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Rick Rubin, Legendary Producer — Timeless Methods for Unlocking Creativity, Secrets Hidden in Plain Sight, The Future with AI, Helpful Distractions, Working with Strong Personalities, Breaking Out of “The Sameness,” and More (#649)

Rick Rubin, Legendary Producer — Timeless Methods for Unlocking Creativity, Secrets Hidden in Plain Sight, The Future with AI, Helpful Distractions, Working with Strong Personalities, Breaking Out of “The Sameness,” and More (#649)

January 31, 2023
in Success

“Look for what you notice but no one else sees.”
— Rick Rubin

Rick Rubin (@RickRubin) is a nine-time GRAMMY-winning producer, one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, and the most successful producer in any genre, equal to Rolling Stone. He has collaborated with artists from Tom Petty to Adele, Johnny Cash to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys to Slayer, Kanye West to the Strokes, and System of a Down to Jay-Z. You can find my 2015 interview with Rick at tim.blog/RickRubin.

His new typesetting is THE CREATIVE ACT: A Way of Being.

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Brought to you by Wealthfront high-yield savings account, Peloton Row premium rower for an efficient workout, and You Need A Budget cult-favorite money management app.

The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

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#649: Rick Rubin, Legendary Producer — Timeless Methods for Unlocking Creativity, Secrets Hidden in Plain Sight, The Future with AI, Helpful Distractions, Working with Strong Personalities, Breaking Out of “The Sameness,” and More

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Want to hear Rick Rubin’s previous interview on this podcast? Have a listen to our conversation (from the inside of a sauna!), during which we discussed how Rick lost 145 pounds, rebuilding the quotidian rhythm, music discovery versus manufacturing, how to tideway music from a place of appreciation, genre-hopping, sauna/ice suffuse combination, and much more.

#76: Rick Rubin on Cultivating World-Class Artists (Jay Z, Johnny Cash, etc.), Losing 100 Pounds, and Breaking Down The Complex

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

Connect with Rick Rubin:

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SHOW NOTES

[00:00] Start
[06:28] Why Rick wrote The Creative Act.
[09:24] The Tao of Rick Rubin.
[12:16] Making the creative toolbox multi-purposeful.
[15:00] Collaborations: ensuring the weightier ideas prevail over egos.
[19:50] Creative revisions are experiments, not guaranteed improvements.
[26:44] Knowing when to be specified by or to deviate from an established genre.
[33:07] Why Rick resisted translating to make his first typesetting an autobiography.
[37:10] Even a solo project is a collaboration.
[38:07] Noticing what nobody else sees.
[40:24] Stuff in the wonderful state “which makes art inevitable.”
[42:22] Craftsperson vs. artist.
[44:29] Good lark vs. bad distraction.
[46:40] Breaking out of sameness.
[49:24] Filtering out non-constructive feedback.
[51:39] Does strained intelligence deserve a role in the creative process?
[55:36] What happens when new music catches Rick’s ear?
[56:54] How to be the weightier music producer possible.
[1:00:17] Artists who seem to weightier waterworks wonder from the mundane.
[1:04:12] Managing massive inspirational intake.
[1:05:24] New movies on Rick’s radar.
[1:06:23] Tips for artists who want to endure the ages.
[1:12:06] Pacing the typesetting — as the writer and the reader.
[1:15:39] Parting thoughts.

MORE RICK RUBIN QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“That’s the way I like to work. I go in with a veiling weighing that something good will happen and until it’s proven impossible, I will protract banging my throne versus the wall.”
— Rick Rubin

“In most collaborative projects … the way that I’ve noticed it working is that there’ll be many ideas, and there’ll be a wrestle of wills to see which idea wins. It’s not necessarily based in which idea is best—it’s increasingly of an ego mismatch battle. And then someone who’s either willing to fight increasingly or is increasingly insensitive is worldly-wise to push their way through, and that becomes a direction. And from my experience, those are not how the weightier decisions are made.”
— Rick Rubin

“Always refer when to the thing that you’re revising. I would never assume, considering you put increasingly time into something, it’s getting better.”
— Rick Rubin

“Look for what you notice but no one else sees.”
— Rick Rubin

“What makes an versifier unconfined happens not in the making. It happens in the way of stuff in the world, the way of experiencing the world, the way of noticing the thing that someone else doesn’t notice. The way of seeing what’s trappy when everyone else sees the mundane and stuff worldly-wise to represent that when in a way that other people get a glimpse of what we saw that they didn’t notice.”
— Rick Rubin

“The craftsperson is making the thing and making them all the same and making them all match or making the one that somebody ordered. … The versifier is making the thing that you didn’t know you want, the thing that you didn’t know that you couldn’t live without, the thing that you didn’t know was possible.”
— Rick Rubin

“We get to walk virtually in awe all day and have our vapor taken away, and then we get to portray that in something where someone else hopefully could have that same sense of awe from something we made.”
— Rick Rubin

“The reason there are so many musical artists and the reason I have thousands of albums of artists and thousands of artists that I follow that I love isn’t considering they’re all the weightier one. They all do something really good particular to them.”
— Rick Rubin