March 10: Rick Rubin and Def Jam

Frederick Jay “Rick” Rubin, named by Time magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2007 because of his role as co-founder of Def Jam Records, as a brilliant music producer, and as a key popularizer of hip hop music, was born in Long Beach, New York on this date in 1963. Among the musicians Rubin has worked with are LL Cool J, Run-D.M.C., Public Enemy, Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, Black Sabbath, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine, Neil Diamond, Mick Jagger, Slayer, and many others on a very diverse arc of musical genres. Now a co-president of Columbia Records, Rubin founded Def Jam while he was a high school student and began a partnership with Russell Simmons to get the company off the ground while Rubin was still a college student at NYU. In 1993, after the word “def” (rhythmic, danceable) appeared in a standardized dictionary, Rubin held a public funeral for the word, complete with coffin and gravesite.

“When advertisers and the fashion world co-opted the image of hippies, a group of the original hippies in San Francisco literally buried the image of the hippie. When ‘def’ went from street lingo to mainstream, it defeated its purpose.” —Rick Rubin