Rick Rubin is on a roll. In the past month, both the new Black Sabbath record and Yeezus sat at the top of the charts the day they dropped. He was behind the boards on both, adding more feathers to his cap. At this point, the dude’s dome looks like a peacock.
Unfortunately, his wild-man face is becoming shorthand for cool. When people think he’s involved in a project, the cachet grows like Cali chron, even when he hasn’t touched a track.
His recent inclusion in Jay Z’s Samsung schlockfest is Exhibit A. To be fair, Rick isn’t exactly the star of the show—he takes a nap, not exactly maximizing his screen time. Still, his contributions to Magna Carta Holy Grail are minimal at best.
In a phone call with XXL, Rick said, “The point of me being in the commercials was that he was filming a documentary and he asked me—I imagine he’s just comfortable talking to me—to come listen to the songs with him and just talk about the songs. Just listen to it and talk about it, and that’s what we did. It was fun.”
Potholes In My Blog had a slightly different take. They called bullshit:
“Despite Rick Rubin’s presence in nearly all the commercials for Jay-Z‘s Magna Carta Holy Grail, the awesomely bearded living legend didn’t actually do anything on the album. Let me repeat that: Rick Rubin didn’t do anything on Hov’s new record.”
In other words, Jay paid him to radiate his unique brand of mystical hipness. Hov wanted a piece of the Zen master, and if he couldn’t get any production, he would settle for a cameo.
Rick was the missing link, the one guy Jay needed to round out the roster of the Dream Team.
Last week, Marty said “it’s time for someone to punch Jay in the camel face.” This doesn’t help his image.
Jay should get a job at the MoMA. He’s curating cool—that’s all he has left. He’s a joke.
