Rick Rubin is Getting Back Into Hip-Hop

While Rick Rubin looks "to' up from da flo' up" (tore up from the floor up= dishelved appearance), he is one BAD ASS producer and music mentor. The Dixie Chicks album he work on (Long Time Gone), is one of my top 3 best albums of ALL TIME.


From Pitchfork:

Back in the 80s, Rick Rubin co-founded Def Jam Records and produced an absurd number of monster jams for the likes of LL Cool J and Run-DMC. Ever since he left Def Jam, though, Rubin's been busy racking up Dixie Chicks Grammys and becoming the music industry's favorite beardo swami figure, and he hasn't had much time to fuck with rap. In recent years, though, Rubin's occasional toe-dips into beatmaking have been infrequent but devastating: Jay-Z's deathless "99 Problems", for one, or Lil Jon's Slayer-sample pileup "Stop Fuckin' Wit Me". (I could make a Lordz of Brooklyn or Saul Williams joke here, but those records were actually sort of awesome, so fuck it.)

Further proving the occasional sharpness of his instincts, Rubin signed masterful coke-rap free agents Clipse to Columbia in 2007. And last summer, we reported that Rubin and Clipse would be working together on music for Clipse's Columbia debut. But these kinds of things are often rumored and rarely actually take place. So we were stoked when, yesterday, EW.com revealed a few more details of the Clipse/Rubin collabo. The Re-Up Gang blog also posted some awesome photos.

According to EW, they've already finished one song together, and they plan to do one or two more. We already know from their two classic Neptunes-produced albums that Clipse know how to handle themselves over icy, minimal beats. Rubin usually traffics in punchy, metallic, cluttered thuds, so this will be a stretch. But all the people involved know exactly what they're doing, so I'm confident.

Til the Casket Drops, the third Clipse album, is due for release sometime this summer. Hopefully they won't experience any of the same release-date delays that plagued Hell Hath No Fury. EW reports that the first single, "Kinda Like a Big Deal", will be out on March 9. It features Kanye West, and DJ Khalil, who did the beat for 50 Cent's pretty good "I Still Kill", produced it.

The last time I wrote something about Clipse for Pitchfork, the brothers Thornton weren't too happy. So I should point out right here that this Rubin collaboration is a really good idea. It gets way higher than a 7.6. Like 8.2 at least.