Rick Rubin Annotates Kanye West, Beastie Boys, Johnny Cash Songs on Genius

Genius just got a new genius: Rick Rubin. The producer has annotated several entries for songs he worked on, including stuff by Kanye West, Johnny Cash, Beastie Boys, Jay Z, Slayer, LL Cool J, the Dixie Chicks, and more. He also writes his opinions on tracks he didn’t work on, including stuff by D’Angelo, Beck, Vampire Weekend, Ghostface Killah, James Blake, and more. Read all of his annotations here, and check out a few highlights below.

He tells the story about finishing Kanye’s new single “Only One”:

I was in St. Barths two days before the single came out. Kanye said, “I’m thinking about putting out ‘Only One’ tomorrow at midnight.” I said, “Should we mix it?” He was like, “It hasn’t really changed — it’s pretty much what it was.” I hadn’t heard it in almost two months, so I asked him to send it to me, and he did. And I said, “I think this can sound better than it does.” We never really finished it.

So we called all the engineers — and I’m trying to get all this to happen all remotely — and we got maybe three different engineers. This is the day before New Year’s Eve, and we’re all finding studio time, getting the files. Then they all start sending me mixes. I thought one was better than the others, and Kanye agreed. One guy mastered it, because it was due, and they turned it in. I had another guy master it, and it was better, but it was already too late. I think it switched the following morning. It was in real time! Like as soon as it was better, we had to switch it.

That’s how it works in Kanye world. It used to really give me anxiety, but now I just know that’s what it is. That’s how he likes to work.

He writes a lot about Jay Z’s “99 Problems”. On the ad-lib, “You crazy for this one, Rick”:

When we were finished, when we were putting it together, I was taking that ad-lib out, and he was like “No, no. That stays in.” I was like, “Really?” I come from an era of hip hop where we didn’t do shoutouts. A pre-shoutout era.

In the entry for “Hurt”, he wrote about working with Johnny Cash:

What I came to realize about that whole Johnny Cash experience was that he was a great storyteller. The song didn’t matter—all that mattered were the words. All that mattered was if the character of Johnny Cash—the mythical Johnny Cash, the man in black—would say those words. If that’s what you would want to hear him talking about, then that would be a good song to do.

So it was never about like melody, it was just about if the lyrics were right.

On Vampire Weekend:

An album gets me really excited is Modern Vampires of the City. I love it. I love it. What I like about it is that it sounds completely modern and it sounds completely traditional. It could be a Paul Simon record, but it sounds really modern. And no one else who’s doing modern has that much tradition in it. And that combination really speaks to me.

Read all of his annotations here.

Here’s the video for “Hurt”:

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