For all intents and purposes, Rick Rubin, co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, founder of American Recordings and former co-president of Columbia Records has been extremely successful in the music industry.
He is responsible for helping to launch the careers of LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, Public Enemy and more. His resume ranges from metal to country and he has nine Grammys to his name, including Album of the Year with the Chicks in 2007 and Adele in 2012.
And yet, unlike the vast majority of producers out there, he has close to zero actual musical ability. In a 2023 interview with 60 Minutes, Rubin spoke openly about “barely” being able to play any instruments and not knowing how to work a soundboard, but still finding his place in the recording process.
“I have no technical ability. And I know nothing about music,” he said. “I know what I like and what I don’t like. And I’m decisive about what I like and what I don’t like.
So what does Rubin do then? What is he being paid for?
“The confidence that I have in my taste and my ability to express what I feel has proven helpful for artists,” he said.
Sometimes, this is exactly the sort of person a rock band needs in the studio, someone outside the group itself to definitively point the work in one direction or another. And this is how Rubin has wound up working on so many hit songs and albums.
In the below gallery, we’ve listed 32 albums Rubin has been a part of, all of which landed in the Top 10.
32 Hit Albums Produced by Rick Rubin
All of these went into the Top 10 on the ‘Billboard’ 200.
Gallery Credit: Allison Rapp
