Rick Rubin
American music producer (born 1963)
Frederick Jay "Rick" Rubin (, ROO-bin; born March 10, 1963) is an American record producer. He is a co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, founder of American Recordings, and former co-president of Columbia Records.
Rubin helped popularize hip-hop by producing records for pioneering acts such as LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, Public Enemy and Geto Boys. He has also produced hit records for acts from a variety of other genres such as pop, heavy metal, hard rock, nu metal and country. His signature production style is stripped-down to the essentials, eschewing excessive reverb and sonic layering. He has been criticized for contributing to the loudness war by overusing compression and limiting, and mastering his tracks at very high levels.
In 2007, Rubin was called "the most important producer of the last 20 years" by MTV and was named on Time's 2007 list of the "100 Most Influential People in the World". In 2026, Rubin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Early life
Frederick Jay Rubin was born in Long Beach, New York, on March 10, 1963, the son of housewife Linda and shoe wholesaler Michael Rubin. He grew up in Lido Beach.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Rick Rubin” as american music producer (born 1963). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q587361. VIAF identifies the subject as 100245607. The Library of Congress control number is n93075739. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1963, 2007 and 2026.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rick Rubin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.