00:41:30
• Rubin recorded Blood Sugar Sex Magik in a rented mansion and a Strokes album outdoors atop a Costa Rican mountain to spark new creative energy.
  01:36:30
• Ric Flair was genuinely terrified the first time the figure-four leglock was applied to him because he believed it was as deadly as announcers claimed.
  02:44:25

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