Rick Rubin: What Jay-Z Did in 30 Minutes Left Me Speechless!

Rubin recalls that Jay-Z approached the beat for “99 Problems” differently from other rappers he had worked with. Instead of writing lyrics on paper, Jay asked Rubin to loop the beat and sat quietly, sometimes mumbling or humming. After roughly 20 or 30 minutes, he went into another room and delivered the first verse from memory. Across several takes, the words stayed the same while the cadence and emphasis shifted, much like a musician improvising a solo. Rubin says Jay then chose a take and returned to the same process for the next section. He describes this as an unusual skill, but does not reduce it to a technique that other artists should copy.

The conversation contrasts artists’ different ways of working. Rubin describes Eminem as someone who writes constantly because he is intensely committed to improving, while also acknowledging that some people appear more naturally creative than others. He then challenges that assumption, arguing that schooling can suppress creativity by rewarding rule-following over free thought. In his view, creativity involves risk and a willingness to let an old path, career, relationship, or way of living end. The host asks whether there is a first step for someone seeking a reset, opening a discussion that shifts from artistic practice to the choices people make in their lives. These are Rubin’s beliefs about institutions and creativity, rather than conclusions established through evidence in the interview.

Rubin describes his role broadly as participating in art and creativity—as a coach, collaborator, or partner in a film or startup. He believes creative thinking can offer alternate routes through problems and that accepted ways of working can become limitations. When asked for a principle that applies across music and business, he introduces the word “indefensible,” usually a strong negative judgment. For him, taking an idea to an extreme that cannot easily be justified may be useful in art, because reason captures only part of how decisions are made. He says he also relies on intuition and what he experiences as guidance from a creative force he calls God. The host asks whether the art he makes is literally an offering; Rubin says yes, while emphasizing that the work is a gift rather than a transaction with a customer.

Rubin uses a meme about “vibe coding” to illustrate how he responds to an unexpected invitation. A photograph of him wearing headphones became associated online with the term, although he says it had nothing to do with him. Friends sent it repeatedly, and instead of ignoring the coincidence, he wrote a joke post: “Tools will come, tools will go, only the vibe coder remains.” The post received far more attention than his typical tweets, prompting him to explore the idea further and eventually set aside other work to write a book about it. He describes this as following an intuitive signal he could not explain. The anecdote presents his personal creative process; it does not establish that every coincidence carries meaning or that artists should abandon other obligations when one appears.

Rubin says artists could make a conventional hit and pay their mortgages, but that is not the game he wants to play. He sees investment and commerce as legitimate pursuits, yet says his own work is about art and taking risks. He claims that for forty years he has tried to make the work he himself loves and to support artists in making theirs, and believes some of those choices helped produce revolutionary music. His account values the possibility that art can influence other artists and make the world more interesting, even when commercial outcomes are uncertain.

Rubin describes meeting Jay-Z while the rapper was planning what he expected to be his final album, The Black Album. Jay invited ten of his favourite producers to make one track each. Rubin says he and his collaborators created the beat for “99 Problems,” while Jay wrote and performed the lyrics. The idea for the hook came from Chris Rock, who suggested that “99 problems” did not need to be about women; Rubin then encouraged Jay to make the song about problems more broadly. The story shows a collaborative route from a phrase to a track, rather than presenting the record as a solitary act of inspiration.

When Rubin submitted “99 Problems” to Def Jam, the label’s president liked it as an album track but did not think it could be a single because it sounded unlike radio music. Rubin recalls this as conventional thinking: make songs resemble what is already on the radio. He says the record later had a major impact once it was played on air. He gives a second example from System of a Down: a leading alternative-rock station initially said it would never play the band because the music sounded too unusual, but about a year later one of its songs became the station’s number-one, most-requested track. Rubin says the band later sold out two nights at an 80,000-seat Paris stadium. These outcomes illustrate that early rejection can be wrong, but they do not establish a reliable formula that unconventional work will eventually succeed.

Asked how people can learn what they love, Rubin recommends meditation. He says he learned Transcendental Meditation at 14, stopped during college, and resumed after moving to California. Returning to it made him realize how deeply it had shaped his sense of self and his view of the world. He compares each session to making a deposit that accumulates over time and describes the practice as a silent mantra meditation taught by a teacher. He says he used to meditate in the morning and before dinner, sometimes with musicians before recording sessions. These details explain his own practice; they are not an instruction for readers to adopt a specific religious or meditation technique.

Rubin says he recognized the value of meditation most clearly when he stopped and later returned to it. He believes it deepened creativity and understanding. The host connects this with his fiancée’s daily breathing practice and asks why he has not tried it for a month. Rubin admits he has no good answer, then distinguishes external cues from internal ones: what lights you up, and what you are genuinely excited to share with a friend? The host contrasts that with business methods that work backward from customers’ needs. Rubin agrees that customer problems matter, but emphasizes personal intuition and openness to signals that are not purely numerical. The exchange captures a tension between customer-led analysis and the creator’s internal compass rather than resolving it in favour of only one.

The host cites Amazon’s practice of working backward from the customer and Jeff Bezos’s focus on needs unlikely to change, such as wanting faster delivery. Rubin responds that Amazon was once considered a poor investment because its results did not yet work, but the company continued to back its beliefs and later changed the world. He treats that as another example of doubling down despite unfavourable metrics. He then argues that people differ in their ability to hear an internal creative voice, and that school can suppress creativity by rewarding repetition and rule-following. This is Rubin’s broad critique of institutions; the conversation does not examine the many different roles of education or the evidence behind his claims.