“Unbelievable”: Rick Rubin’s pick for the most obsessive musician ever
Every iconic artist doesn’t get to the top of the food chain by being merely good. It takes a lot for them to get someone in front of those stadium crowds, and that means that they have to eat, sleep and breathe their music until they feel it’s ready for primetime. But for someone who has worked with as many musical technicians as Rick Rubin has, he could still be shellshocked when someone was able to be laser-focused from the minute they walked into the studio until they walked out.
Then again, Rubin wasn’t always into music production simply to make the most perfect songs ever made. He had come from the punk rock tradition, so making something a little bit messy wasn’t a taboo concept for him. Everything had to come from an emotional place first, and even if it had a few blemishes, it would have worked as long as you could hear the person at the centre of the song.
That’s not exclusive to one genre, either. That kind of emotional connection is the emotional throughline that connects everything from Public Enemy’s ‘Bring the Noise’ to Tom Petty’s ‘Wildflowers’ to Red Hot Chili Peppers’ ‘Under the Bridge’. None of them sound like each other, but every time they come on, you’re getting to hear someone’s life experience in a few minutes rather than a typical pop song.
When Rubin started, though, he was always relying on the groove to hit him before anything else. Being at the forefront of all forms of hip-hop culture, Rubin wanted to be a producer who spoke for the fans, always listening for what made the crowds bounce rather than getting every line perfectly right. And after working magic for people like Run-DMC and Beastie Boys, Rubin managed to see the brilliance of Eminem in action.
Although the Beasties had shown what could happen when rap was combined with hip-hop, Eminem was another force entirely. For all of the dangerous rappers who came out of the 1990s, the vulgarity in Eminem’s music had the perfect amount of terror, tastelessness, and charm for him to become any kid’s favourite rapper. But what struck Rubin more than anything was Em’s knowledge of music history and his drive to create something that would stand the test of time.
“[Eminem’s] a real, unbelievable student of hip-hop. He’s maybe the most obsessive artist I’ve ever worked with”.
Rick Rubin
Compared to every artist before him, Rubin felt that no one was more dialled in when working than ‘Slim Shady’ when working on tracks like ‘Berzerk’, saying, “He’s a real, unbelievable student of hip-hop. He’s maybe the most obsessive artist I’ve ever worked with in terms of someone who just full-time is writing rhymes. It’s what he does.”
Then again, that obsessiveness can be somewhat of a crutch as well. There are plenty of great moments on albums like The Eminem Show where he combines every style of music that he wanted to, but his intolerance for someone leaking material from Encore is the main reason that fans had to suffer through songs like ‘Big Weenie’ or hear a spiteful version of him talking about gerbils nibbling on his ass in ‘FACK’.
But being that dialled in to working is a small price to pay for being at the top of the music world. Eminem may have had a complicated relationship with fame, but every controversy he found himself in felt like a by-product of him making some of the most technical records he could.
