POLL: Best Rick Rubin Production

I voted for Reign In Blood, but now that I think about it I like Raising Hell a lot more.

tough call between Licensed To Ill and Chef Aid.

we did a non-poll version of this thread last year, btw: Best Album produced by Rick Rubin

raising hell, duh

was gonna vote for radio til i saw the version of i need a beat on that was prod by jazzy j so now its a tie between raising hell & licensed to ill

ethan otm

anybody ever heard hte original rock the bells over the peter piper beat?? o_o

did Rubin produce Raising Hell in what became the traditionally understood sense for a hip hop record, or did JMJ do all the beats/instrumentation?

xpost re rock the bells w/ peter piper beats
no! is that a real thing?

btw tougher than leather is actually pretty fucking great too. i should get those new run dmc reissues with the bonus tracks.

ethan otm indeed. went with LTI myself.

in the liner notes it credits every song to rick rubin & russell simmmons

lti

I'm sure I'll end up voting for Raising Hell or Reign In Blood, but Ballbreaker is pretty goddamn underrated.

i cant remember the exact story on rock the bells but essentially it was supposed to be ll on the peter piper take me to the mardi gras break which is why it was called 'rock the bells' but then run stole it for the run dmc joint

I wanna hear that Masters Of Reality album

i vote for andy wallace.

I was just listening to Tougher Than Leather the other day - an unfairly maligned album (at least at the time)

the question isn't what's the best album, it's what's the best production. accurately capturing 100-mile-an-hour speed metal is trickier than you'd think, there's such a potential for the sound to turn into an undifferentiated wall of mush. especially considering there weren't a lot of blueprints for that style at the time. fuck, it *is* the blueprint.

to my ears raising hell was a refinement of hip hop style, but reign in blood blew a hole in the wall of metal and added a new wing.

ps the geto boys don't have an album called same

who the hell am I arguing with? I'm voting for the dixie chicks.

wheres t la rock??

i always vote for slayer

hey scott are you still on mae street? believe it or not I have that spacemen 3 cassette in an addressed envelope on the front seat of my car. the one I said I'd send to you like 8 months ago or something. my intentions are good but my movements are slow.

yeah, that's wikipedia list, sorry. i think it's referring to the geto boys self-titled record, but I don't think he really produced that. remixed it maybe, but isn't that more or less a reissue of their independent record..

the masters of reality record was pretty good, as far as I remember.

can't believe i never heard that rock the bells story before, it sounds true... i'd love to hear that

you know you can fix the wikipedia list, right?

yeah, i just didn't notice the mistake wise guy

shame the Private Parts soundtrack isn't on that list or I'd vote for it for laffs

re geto boys, yeah he remixed a bunch of tracks from grip it! on that other level but I think he also produced some of the new tracks like "fuck 'em" and "city under seige". I'm in the minority but I prefer the rubin produced one. the bass is so much smoother.

Pretty prolific motherfucker. Don't know if we're voting for best Rubin production job or best album he's produced (and from that article it doesn't look like he's much of a "producer" in the traditional sense) but I'll go with South of Heaven.

omg, how awesome is this review of the geto boys from amazon

A typical rap album, which is mostly bad, occasionally good..., July 2, 2007
By Grigory's Girl "Grigory's Girl" (NYC) - See all my reviews

There are 3 genres of music I really hate with a passion, and that is punk, rap, and indie rock. Rap generally consists of a pontificating, sanctimonious black man (and occasinoally a white one) talkin' about how rap is music from the streets. At first, it was. Rap came out of Compton/South Central L.A. in the 80's in protest of the poverty and crime there. But then it turned into music in which we hear how big rappers' c**ks are, how much money they got, how many ho's they got, how much they can swear, and how nobody better mess with them. Rarely do I hear rap get truly political. The Geto Boys epitomize rap here. They have several examples of songs that I talked about. They have the song where they swear a lot and tell people not to mess with them (F**k 'em, with lyrics by an uncredited Oliver Stone, who wrote the screenplay for Scarface, and who The Geto Boys use quite liberally throughout the song), they have the song about how many ho's they have (Gangster of Love, which samples Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd), a song where they fantasise about killing (Mind of a Lunatic), and one real political song (City Under Seige). Now, sometimes when you hear rap stuff at first, it gives an awesome visceral kick, and this album does that. Gangster of Love is reminiscent of 2 Live Crew, except much more brutally funny (or misogynistic, depending on your gender or outlook on life). But the visceral kick rapidly fades, and you're left with a boring, pointless, beat heavy, profanity contest that really has little or no art in it. The Geto Boys played the "censorship" card really well (acting like their music was being censored because of the man and the "politics" of the man), where in all likelihood it was kept off the radio because of the barrage of profanity and generally in your face attitude of The Geto Boys. So, it's funny and visceral the first time, but the high doesn't last. The album never resonates beyond the first few listens, like most rap albums I've had.

yes, I DO want to see all your reviews

she has a bright future at the ministry of disinformation

DICE, dudes.

less than zero soundtrack is missing from the list too - slayer doing in a gadda da vida, that danzig ballad & going back to cali

Blood Sugar Sex Magik ... that album just sounds incredible ... plus, it amounts to an amalgamation of Rubin's preferred styles ... loud, lean and weird.

First thought was to vote for 'South of Heaven' because he convinced Slayer do go for that different sound ... but then I remembered all the misty-eyed Vanity Fair and other mag articles about his approach/friendship with Johnny Cash - so 'American Recordings' gets the nod ... (as much as I've been digging 'Christ Illusion' - I don't think he had much to do with it)...

Didn't a big band just shit-can him mid-recording? Metallica maybe?

i vote for andy wallace.

-- scott seward, Wednesday, September 5, 2007 1:33 PM

HA! Seriously...Rubin with his feet up while Wallace does the legwork. Good call.

Reign in Blood, although Seasons in the Abyss has similarly excellent engineering by Wallace.

Control + F "Melanie C"

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i was torn between DMC, the first & second Danzig, and Licensed to Ill...

actually that Trouble record up there is pretty good. I bet i'd like masters of reality too.

The War of Art - American Head Charge

fuck i totally forgot about these dudes..local mpls industrial metal guys....one OD'd or something...

Goin' Back To Cali

Didn't a big band just shit-can him mid-recording? Metallica maybe?

-- Bill Magill, Wednesday, 5 September 2007 19:04 (Yesterday) Link

Rockers VELVET REVOLVER dumped producer RICK RUBIN after becoming bored of his slow work process. The supergroup were delighted when the famed producer came on board with them - but came to realise they were low on his list of priorities. Guitarist Slash says, "I've known Rick for a long time and I don't want to disrespect him, but his was of working was too slow. Rick had about four different projects going at the same time - one minute it's U2, then Metallica, then Linkin Park - and he kept telling us to write songs. We're pretty diligent, we have a lot of integrity when it comes to songwriting. "After a few months of working with Rick we started getting a little disinterested. At some point there was a business glitch and that raised a red flag and we said: 'Y'know, there's other producers out there...'"

Granted, if I was working with Velvet Revolver I'd probably tell them their songs suck and they need to write better ones, too, but it's kind of nice to see that at least one band called Rubin on his bullshit methods and fired him.

I wanna hear that Masters Of Reality album

yes, yes you do

From the allmusic review of the first Masters of Reality album:

"Rubin is the type of producer who knows how to step aside when appropriate and let artists be themselves. Under his direction, the material sounds well produced, but never over-produced."

He's produced some of my favorite albums, but it doesn't seem like he does a goddamn thing.

the fact remains that subsequent masters of reality albums don't come close to that first one

I'm sure I'll end up voting for Raising Hell or Reign In Blood, but Ballbreaker is pretty goddamn underrated.

-- Sara Sara Sara

Replace Ballbreaker with Manic Frustration and you've got a OTM. So much crunch, it almost tempts me to use the word "rawk" (a term I despise utterly).

OTOH, South Of Heaven does indeed improve upon RIB. And also there's the Licensed To Ill factor...

yeah, i dug out that first Masters Of Reality record last night and it holds up pretty good. Never heard any of the later stuff.

I'd kind of forgotten about all those late-80's/early 90's boogie bands, like Masters Of Reality, The Four Horsemen, Raging Slab. They were pretty fun. What was that metal band that Brian Baker from Minor Threat was in around that time? They were kind of like that too.

google says: Junkyard. I remember straight-edge kids at school being so scandalized by Baker's shenanigans with them and the Meatmen. Heh.

the second masters of reality album has ginger baker on it! it's got a few good songs but there's a lot of misses, too

Four Horsemen's Noboday Said It Was Easy. Review from daily newspaper the year it was released. The singer passed away awhile ago.

"he thinks up cool titles for songs like "Rockin' Is My Business (And Business is Good)" and "I'm a Wanted Man" and "I Need A Thrill In the Morning to Get Me Up" and yells them about 90 times or until the band is done playing, whichever comes first" = nail on the fucking head! nice one.

He keeps the record from sounding like it would if Jeff Lynne or Dave Stewart or Glenn Ballard were behind the board.

funny that there's so little discussion of the Johnny Cash American records here, they seem like Rick's big statement/labour of love/marketing genius of the past decade or so... probably feel a bit played out to most now, given the Cash-in since his death but still some great stuff on those to my ears, anyway. He hasn't been able to pull off the same revivals with Donovan or Neil Diamond, though...

gee i wonder why

not dying enough?
they're not as mythic as cash but those dudes are great songwriters

Run-DMC claim to have actually produced most of Raising Hell themselves.

Which means Slayer is the obv. choice.

wow, Rick Rubin really sucks

I loved Raging Slab and Junkyard

remember when Raging Slab opened for everybody for two years? I feel like I saw them a bunch of times.

Def American had Raging Slab in record contract hell for a number of years after the release of Sing Brother Sing, which the label was definitely not fond of. When they hit LA for a gig at the Viper Room in support of it, the label withdrew their support. Rubin made them wait out their contract for a few years and then they went to an indie. The band had turned in at least one album -- perhaps two -- that DA refused to release somewhere between the release of the second and third.

ah - maybe that explains all the touring, keeping alive w/o new records

Rubin worked on the new one from Dan Wilson (Semisonic, Dixie Chicks), and it sounds pretty good, but again, yeah, wondering what the role of "producer" means in his case.

it means "make sure you have an engineer who knows what he's doing".

actually, maybe Rubin is the Anti-Albini.

good call!

i heard '12 songs' all the way through once and not a single thing stuck with me. i dunno how that's possible, considering it's neil diamond. i think they both got caught up in this mythic american troubadour yearning bs and none of the songs have anything grabby in them at all.

yeah, from what i heard about it it sounded like they tried to keep it simple and spare - but neil diamond getting back to his roots should sound like his bang records stuff. you want grabby, he was captain hooks back then!

I voted for 12 Songs. "Mary" and "Hell Yeah" are so good on the ears. I'd vote for anything Rubin does that uses the lowest octave on the piano.

i really like the sound on the 1st mars volta record

Way too many to choose from although the fact that 80-90 per cent of them suck helps a great deal. Voted "Wildflowers".

There are clearly no raveheads here.

Say what you want about ilxor Saul Williams but I like the sound on that record. The beats + live drums + strings + guitars blend really well.

I'll throw a pity vote to Tom Petty for Wildflowers.

Lots of terrible stuff listed.

why are our polls never listed by artist

South Of Heaven it is.

Had to go with De-Loused

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

ugh

The Black Album - Jay-Z ("99 Problems") 5

come on now

i like 99 problems but nfw is it better than the entirety of 'radio'