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

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1:00me to scale my business as somebody that quite frankly has never loved finances that much. Jay Z wrote it in a way that no one else wrote all the other rappers that I worked with spent a lot of time writing lyrics and I never saw Jay write lyrics and when I played him the beat for 99 problems he said okay just keep playing it over and over again and he sat in the back of the room. You could hear a mumbling or humming after 20 or 30 minutes he's like okay I got it ran into the other room and did the first verse he did let's say three takes and then he came in and he listened to him and he's like yeah I think second one's good it just happens in his mind and then this big list of people that you've worked with me it's just this unbelievable list Jay Z can you avail just in Timberlake and Mick Jagger and the Red Hot Cheat Peppers why don't you think these people call you because I've been making things for 40 years and I started making music as a hobby it ended up picking on a life of a son and becoming a business and that list they're not special I would say they're ordinary people who made a decision I think of M&M as a good example M&M as someone who's always writing because he wants to be the best he could possibly be and he's

2:02insanely obsessive about that. Here's that some people are just like inherently more creative than others. Well creativity is beaten out of us over the course of our lives we go to school we're thought to follow rules the rules are not there to help us the rules are there to control us we're not taught to be free creative thinkers so I'm suggesting we break free and express ourselves freely now well all of the best things involve risk it's only through the risk that the greatness has shown and so something needs to die that lifestyle in that moment that career path that relationship that's what needs to die is there a step one in that direction for people that want to hit the reset button yeah first one I apologize your early 30s you had a depressive episode yourself yeah this is really tough damn I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me started having panic attacks and couldn't sleep it got really sick and it felt like I was shot with a poison error taking me into that part of your life so um

3:09guys I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins the algorithm if you follow a show deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed so when we have our best episodes on this show the most shared episodes the most rated episodes I would love you to know and the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button but also it's the simple easy free thing that you can do to help us make this show better I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this one right now and hit that follow button thank you so so so much I'm gonna start require my curiosity is yes how do you sort of self categorize or self-identity in terms of like your profession hmm I would say I'm involved in art and creativity and what is your involvement in art and creativity might be as a coach it might be as a collaborator it might come up in a film project or it might come up in someone who has a startup who wants to talk

4:12about what are the things it creative solutions and any problem that we have or any anything we want to get better at there's usually a creative path to improve or at least to test to see if there are other ways around often the accepted version of how to move forward is another limitation I'm very curious about your principles as it relates to finding the solution whether that's in business or whether it's in music and I'm really interested in if there's any similarities in the process of finding a solution because I'm an entrepreneur I guess I'm a podcaster as well I do investments all day every day I'm in the pursuit of a solution to a problem a people problem a creative problem do you have any high level principles that are broadly applicable irrespective of the type of problem you're solving I'll take an interesting one where they've been thinking about lately is indefensible indefensible is a funny word because it's a it's a really

5:13pejorative word it's a strong pejorative if something is indefensible it's not just bad indefensible is really extreme I'm thinking that in making art it indefensible is actually a good thing maybe not only a good thing maybe a necessary thing that you take things to the extreme that are indefensible I can't tell you why I can't tell you why because it's beyond reason so I'm I'm in that camp of reason is a is a tiny sliver of how decisions get made and I would be much more in the camp of intuition or maybe some sort of a guidance guidance from the universe openness to being guided by something more something

6:24the creative force of the universe you could call it god I call it god you're not required to what art that you've been involved in creating would you would you define in the moment as being indefensible a little over a year ago there was a meme about vibe coding the way it started was there something new happened a guy named Andrev Carpafi coined the term vibe coding I didn't know what it was that same day that he coined the term and tweeted about it someone put a picture of me with my wearing headphones with my eyes closed hand on a mouse and that image became associated with vibe coding had nothing to do with me I saw it I didn't know what it meant but then over the next few days friends started sending me hundreds of this image associated with vibe coding in all different ways and I thought hmm now the old me pre-creative act to me would have laughed and moved on with my life

7:29and one of the things that I learned through working on the creative act one of the things that talks about a lot is we're given information all the time around us there are all these opportunities or invitations being made all the time in the past if someone told me about a movie that sounded like I didn't want to see it that doesn't sound like it's for me I would ignore it but if two or three people say you might want to see this movie I might even if it's not interesting to me it's almost like the universe some too much energy behind this so this was an example of a lot of energy coming towards me related to vibe coding I don't know what it is and I thought okay how do I participate if I want to participate in this thing that's going on an experiment creative experiment and I thought okay I'm going to write a joke tweet related to vibe coding I thought about it and

8:30came up with tools will come tools will go only the vibe code remains and typically the tweets get 10,000 20,000 views I look the next day and this joke tweet has something in a half views say something's going on it was an indefensible act there was no reason for me to do it but I'm feeling this energy coming at me from all of these different directions I participate I answer the invitation comes back there's interest I said hmm what would be the next step and the next step is well I still don't really know what vibe coding is maybe I'll write a book about vibe coding I put aside all of my real work my professional work to dedicate myself to this book on vibe coding and again I couldn't explain it I couldn't tell you why I can't say it was a good idea none of those

9:31things I was following a calling feeling like I was being invited to participate in this thing and this is the way that I could answer the call so I did in so many parts of our life we might get that invitation to participate in something that is none of our business all the time yeah and we usually say no because it's not what's on our business card it's not what we've done in the past and we are in the most successful we've become the more narrow we've become in many respects yes I'm thinking about this idea of like how one resists their labels so they can capitalize on all the callings or you know but so they don't miss yeah important label that you put on yourself or that's put on you makes you smaller no label supply no label supply we are beyond labels it's tempting though isn't it because labels are my shortcuts at cocktail parties there are also no shortcuts and I hope you don't spend too much time in cocktail parties I don't worry I'm guessing

10:32what goes on now okay so that's interesting this idea of sometimes following the indefensible well if you feel a call even if it doesn't make sense if you for an artist to write a song and you really feel like this is really this is some this is really meaningful to me I think no one's gonna like it but I really feel it I can't defend it that's the best thing you can do if you make something where you think this is for everyone are they're gonna love it it's like it's too easy the most interesting things are challenging it's challenging to you it's challenging to the people who see it the things that are revolutionary most of the things that I've fallen in love with over my life creatively aren't when I first see it often or first hear it I might not like it at first because it's it's too much or I don't have any context for it the true revolutionary works

11:39we don't have context for it appears to me Rick that sometimes things that are more of the same do bigger numbers so I'm thinking about maybe for a period of time I was thinking about two artists one of them is Drake who listen makes great music makes hits everybody loves them they come out we dance in the clubs to them etc then I was thinking about I think a record that you worked on with Kanye Jesus and I remember where I was when I first heard that as a huge Kanye fan I thought here we go gonna get more college dropout here we go yeah and I put it on and I was like what the fuck is it but then I loved it yeah in my little group of six how long did it take a while a while yeah it took a while I mean you know if we Drake stuff I I tend to like it on first listen but with that Jesus album I had to really like persevere and then I thought it was was genius because it was a new paradigm and you worked on that album yeah and that that's a good example of like it was a sort of an anti hip-hop album and that was done intentionally and it definitely

12:46we went as far as we could into into an indefensible realm but what about the numbers what about the sales what about the record label do you is it an important album to you now yeah okay did us job there's near time incentives though listen we need Drake we need you to make another we never consider near term incentive ever at any point in time never once never consideration it doesn't exist we're making things forever we're making things that are truly personal to us and if it's truly personal to us if someone doesn't get it that's they just don't get it yet or maybe they'll never get it and it's fine because I know this is my diary entry can someone else read your diary entry and tell you it's wrong it's not good enough or it's not true it's not how you see the

13:49world everything we make is a diary entry everything we make is our personal true expression the reason we're saying it is to show you see it like that we see it like this or I see it like this this is how I see it and with that information you can see it's like ah I never considered that before there's more the world is bigger than I thought it's not just more the same it's not just more numbers and it's also the more numbers game is a shorter term game I remember I made an album with Lincoln Park who at the time were probably one of the biggest bands in the world and they'd made three albums that were I would say stylistically very similar they were rap rock and they were there was this there was a rap rock movement corn I guess regiance and machine was first corn limp biscuit all

14:53these bands and Lincoln Park was probably the last of that wave of music and they were wildly successful doing that music and when we started working together there was a choice we could continue and do the next in that same style which the audience would love and it would be easy to do or we could be true to where the band was in this moment of time 10 years after they started about probably eight 10 years after they started and be free to find the new sound the next sound and when we did that probably half of the audience didn't like it and half of the audience loved it and new people came along and they set themselves up to have a much longer career of making the things that they wanted to make whereas they were already on the tail end of a genre that had they made another one

15:53maybe it would have been it probably would have been you know as successful as what they had done but long time the genre was dying again none of this was thought about at the time another example I think of is radio heads kid A I remember when kid A came out I didn't like it at all I loved the bends and okay computer they were my favorite then and then they made this up in kid A and it was totally different and it really alienated me and today that might be my favorite radio head album it feels like a risk yes but that's all of the best things involved risk because I'm sure you've also got examples where someone followed that thesis of listening to what they wanted to make or doing it for themselves and not thinking too much about the audience and it didn't work of course and they could have just made you know a hit and paid off their mortgage and yeah it's not so interesting I don't know it's not so interesting to me I think that's it's a different game that's the you know that's the investment commerce game and I'm in the art game it's just a

16:54different thing there's nothing wrong with that other game it's just not my game which one leads to more success over the long time defined by let's say if we define success in this context by the subjective opinion of people that that was good and money all I can say is that I've been making things for 40 years I have never done it the way you're suggesting I'm always taken the risk I've always made my favorite thing I've always supported the artist in making their favorite thing and luckily a lot of revolutionary things have happened from that and I would say things that probably inspired other artists to be more free and more true and more honest and take bigger risks to make something more interesting made the world more interesting place why don't you think these people call you I think it's probably different for different artists

17:54why did Jay Z call you the time that I first met Jay was when he was making the black album and he wanted to he was planning on retiring and this was going to be his one song his final album the black album was the Jay Z's last album turned out not to be but that was the plan and he asked his ten favorite producers to each make one track with him and ours was called 99 problems and it was a really fun experience to make I mean one of my clinic record that is what was your contribution to that record everybody knows that record everybody yeah we created the track and we played it for Jay and he liked it and then he wrote the words and wrapped on top of it so you you produced the music made the music my read that you gave him direction in terms of the lyrics as well when my friend Chris Raul had the idea of iced tea had a song called 99 problems that was the opposite it was I have 99

18:58problems and a bitch ain't one and then it's a story about the girls and Chris said you know 99 problems would be a great hook and it doesn't have to be about the girls and then I suggested to Jay make it about the problems and then that's what it was and business people startups they seek your advice as well once you're finished all the time and what are they seeking let's talk about 99 problems a little more because an interesting story so Jay Z was signed to deaf gem records deaf gem records was the label that I founded and I was no longer at deaf gem when we made 99 problems and I remember giving it to the people at deaf gem and the person who was the president of deaf gem at the time listen to me like oh this is great it'll never be a single but it'll be a great album track and everything okay and again I don't know I couldn't say but the president of the label that I founded was saying this could never be a single because it doesn't sound like everything else on the radio that was the old way of thinking that was the normal way of thinking of like

20:01you make things up to go on the radio that sound like everything else on the radio but if you do that who cares it's just more the same so 99 problems didn't sound like anything on the radio so when it eventually got on the radio it had a big impact so another band I worked with as called system of a down yeah and I remember bringing their record to Kevin Weatherly at K-Rock which is the rock station alternative rock station in California and if they play it all of the other alternative rock stations in the country play it they were like the leading station and this was a California band that was starting to get popular in the clubs maybe 200 people would come but in a club the club would sell out good sign and I brought I think this almost called sugar and I brought it to Kevin Weatherly and I played it for him and he said not only will we not play this record we will never play this band on our station because it sounded insane it didn't sound like anything else on the station one year later number one saw on the station most requested and two weeks ago

21:09I saw system of a down sell out 80,000 seats in a stadium in Paris they sold it out two nights in a row I can't tell you how or why this this works I can't tell you that there's anything to follow but I will say we made the things that we loved we never questioned if anyone else was going to like it we never questioned what the audience was going to think we never questioned where does it fit in the market none of those normal conversations we made our favorite thing we took it to an indefensible level as far as we could go and luckily it worked out is there a way to get clearer on what you love this sounds like a strange question but I'm meditate I learned to meditate when I was 14 and I think having a TM as a grounding element in my life TM a transcendental

22:12meditation that was the first type of meditation on there when I was 14 it it it changed me I know this because I stopped meditating when I went to college and then when I moved to California red act college I started meditating again somewhere I knew it was a big decision and somewhere I knew there would be a right moment to start and it took several months before actually sat for the first meditation after not doing it for several years and in that first meditation I realized oh this is this is very familiar to me this is a big part of who I am even though I haven't done it in five years it's a big part of how I see the world the fact that I got to do that from a young age to understand who you are with it I'm going to ask you who you would be without it I don't know it'd be I'm curious I'm happy that I don't know because I like having the practice but whether I

23:15continue a practice or not I've done enough of it over the course of my life that I'm there I'm when I meditate more it gets deeper but even if I don't meditate it's like Maharishi teacher transcendental meditation Maharishi Mahashiyogli says every time you meditate it's like making a deposit in the bank so it builds up and again that was rhetoric before but in my experience I got to see oh it's not rhetoric like I actually had this experience and it changed the way I saw the world and and I'll say you see beyond the surface you can see the depth underneath and for me the things on the surface are not so interesting I'm interested in the depth the depth behind it so my first question would be what is transcendental meditation it's a mantra practice that's done

24:20silently you do it sitting with your eyes closed you learn it from a TM teacher I can't teach you we close our eyes and then the mantra is a sound vibration that gets given to you I was given mine at when I was 14 I have never uttered it out loud since that time I've never shared it with anyone and that's part of the training it it's like a private sound and you engage with this sound in the way that you're taught 20 minutes at least once a day typically twice a day I would do it right when I woke up in the morning I'm in again before dinner those would be the two the two windows I when I lived in California and I was working in different recording studios I've meditated with Tom Petty and Johnny Cash in different artists before sessions that would be part of our practice right how chili peppers we would sit and meditate together before sessions so I've had

25:23this experience for a while in my life and it's it's probably the most profound thing I can mention it will get to others but that that that's one that's a learnable practical action that really changed who I am how did you know it was efficacious how did you know it was working what is the measure that this practice is worth that investment in time in your view the only proof that I had was getting away from it and coming back to it that was I I recognized it in that first meditation back how deep and connected I was to this thing and I'm guessing this unlocks it you said a deeper level of creativity and ideas and everything oh everything deeper understanding people often hear that meditation in various forms is beneficial very successful people sit here all the time and say it's so it's so central to why I've been able to do what I've done and then there'll be people you know

26:24that think well I sit in there for 10 minutes my brain is very very busy I've tried it once it didn't really work and then they move on and then I study some of the great some of the great creatives in the world the great visionaries people that I thought could see round corners in an atypical way like Steve Jobs and there's always a practice of meditation practice well so often at the very heart of of their brilliance so I've I don't currently have a meditation practice my wonderful fiancee does she does every morning for 20 minutes she's a breath breath breath practitioner say I mean it's her whole world and tell me what she says about it she says it unlocks a deeper level of calm and I don't mean calm is in light stress I mean a deeper level of like groundedness and she says she feels more connected now in her context I think that's more of like a spiritual thing she feels more connected to the universe and and others as far as the creative experience goes a spiritual connection is a big part of that it's just the nature of

27:25it's a nature of how it works it's not an intellectual process it's a spiritual process what is the mechanism that is causing these results that you see from the biological perspective I couldn't answer that in the way that you would hope but I will say I think it it allows you to let go of all of the ordinary concerns I also have a question which is if you live with a person who says this practice is so impactful on her life I'm questioning why you at least haven't tried it with her for a month to see how it would question you to get me to answer one no it's a good question yeah I have no good answer for it yeah yeah because it's what it has to do it's you're not looking for cues from the outside you're looking for cues on the inside what lights you up what are you excited to play for your friend not what are you excited to play for

28:27your friend like what do you think this will do you play it for your friend like wow can you believe something like this exists in the world how cool is that the distinction that I'm trying to make is often if you read business books or entrepreneurship books when they're talking about innovation when they're talking about the great companies like amazon or I heard Sebastian who's a CEO of Klanisset the day who's a tech founder they spend a lot of time thinking about the customer the customer's problem and they work backwards they call it to the answer so they'll zoom in on Rick's world and say Rick has these problems he's dead and they'll work backwards from there to a answer that's how Amazon say they built the platform and one of the quotes that's quite famous with Jeff Bezos is he bets on things that he knows won't change he says no one in ten years going to come up to me and say I wish my package would take longer so he can double down on that solving the customer problem does that sit in contrast to what you're saying or is it the same thing or is it different type of work well I'll start by saying if you look at the history of Amazon it was

29:31it lost money for probably 20 years it was considered one of the worst investments until it wasn't they kept doubling down on what they believed in it wasn't working the audience showed it didn't work the models showed it didn't work but they stuck to what they believed and it changed the world so it's it's the same thing it's it's doubling down on what you believe in when all of the metrics are showing you it's not working that's the story of amazon do you think people are and have different levels of their ability to you know if we take practices like meditation aside it just seems that through history some people are better at cultivating that we're listening to that internal voice than others obviously I sit here and interview these like some of these great founders and it appears that some people are just like inherently more creative than others some people are in the analytical part of their brain and they need one plus one to be called tool the time I'm wondering if you know there's other ways if you think there is an inherent

30:35difference in creativity and I think that creativity is beaten out of us over the course of our lives I think we we go to school we're told to repeat back what we're told we're told to sign a chair all day where our spirits are broken by institutions we're not taught to be free creative thinkers we're thought to follow rules the rules are not there to help us the rules are there to control us I'm suggesting we break free and be free and express ourselves freely and that's our purpose here on the planet to express ourselves freely that's why we're here what you're saying links to something we're talking about earlier which is at a very young age we're taught that the things we make are a means to a particular end and that end is promotions pay rises capital success job titles yes in the creative process are you saying that it's never productive to talk about how well measure success and to try and optimize for that measurement in the creative process I

31:43would I tend not to think about those things I can't think of an example where we would want to use data I think it's it's much more about this internal feeling and then the feeling we have when you play it for someone when you share it with someone whether it lights someone up you can tell when someone really resonates with something sometimes the numbers don't show the numbers can't reflect that you know you can have two things that are kind of unequal footing commercially yet one of them lights you up and the other one is well this gets a job done they're different and long-term chances are the one that lights you up it's going to have more value to you and you'll be more willing to support that thing over time in your book here the creative act a way of being

32:47you talk about the things that block creativity thoughts and habits not conducive to the work believing you're not good enough that's a big one someone at some point in time you were singing and sounds like ah you can't sing at when you're a kid and that gets larger new singing is not something I can ever do or you're a terrible cook or you're not smart enough so often the gifts that we have are stifled and smothered we're all creative we may not choose to embark on a creative make creative choices but that's it's on us we can we just have bad information we're we're told we're not good enough and we believe it and it's not true when people say that oh you know Rick is a creative and Stephen has say they say Stephen is not a creative what are they actually saying what is that like in our culture to be a creative how are like we misunderstanding the

33:52definition should I'm saying because we do we go creative they do a little bit of our music stuff creative not creative Excel documents creative yeah what are we actually saying that I think it's a way to try to simplify the world the world is complicated and I think all of us can do anything I'm not saying all of us could do everything to the best of our ability better than anyone else that's a big part of it is the idea of competition like if I want to play baseball I know that I could get better at baseball that doesn't mean I think I could get good enough to play on the meds but I know I could get better and I know I could train anything that I'm interested in and get much better at it and as soon as we're not capable of playing for the meds we think it's not for us and we shut that off we're not doing a service to ourselves we're not becoming our best selves or really living up to our full potential as humans feels like a natural human instinct to compare

35:00in order to understand the value of anything I think we do when we go to restaurants there's three stakes the expensive ones probably a bit bougie the cheap ones probably not good I'll go for the middle one seems like a huge a way that humans take shortcuts but we do it with ourselves as well so I know that the thing I've made is good as if I look over at your thing and miners ranked better or miners prettier or richer are you saying for us to get out of the business of comparison yes because I'm saying it's it's always apples and oranges if you if you were to ask who's better Michael Jackson or Prince I would say Michael Jackson's much better at being Michael Jackson and Prince is probably better at being Prince but you can't compare what the two of them do they do two different things before you mentioned Kanye West and and Drake there's no competition there they do two totally different things what you get from each of them is totally different I wouldn't want from Drake what I get from Kanye and I certainly wouldn't want from Kanye what I get from Drake

36:05it's it's pointless is either more creative that's for you to decide that's for you to decide there's not the whole idea of competition between artists is it's such a weird thing again it's back to who has a better diary entry it's ridiculous feeling you don't have the energy it takes these are all things that are not conducive to the work yeah I have that one sometimes feeling like I'm not up to it too much I flew here yesterday from London I'm tired I'm a little jet lagged and show up and talk to you maybe won't be good maybe it's better just lay down or relax and recover but I'm here I show up and you've referred to yourself as a um and lazy worker holic yes it's true what is a lazy worker holic often most days I would rather not do any of the things that I'm scheduled to do and I schedule the things and I show up and I do it

37:10needs to get done do you have a settle with creative work the deadline for the record label is approaching the work is not yet done we'll finish here and we'll send it I tend not to do that I tend not to work on deadlines until we're past the point the first time we would ever establish a deadline is when we already know we've cracked the code we know what this is going to be we can see it it may not be completely finished but we have a good idea of what it is and how it's going to work and it's maybe 90% done then we might set a deadline for that last 10% of finishing it and that less 10% probably won't make or break the project part of what you accept when you pursue the creative process you've described where it's really about like do I like it do we like it is you will create things that are at some some points just absolute legendary and unlike anything else that exists they are not the same but part of the risk you take is you'll make things that other

38:13people just don't like yeah that's all there is in this process is you have an idea you build it you may learn along the way that the idea was maybe not the best idea and it turns left and you make I'm starting out to make this blue statue and it turns out to be this red painting you don't know that going in but you discover it through the process and it could take a long time other times you'll think I'm going to make this blue thing we make it in five minutes there it is done and and we can't you can't calculate that you can't anticipate what's going to happen but if I wasn't doing this experiment here I would never get to the better thing it happens all the time and then sometimes you build it and it doesn't work for 20 years and then it becomes Amazon I've thought a lot recently about how time horizons change the work that you do and that's kind of also what I'm hearing there because in that example you gave of this blue statue thing

39:15if you were under a time horizon you wouldn't have this space for that exploration you've described and actually in all of our lives we I think apply time horizons we say this part of my career is going to be five years and in those five years I want to achieve these things how do you think about setting personal time horizons but also like creative time horizons one of the things I talk about in the book is that they're a different phases of creativity the first phase is the seed phase then is the experimentation phase then is the crafting phase and then is the finishing completion editorial phase and you can't set a timeline early in that process in the seed phase you have to try a lot of things since can take as long as it takes and in the experimental phase which is where you're taking the seeds and seeing what they want to be that takes time and then in the crafting phase the third phase still takes time because now you have the seed you see what it wants

40:15to be you've given it time to gestate you see how it grows and now in the crafting phase the third phase you start trimming it and making it the way you see it all of that has to happen before there's any idea of a timeline because until that time you don't really know what you're making it's a dream but once you've gotten gone through these three phases and you have this thing in front of you may not be finished but you see what it is you see it and it's good you're excited about it when I say it's good I mean it's good to me that's it that's where it ends it's good to me I like it enough that I'm willing to show it to you if I like it enough that I'm willing to show it to you I like it enough to show it to everybody people will hear this is creative advice I was hearing it as life advice I was hearing the seed phase of my life experimentation phase of my life the crafting phase it's the same it's all the same and that's why the creative act started with this idea of how to make

41:17things and it turned what I realized you're writing the book is it's how to be in the world that you you either live your life to allow these things to happen or you don't and if you live your life to allow these things to happen then you're an artist even if you're a businessman or if you're a chef or if you're a mother you're living your life as an artist you're embodying it and it's coming from you and it's I want to say it's who you are it's not who you are but it's who you are in that moment I'm showing you this beautiful thing as a reflection of how I see the world today now tomorrow I may see the world differently that's fine but when I share it with you this is the best it can be in this moment the reason I was asking this question about the um you know sometimes the the world might not like what you give it yeah it's because because of this word

42:18failure which you talk about in the book as well and how to deal with failure I guess a lot of the reason why people won't take the risk to listen to themselves to what they love is because of the word risk and with that comes I might lose money I'm at least friends if I quit this job and pursue that violin hobby and go to Peru and violin up in Peru my friend I'm gonna lose friends people in anything I'm strange so I I'll conform yeah and I'm saying you have to do all of those things lose the friends take the risk now I'm and and I'm also saying I'm not saying that for that 100% if you go move to Peru and be the violinist it's gonna work and you may want to have an actual job to pay the bills while you're doing that that's okay the idea that it all has to be one thing I have to do my dream thing and it has to be my prophet it has to be my hobby my love my profession where I support myself doesn't have to be when I started making music I thought I was

43:23gonna have a real job and I'd make music and it would be my hobby I would do it forever I would do exactly what I was doing but I thought I would have a real job to support myself to do these things that I want to do luckily I was able to it turned into its own thing by nothing that I did had no expectation that it could be a profession I had no it couldn't be it was a ridiculous idea I did it because I loved it and while I was going to school and while I was probably gonna go to law school and I would have a regular job day job and I would do music as the love of my life that's what I would do luckily I didn't have to do that but that's what would have happened a lot of people at that age are told to follow their passion find their purpose which sounds like this you know because the word passion is a singular word and also the word find means after go go out there and actively pursue the thing a lot of people listening now would would say you know I've been told to find my passion and when they look at their job in the factory or wherever it might be you know

44:25whatever they're doing they go okay this isn't it yet but I will get that at some point later yeah and I will jump so you're saying don't jump necessarily there are realities of life that you have to deal with I'm not saying ignore the fact that you get you have to pay rent or say I'm happy living in my parents house until until it works that's fine I'm saying there are realities of life that have to be dealt with don't put the pressure of of that on your art because then you won't make the best decisions you'll make short-term decisions based on real world issues that you have to deal with in that moment that won't support the long-term benefit of the work you're doing the real work you're doing I'm sure you sat there in those moments where you're trying to persuade an artist to follow themselves and what they know I don't try to persuade anyone of anything really I know I wouldn't use that word I wouldn't use the word persuade what would you use we talk about it I ask what are you what do you hope to accomplish and then I support that process can we roleplay

45:32I pretend I'm an artist sure wants to write an album okay so I'm actually learning to DJI have been learning for like four years but what would you say to me so I could come to you say Rick I want to make an album what the first questions be to me play me the of all the things you've made play me your favorites let's talk about it I would listen to it and then we would talk about it so I play you let's say it's a house song I play it I think this is my favorite I would tell you whatever I think about it honestly honestly you know she thought it was terrible yeah I probably wouldn't say it in a in a unpleasant way but I would probably ask more questions around it get ask how you know explain to me what it is that you like about it how did you get to that what equipment did you use was it fun making it was it a good experience have you played it for other people what's it like what's the experience like what's the feeling you get when you when you're making it what's the feeling you get when you play it for a friend have you ever played it in a club what's that like I would listen to what you say and then we would talk about it often an artist will come to me they'll tell me exactly what they want to do and then say I have no idea what I want to do can you help me it's like they can't

46:40they can't hear themselves there's a we we all have this barrier between it's it's a little bit how therapy works if you go to see a therapist you might talk they might not say anything but through the talking you start understanding what you believe what you think what's going on in your life you might have epiphanies just because someone's listening most people are not used to being heard really heard deeply heard often you'll say something to someone and they're thinking about what they're going to say next like what what they're they're not really hearing what you're saying and I find if you really are there and listen to what someone's saying they tell you what they want to do and then my job is to just help remove the roadblocks that they're putting in the way of themselves to get there and when they say what they want to do but then ask you what they

47:44should do yeah is that a lack of sort of self trust what what is yeah yes but that lack of self trust is what is the condition of the world that's what we're that's how we're indoctrinated we most people don't trust themselves and it's a fine line because there are the few people who might seem to really trust themselves and you think oh there you go maniacs usually when someone really comes off as wildly egotistical it's usually hiding some insecurities really it's like a mask so that's dealing with someone who's insecure and dealing with someone who's overconfident it's often two sides of the same coin and we're really looking for this middle place of reality it's like not what you're afraid of about yourself but or what other people are going to think but where are you really on this I often describe it as tasting food

48:46like if I gave you two pieces of pizza and say taste the two pieces of pizza tell me what you're going to like better it's not a hard question you'll probably say I like this one much better than this and when I ask you which tastes better you wouldn't say well I think this guy's going to like this pizza better you would say this one tastes better to me that's the goal is getting to that this one tastes better to me simple we don't believe that it can be as simple as it is and it is simple if you were to bet on an artist being one of these great artists that you've worked with because they have a set of characteristics or a perspective or a humility that is conducive with what you've seen results in exceptional work what are those like similar attributes as someone that does a lot of investing in entrepreneurs and I was wondering if there was similarities even there because I'm sure some of it sounded the same I'm sure there are I asked a friend of mine who is a venture

49:49capital guy about when he's picking things to invest in is it the premise of the business or is it the founder and he said it's always the founder doesn't matter what the business is he said if I believe in the person I'll back them and I suppose it would be the same with artists like it's it's the artist not like well they wrote a great song the great song is more like the great products like maybe they could do that again but if you see that the way that they see music the way that they innovate in the things that they make that's a good sign tell you story uh band strokes I produced a new album just came out maybe a month ago and they'd asked me to produce an album for them maybe want to say 15 years ago and I listened to the demos and I didn't hear it I didn't I didn't

50:54I'm not saying it couldn't be good I just didn't see the way in for me it's like I don't think I should do this I don't I don't feel it and then they asked me another time maybe 12 years ago and I listen to the demos and I didn't hear it I couldn't I just I don't see how to do it so I passed I didn't see how to do it give me some color on what that means yeah it's like um when I hear something and I know I can see a path I can hear a thing doesn't have to be good but I could hear something in it like I understand what this is and I can I'm I want to see what this can become I didn't feel that the first two times and then on the first album we worked on together which came out about six years ago they sent me demos again they were probably the worst demos they ever sent but I could hear what it could be and some one of the demos might be a 22nd voice note

51:57whereas in the past there were these produced demos of like here's our great new songs but in this 22nd voice note I could listen and think I really want to hear this whole song whatever this is this seed of an idea this is going to be good as a potential to really be good how do you know feel it there is no knowing it's it's a it's a knowingness it's like I have a knowingness I couldn't explain it to you it's uh an internal experience one of things is again you tend to want to lean forward not lean back you tend to want to listen again not skip to the next one it generates curiosity generates interest and I want to know more do you set goals in your own life none you strike me as someone who has a uh who is okay with uncertainty in a world where most people need certainty in order to take

52:58forward motion or take an action in a direction I know uncertainty is real I had a house in Malibu that was my main house with all of my possessions that eight years ago burned in a fire and when that happened you very quickly see like I thought I would live there forever when that happened I realized hmm impermanence is real I thought I was going to live there forever it's gone now it's it's a lot it's a a dirt lot so I don't think that we can know anything we just kind of move along and make decisions based on the information we have at the time and life unfolds I guess in an analogy would be satnav in the car you get in the car in the morning you you know it's your button then you sit your satnav and say this is my goal this is where I want to go and then you drive so you put action towards that goal what you're saying sounds more like you just drive yeah all the time yeah I used to do that and remember um it's funny you bring that up but there

54:04was a period of time when I worked a lot in the recording studio a lot of hours many sessions it's sometimes I made eight albums a year and I'd be working on different projects at the same time and then I would have a day off on the weekend and I wouldn't make any plans but I would just drive and just listen to music in the car and drive and I might end up somewhere but I might just drive for a couple of hours and relax and it felt good you might get lost though and that's okay that's why we have goals in our life that's why we make a five-year plan a new year's resolution I've never done any of those things couldn't imagine it seems like a terrible limitation as good as it can be I could never imagine that I would have much more ordinary understanding of the world than what what actually happens than seeing the impossible become possible on a regular basis I certainly couldn't plan for that now because it's happened so much in my life

55:07I accept that's how it is and I'm on the right you accept the unknown and the uncertainty the unknown is that something that we can all do or is that a privilege that you have now that you're so successful in that we limit ourselves in so many ways I can remember a very successful artist who is going through a really hard time went out to dinner at this restaurant in Malibu we remember specifically what it was and I remember thinking this person might commit suicide that's how I could feel their energy was so unbalanced and so conflicted and they were suffering and I remember saying you know you don't have to keep doing this you know you've done a lot of great things you've had great success you can afford that to do this and anytime you want to you can say

56:09you know what I'm going to move to the other side of the world and live on the beach and just eat good food play in the water you're not obligated to continue doing what you're doing that's causing so much conflict in your life you've done enough and I found out years later I didn't even know that the person really heard what I was saying because they were they were really in a hard place but years later that person said to me remember what you said you said I could go I could check out and he did I he didn't do it in the way that I imagined I didn't know that that's what happened but he did that I know several people who committed suicide and I have one friend a good friend who unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide all of them were in those moments it's like they feel like

57:09the choices I've made have me boxed in and there's no way out and when someone thinks that the the inclination to commit suicide is the person knows something needs to die and they think the body needs to die but in reality those choices that they made that lifestyle in that moment that career path that relationship that's what needs to die and they can go and start a whole new life and we we don't see that we we get very locked in thinking this is all there is and this is not all there is this is what we have chosen and we're going along on this path and at any time we say you know what I want to do it all differently I want to start a whole new life

58:14in a whole new way and it that doesn't take a lot of money to do it might take less money to do because you can move to somewhere in the world that costs nothing to live beautiful places where people are happy it's just a choice it's almost like we're playing a game it's a game of chess you can get up and leave the table and not play anymore and go on and play a different game and have fun it's always available to us you could press a button and it all goes away and it doesn't mean that you have to die for that to happen just that scenario has to stop and you go and find a new one I've seen a lot online again about how to find your flow that feeling when everything just click distractions disappear and suddenly you're operating at your very very best but most of us treat flow like it's something that just happens randomly but when you're operating at the highest level you can't just leave that to chance or if you don't want to bad days are expensive and you need to be able to zone in on demand that's the idea behind us once a key tone IQ a company I've invested

59:20in and become a co-owner of because I've seen for myself the profound impact it has on me as a podcaster sometimes I'm here with an investor or a business person or a philosopher someone talking about menopause whatever it might be I need my brain to be sharp key tone IQ is a premium focus fuel for your brain and deliver sustained mental clarity and focus so you can be more intentional about creating the conditions for focused work and it's no longer just chance because your best work shouldn't have to depend on a lucky moment so go to keytone.com slash Stephen for 30% off or you can head to CVS and get your first shot for free that's right key tone IQ is now available at CVS locations nationwide the biggest unfair advantage in business right now is having people who genuinely understand AI and big businesses are hiring them very very quickly AI job postings in the US have roughly doubled since 2023 while postings for VP of AI roles are around 600% up if you're running a small business you can't just build an entire AI team but you still want the same advantage that these big businesses have this is where our sponsor five are comes in it lets

1:00:24you plug into top tier AI specialist for the strategic work that usually requires serious in house expertise that could mean building custom AI tools it could be automating complex workflows or creating something that off the shelf software simply cannot do because at the end of the day it still comes down to human judgment knowing what's worth building and what good actually looks like so if you want that kind of leverage in your business check out five or dot com that's five or two hours dot com a lot of the prison that I think I almost hear you sort of inferring to that we've kind of built that makes us feel boxed in is our identity this word identity I am a lawyer in Manhattan and a father and a and yes and I took that identity it's almost a bit of a trade I made I accepted it which meant that I've got to our parties people were impressed by me yeah and so you know we traded something for something else and now a boxed in and now a lot you know I hear

1:01:25a lot from our listeners on the show like they feel stuck yeah we're free we're free we just have to choose to take advantage of this human gift of freedom and we can start over I remember the one close friend who tried to commit suicide and didn't it luckily lived I went to visit him in the hospital he was laying in in a hospital bed and he was seemingly catatonic he hadn't spoke since this happened and I was standing in the hallway and there were a series of his friends coming to see him everybody would go into the room wanted a time and I listened to the two people who went in before me and they were crying and they were acting as if he had died now he's laying there he's in fetal position he's not saying word and I'm just thinking this but this

1:02:28is really weird this is really it's really the whole scene is weird never seen anything like it before and my first thought was the people who are going in there and talking to him they have no idea how to act none of us do because this is an unusual such unless you've been in it which I hadn't been before you'd have no idea what to do but I knew from listening this is not the best what they're doing is not the best situation there's a better way and I was the next one and I went in and I looked down and I said again I don't know where this came from but it came I said this may be hard for you to see right now but you're in the sweet spot and I remember saying that and he looked at me and he looked at me like I was insane but it was the first the first time anyone the first thing he reacted to was that and I said you just hit the reset button I said all of the things

1:03:34that you hate to do that you feel obligated to do that you feel committed to do that made you want to not be here anymore you just hit the reset button you never have to do any of those things again and now you can do anything you want you're free to start all of those old ideas none of those obligations are hanging over your head and we ended up having a really nice conversation and he got up and he got dressed and he was like himself it was an amazing an amazing experience but that that's how boxed in we feel but it's all just a story it's not true we are free is there a step one in that direction for people that want to hit the reset button is there a first step well I would try to see what are the things in your life that really you want to change and

1:04:37then think about what's the what's the cleanest way to change them leaving a job leaving a relationship you know the the reason these things happen is we make commitments with good intentions and then when it's hard to keep the commitment is where it starts feeling boxed in now I think commitments are a good thing both to make and to keep that said there can be a point where it becomes life and death it's like this commitment that I made was a mistake and it was and or something changed maybe the person that I married became an alcoholic and it's really hard living with an alcoholic and it's not fun this is not what we signed up for and I can do everything I can to help this person but maybe nothing works and at some point it's okay to hit the reset button say you know what you're not doing any favors if you're if you're locked in the situation I have a

1:05:38lot of friends who are in relationships and maybe the relationship has gone south but they stay in it because both both sides of the couple feel like this is the life we signed up for and in reality you're not doing any favors for the person being unhappy in our relationship it's the nature of love is it to two way street or the same the same I can say if someone is in love with someone and the other person unrequited love the person's not in love with them there's no really such thing because the nature of love is it's like a negative and a positive magnet pulling towards each other you can't have one side of the magnet in love it doesn't work and it's just a fantasy of what you know it's it's a beautiful fantasy of what you think like as an optimist it could be so beautiful

1:06:40but if it's not there it's best for everyone involved sometimes I have some friends who feel like well I don't want to break up with them because it'll it'll it'll destroy them it's not true it's better for everyone involved if it's not working to find a new beautiful life can do that it's okay I imagine there's all this some people who have lots of small misalignments none of them are huge issues on their own but now they have a life full of 100 small misaligned things could be anything and so their life feels really fundamentally misaligned but it's actually just maybe they struggled with honesty across many little areas of their life and maybe those can be worked on and maybe it could be fixed but in either case don't let it just linger you know prepare them it's hard conversations they're right yeah a lot of people aren't good at that where you know people pleases and there's a through line here with creativity generally I think this idea of like people pleasing the difficult conversation and I've obviously seen from some of

1:07:40the things you've mentioned through this conversation like you'd be willing to tell people like this isn't for me I imagine you're off to a lot of money a lot of the time as well yeah how do you sort of pass through that if you're off with a ton of money to do something but at some level it's not aligned with your principles or values or I want to make good things like I want to make something good have you turned down large numbers of in in terms of money or other incentives because you didn't feel something was gonna be good or was aligned or yeah I'm sure I have I can't think of examples but I'm sure I have I don't think about the stuff like I think about the things I do I don't think about things I don't do you know does it matter to you the money part of it I want to be in success I want to participate in the success I think that's right that feels right to me I never make a decision for a financial reason that said if we make something successful that's valuable and in your own life and we're talking there about mental health

1:08:47through your early 30s you had a depressive episode yourself yeah was there a causal factor and how how important was that in shaping how you think generally about the world and the art and the creativity because I know it I've heard you say on news day that it changed you permanently it did take me into that part of your life you're 33 years old my age got what what happened what happened was I'd been an only child my parents really loved me really cared about me always supportive I went to school I started making music as a hobby it ended up taking on a life of a zone and becoming a business and had great success for all those years and then at 33 for the first time it got called into question I had a business relationship with a big company the person who I was in relationship with was one of the probably the top person in the whole

1:09:50music industry well loved beautiful person one of my mentors he got politically forced out and a new person was put in who I didn't have relationship with and that person called me said I read here I read our agreement because he had adopted the agreement that I had with my mentor he's like I don't like it when you come back to California we should talk about it that was it that was the whole conversation now for me I didn't I didn't know because I had so much success for so long I never I never had to deal with any instability in my life in that way I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me and I had started having panic attacks and couldn't sleep I got really sick and again for for almost anyone else the exact same scenario would have been okay we'll deal with it when I get there no problem and move on but I didn't have the ability to deal with it because I never had to deal with anything like that I didn't have the musk of the chair to deal with

1:10:52that issue and it felt like the rug was pulled out I didn't know what to do and sunk and then we it ended up going on for years even after the problem was solved I ended up leaving the company starting a relationship with a new company everything was fine but some it's like it was like a it was like I was a balloon that got burst in that moment and I'm still not the same person as I was before now maybe now I'm more rooted in reality which probably sounds funny after a lot of the things I've been saying before that I would say I never questioned anything it was just like everything was always rolling in this one direction and that was the first time that it was questioned and I it sunk me and took years to get out of it what I will say though is that because of that so many of the artists I work with deal with a lot of it personal issues and before that before

1:11:59I was 33 I probably didn't understand how they felt as much as I do now because now I had an experience where I feel like the bottom fell out I would say it has helped my understanding of the artist I work with on your desert island discs you said it wasn't anything that I understood I thought I was dying yeah the essence of this is a it was your first sort of big professional dare I say rejection yeah yeah yeah I was wrapped up in that in who I was and that question to who I was for the first time and you into therapy yes went therapy and ended up using an anti-depressant drug which I tend not to be a drug person but it was bad enough for long enough that that was the final

1:13:02it was the it was the last thing I was seeing a different therapist probably a therapist or a healer at least one five days a week and every time I would wake up and go and just thinking maybe today it's gonna be better maybe today it's gonna be better and it wasn't better yeah it was really tough damn what was going on under the surface of this because it because on the surface woman say Rick got a professional rejection yeah and it resulted in him saying that he thought he was dying that's what we see on the surface well it was totally un it always happening on the unconscious level couldn't sleep was nauseous all the time didn't want to get out of bed it was like it was a fit I felt it in a physical way and didn't want to do anything what what what is this what what was that well I've heard it described as like being shot with a poison arrow in a in a philosophical or a psychological way I was shot with a poison arrow

1:14:05because I've I've looked at you around in your earliest years I've looked at you know two wonderful people there yes your mom and your dad yes and sometimes you know when I interview people that are a normalist in some way I find that they're upbringing had some sort of trauma they're they're a chip on their shoulder but with you I had very much the opposite that you had two parents that really really loved you really loved me could do no wrong but that was part of what it was it's like I had been raised believing I could do no wrong and then in the real world making music the success showed that I could do no wrong until someone decided you know what I don't like I don't like what you're doing so I just had no I just didn't have context for it no way to deal with it sounds like a horrific season of your life yeah would you if there was there was a button on the table now that would allow you to erase it would you press it I would not why um I feel like every

1:15:11event that I've had in my life positive and negative has brought me to where I am now and I wouldn't want to change a thing I wouldn't want to change anything what did it give you it gave me a different perspective again I think it brought me down to a more realistic you of the world still one who believes in magic and that the impossible is possible on a daily basis but but before I might have felt more like Superman and I don't feel like Superman anymore what do you feel like tired tired I am you know as as creatives when I go back to this question I was asking you earlier on about the similarities you see in these great artists I heard on one end conviction and then I also had humility which kind of seemed like opposing forces is there anything else that you see in the similarities between the jazzees the canyaz the list of people that you've worked in is endless it usually has to do with a point of view seeing the world in a way

1:16:16that other people don't see now maybe something that everybody sees but no one has pointed out before they notice the world in a different way it's what a great comedian does great comedian says something and you laugh at it because you relate to what he says like of course so far it's so ridiculous that's what we do it's the same it's it's seen another layer of what's possible understanding the world on a deeper level than we think we see it and with art we get to experience all these emotions that are happening to someone else but because we're humans they resonate and we get to feel you can hear a song of heartbreak and you don't even have to be heartbroken but you feel you can feel it you can see a movie that can really impact your life and art has this incredible ability to widen our perspective and see things from different angles that we couldn't see before

1:17:21the great artists what caught very hard what does that mean from the outside you'd think you check into the recording studio and make something and put it out and then you go on tour and everybody screams it's a grueling job everything about it is hard it's wildly competitive not because you're competing with other people but because a lot of people are trying to do it and and you can be tremendously talented but if you don't have the work ethic to go with it it's unlikely that anyone will ever hear what you do so it's a this combination of really diligent work ethic doing whatever it takes and some interesting perspective an interesting point of view an interesting view on the world that someone else looks at and thinks hmm I never saw it that way before is there a way that you know to make my perspective on the world more interesting it sounds like

1:18:25you spend a lot of time looking at business and self-help material and I would say maybe look outside look at the great things outside of that area and see how they rhyme or how they resonate or how they relate often we get great ideas from something having nothing to do with what we're actually interested in we'll see some new thing how would say start going to museums you know go to museums look at the art take the walking tour with the headphones listen to the stories read the great literature when I say the great literature it's not one single list but if you ask around you'll find out and if three people recommend it definitely read it see the great movies ever see the great movies that you know the greatest movies of all time it's funny because when we're told how to become a good insert occupation we're told to go study that occupation be a good lawyer go study law but oftentimes it appears to

1:19:30be the case even with someone like Steve Jobs that they have these sort of rare things in their skill stack like his love of design and typography no one at university would have told him okay you want to think great computer programmer go do typography design yeah yeah it's usually what makes you good at what you do is not that you do it the same as everybody else so if everyone is reading the same books they're going to have the same perspective I would go outside I would also recommend reading old books as opposed to new books ancient wisdom is the best start very old I mean I've got some books here yes good choices you're fine of these books I love these books why what did they give you I first read the Dow when I was I just moved to California it's probably 30 years ago and I read it and I felt like this is different than anything I read before

1:20:32it speaks to me on so many levels and then I remember reading it something like six months later and it was an entirely different book and it's the kind of book that every time you read it at different points in your life you'll read an entirely different book and this was the inspiration for the way of code and the way of code is essentially an adaptation of the Dow for vibe coding oftentimes books can be summarized into a sort of a lesson is there a less essential lesson that you got from that book maybe I would use one sentence like that the soft overcomes the heart that would be good that would be one things that seem counterintuitive that non-action is off in the best action now that seems crazy but that really is where it's at you know there's a story about Napoleon that when someone would come to Napoleon during all the warring stuff that was going on

1:21:37they would come with an emergency you know you're the only one who can answer this here's the problem it's an emergency he would always say bring it back to me in two weeks and the idea was 99% of the problems that need your immediate attention in two weeks will resolve themselves and if it's still a problem in two weeks he'll deal with it let's try that with my fiance see how goes it's an interesting idea though that what was that phrase you said the soft the soft overcomes the heart the soft overcomes the heart yeah it's like the idea of water dripping on a rock that eventually the water will eat through the rock slowly dripping water soft water is totally pliable malleable soft and what about this book is there an essence well I like I like Carl Jung and this is probably supposed mystical book but in general his ideas of archetypes

1:22:44and looking into dreams and synchronicity are beautiful ideas and I think that they're I think that they're really how the world works so I find comfort in reading him because it's different than what we're shown in math and science but maybe closer to how it really is I'm gonna have to ask you to elaborate especially on this point of you saying that synchronicity is actually more so how the world works yeah I think we don't know how anything really works I think the world is much bigger and more interesting than we give it credit for and most of the things that we think we understand maybe are not so accurate like one of the things about science is that science is the understanding of how things are now until the next scientific

1:23:44breakthrough comes and negates everything that was before it it's like this ongoing interest and I think maybe there's an inner knowingness like we don't know why you meet somebody and you really want to spend time with them I don't think that science can explain that and you meet someone else and you feel like you know what I don't want to be around this person there's something going on energetically here that's not for me I think that that's the kind of wisdom that probably has a more impact on our lives than anything that you can any data can show us I was thinking about how believing what you've just said might change my life yes it would in what ways do you think it might change my life it's like you would take the shackles off of feeling like it has to be this narrow way or thinking well if these numbers look

1:24:44like this then it means this and this is what's gonna happen when in reality you know many times you've looked at the numbers and then acted accordingly and then three years later realized hmm didn't really work out the way I thought that's the real world like that's one way of looking at things you know the money ball approach is one way and then the other way is when you met your wife and you felt like I want to be with her that's different there weren't any metrics you could use to calculate whether that was a good idea or not it's like an invitation to trust ourselves more as well because you're talking about energetic feeling and and doing things that would make trusting yourself make more sense that's the other part of it's like if you spend so much time not trusting yourself then that antenna to be able to tell what's going on might be a little rusty so anything you can do to start using the antenna as often as possible and letting it dictate you there was a time when I

1:25:51was surprised by the miracles that I would see and now I'm not surprised it's still surprising but it happens enough where it's like yeah that's what happens look at that can't predict it can't bet on it but when it happens like it seemed like that's what was going to happen happened look at that and do you think there is a higher force taking actions on our lives or I think there's a higher intelligent creative intelligence that I'll say lives the world like the thing that allows plants to grow there's some generative force I don't know that it's like aiming particularly at you or me but there's some energy that like life wants to live and you can write same like catching a wave you know you can you can catch the wave the wave is there there's a lot of waves

1:27:00beyond the ones in the ocean and you can ride those waves you can't always see them but you might be able to feel them you might be able to over time you start to recognize them and for some reason it seems like the universe wants us to know about this that's what I talked about paying attention and about the the way of code like it was a ridiculous thing it was indefensible but I listened to this feeling it was coming from a lot of sources didn't make sense to me but it felt like hmm I'm being asked to do something here what could it be let me try to participate what I hear from a lot of what you're saying is um it's making me think about how like rationality as an idea being rational yeah can be a bit of a curse I would consider myself to be quite a rational person I would say rationalities overrated the rational world is very small is much more there are much more interesting things going on than the rational world

1:28:04yes that's what exactly what my fiance would say to me what she has been saying to me I think I think we we go together funnily enough you're talking about plus and minuses because she is someone that helps me break outside of rationality yes and when she's when she speaks to me about these ideas she has about these you know bigger ideas she has I always listen very intently although at some level I am I guess rebuttling them but do you see how they impact her life do you see what they do to her yeah does it feel like it raises her vibration like 100% yeah it's like there's that counts you know the way she feels that counts have I yeah one of the um enough for you to want to be around her all the time yeah I feel like I'm yeah leeching off that vibe to some degrees and dance what you talked about higher intelligence and you talked about a generative force which is the perfect segue into the big subject of the moment which is artificial intelligence kind of leads to what you're saying about vibrating as well for the first time ever I was saying yesterday I

1:29:08got a message from my friend who isn't involved in technology saying like I'm concerned I don't know what this technology is is it going to take our jobs I'm concerned and that for me was the bat signal that that this is really getting down to everyday people this week there was a anthropic researcher and who also worked at a a chat GPT open AI say he thinks it might be the end of the human race really so there's a more than 10% chance of that AI is a broad subject sure you've got lots of thoughts on it yeah I think it's a it's a wildly powerful tool and I'm curious to see what it can do like any powerful tool it could be really dangerous it could be used for batter it could be used for good fire burned down my house I wouldn't say we should ban fire fire cooks our food does some good stuff heats our eats our houses it's one of these things like the internet change the world it does some really good things probably does some really bad things

1:30:14very powerful the printing press when it came along the church tried to ban the printing press they didn't want that they didn't want books to be able to they want information to be able to be for everybody good came from that and probably some bad can be creative I don't know I'm curious I don't know I feel like everything we've talked about today about what creativity is has to do with point of view and AI doesn't have a point of view AI is the collected ideas that already exist it doesn't have it doesn't see it from a particular angle and if you ask it the same question several times or several days in a row it may give you very different answer a day after day so it's not like it has this is how it sees the world if I lost an AI to make 10 million different tracks yeah would it theoretically it would at some point make a hit even though it doesn't have a

1:31:17a point of view per se yeah I wouldn't I wouldn't it's hard for me to say what a hit even is okay but I would say it could make 10,000 tracks and you might like one or two of them or you may like 5% of them you might and that's interesting and I could see like there was a time when we would sample records when we were doing hip hop records it was called great digging where you'd go record stores find old records listen to them all the way through and find one little parts like ah this little break beat let's use that and make a new song out of it and it and you change the context make something new so if AI was playing music constantly in the background and then all of a sudden I heard a little clip oh that's a good sample we can make that into something that would be a use I think the idea of it doing the end to end of replacing the artist I don't think it I can't imagine doing that I'd be curious if it could but I think what we want from an artist has to do with point of view and I see AI maybe is a tool that could help the artist and maybe even help the

1:32:23person who doesn't know they're an artist be an artist so I can't draw I can't play any instruments I don't have any talent I have no way to express my creativity but I could talk to the AI and maybe I could prompt the AI into making something beautiful through iteration and prompting so maybe more people will get to be creative using AI and I think that's a beautiful thing this is such a recurring debate you hear it probably on every panel everywhere at the moment which is can AI be creative and I've thought a lot about like I've sort of tried to interrogate the question itself because you first sort of need to define what creativity is and then I think what people are saying is when they think of creativity they actually think of good creativity that sold well or that was number one so oftentimes I remember when my friends were saying to me the other day I don't think AI could ever make and then he liked named a great song yeah I think I could never make that and even when I look at that great song what's making him think it was great creativity and in hindsight

1:33:26was actually as you use the word end to end an end to end process of having the meeting with MTV building up distribution and reputation maybe people being following that artist's life and therefore that being part of the point of view people have followed Olivia Dean so when she makes music something else comes with that a story comes with that Olivia Dean sent a record label so maybe there's some support there that's done and in hindsight we go amazing creativity but what we're actually saying is there was this long process which resulted in this me experiencing this thing and so I consider it creative now AI might like I was trying to think like okay AI could help with be the tool that you describe but isn't the whole process part of what we look back on and say that was great creativity I would say the whole process I also think it's even beyond the process like the things that we make are the reminders that we're creative they're just the output the real creativity is the idea that allows this thing to be made if you look at

1:34:33Alfred Hitchcock his movies he works out his whole movie in advance and he storyboards the whole movie and if you look at the storyboard he doesn't even really need to make the movie the whole thing is there just in drawings exactly frame by frame the whole movie is there Wes Anderson makes his movie frame by frame in advance before there are actors so he could watch the whole movie um like a mock a mock up of the movie and then with the actors it's is where he executes the idea and I think AI is it could be a great tool to like assist in this mocking up but it's the prompt the prompt is where the creativity is the prompt is what Wes is using and what Alfred Hitchcock is using to tell the the artist what to draw in each frame the creativity is there it's not in the

1:35:38drawing it's not in the finished movie it's in the prompt so that I feel like now using prompts anyone can prompt and you can get better at prompting through experimentation so someone who thinks of themselves is not not creative the idea of learning how to prompt it's pretty easy it's really like the barrier of entry is very low and I think that's a good thing in a world where the barrier of entry is so low to creating what what becomes the distinction what makes a great artist from a not so great great artist both the same thing it now it's the same thing as now like the the reason you love the artist you love is they make something that changes your life moves you you want to listen to it a million times you want to see the movie over and over again you want to read you want to read their books I don't know if it if the AI itself

1:36:47could write the book that you want to read over and over again I don't know if that's a problem if that happens I don't see any indication that that's going to happen but more good art doesn't seem like a bad thing me and my business partner out there George Gibson we were on Spotify and we um listen to this song we really liked it and about two months later I figured out it was AI there only reason I figured out was AI was because I went to get more from the artist and I was like click through I realized it was AI and then the other thing that happened around the time is it there was these two songs from this Spotify artist I guess I'm one of them disappeared and so I that's when I went on Google and was looking like what what happened to that song yeah and it turns out it was an AI artist something interesting happened when I realized I was listening to an AI song what happened I didn't like it as much anymore interesting and so when I think about again creativity I wonder if there is a sort of an irreplaceably human

1:37:49element because it resonated with me because there was this story that it came from this woman who was singing and she was talking about this subject and it meant something to her and then when I found out it was none of that it the song lost something if you think about Andy Warhol's art Andy Warhol started as a commercial illustrator so he would draw shoes for advertising let's say and then he came up with what essentially now what we call pop art and pop art was a brillo box or a soup or a Campbell soup can and maybe the first Campbell soup cans he drew them and painted them those were the first ones but then over time he did a series of images that were screen printed so like Elvis Marilyn Monroe for really famous the most famous Andy Warhol images he never painted anything he never touched anything he said we're going to use this shot of

1:38:51Marilyn and we're going to treat it in this way and he prompted the the people in the studio to screen print these things and they're not less Andy Warhol the art's always in the ideation that's where the art is it's not who put the paint on the canvas there was a time even even going back to the the Renaissance so many of the painters had studios and you'd see Rembrandt and Rembrandt might have painted 70% he might have painted 30% of that painting but it was his vision for the painting and he would have the guys in the studio you guys do this not sure if Rembrandt's the best example of this but could be that it was it's a normal thing that Artisu Ed studios would have other people other painters disciples who would do a lot of the work

1:39:53it happens now in the studio so many records you'll hear it can be a band but then the band isn't playing on the record studio musicians are playing on the record it's normal it's just part of the process but doesn't make it less good it's just a different thing it's fine it's the ideation is where it comes from and I don't know that the AI's ideation is interesting to anyone we'll see I always think with like the F1 if they removed Lewis Hamilton from the car I wouldn't watch the F1 anymore even if the cars drove faster and yeah beat their times because there's something in me watching a human being experience those emotions of competition and anger and you know you can kind of see by the way they're driving how they're feeling and you can relate to that guy I felt like that I'm work once yeah here does seem less interesting if it was just a car automated car doing it so what what has been removed is kind of I guess what

1:40:55I experienced with that Spotify song I was talking about is like resident human relatability and resonance and me too and connection but it's interesting that you liked it before you knew and that's interesting you know that's interesting to me and I wonder would I be against something because of the way it was made it doesn't make sense to me either like it or you know it's we're living in interesting times absolutely you used to add miracles early on which I found to be an interesting word yeah and I wondered if you had experienced miracles through the creative process of working with great artists all the time what all these is there a miracle you could share there's an avid brother song called um no hard feelings and they were playing it in studio and it was okay it was fine it wasn't great

1:41:58they played it a few times and then finally they played it one time and again I don't even remember if we even said do anything different might be just try it again you know I could have been that nothing changed and for some reason while they were playing it it was like time stopped and this incredible thing happened I don't know why no one involved knew why or how but after I remember about a minute into the song I remember thinking there's this feeling it's scary because it's really good we don't know how or why I hope it can get to the end of the song because if they don't get to the end of the song we don't have it and we maybe we can never get back to this that's what it's like it's like so as soon as you realize in the process if you happen to realize okay something shifted something magic is happening now sometimes you don't know it right away sometimes you know it

1:43:00after I've made an album with Neil Young where we recorded for a week it was not good the band it sounded like the band not only couldn't play the songs but would never be able to play the songs that was a feeling in the first week and at the end of the first week Neil said to me after he's like don't worry next week's gonna be better we're gonna they're gonna be able to do it it's like okay okay like I'm nothing showed me that but let's go I fall listen and then the next week Neil said to Ralph the drummer it's like okay let's play whatever the third song again and I was like well we already did that last week it is like oh let's maybe we could beat it and I was like no I really think we got it and now last week we thought not only did we not get it but that we may never get it then we try playing it again it is no better and then Ralph says put back put on the one from last week and he puts on the one from last week and he says well turn

1:44:04down the turn down the bass a little bit maybe turn the piano up and we listen to it again and it seemed like it still had problems but the magic was there kind of ate it had a lot of mistakes but forgetting the mistakes the feeling the feeling was there and then our job was just like doing little bits of repairs here and there a little ducking a sound or featuring a sound or adding another vocal or doing little things and turn almost a whole album turned out to be recorded that first week when it seemed like it would never happen so that would that felt like a miracle the question that's front of mind when you talk about these moments where great art was created everybody wants to know how to make it repeatable how do we repeat that process it's not none of

1:45:06this is repeatable now the thing that's repeatable is you show up and you keep going till it's great whatever it takes that's the thing it's like and sometimes you listen back like you'll make a demo or you'll do a little sketch and you think this is this is a great idea this is beautiful now I'm going to make a big painting and you work on the painting for months and months and months it never really comes together but then you look back at that original drawing that you made in five minutes like you know that's actually it happened on the first album I made with Johnny Cash we recorded all these songs in my living room of him singing and playing guitar we weren't recording for an album we were recording it was the way that we got to know each other I asked him to play me all of his favorite songs songs he like you remembered from growing up songs that mean a lot to him or I might say can you try playing this song let's just see what it sounds like more like trying to understand what sounded good when he sang it we were doing this exploration and we did that with the idea of

1:46:11we're gonna test 100 songs this way and then maybe we'll find 10 and the 10 that we like best will go into the studio with a band and we'll record them and we did that and recorded them with a great band and it was interesting but it wasn't better and then we did it again with a different band same thing wasn't better it's like I guess those recordings from the living room which we had no thoughts of anybody ever hearing they have something that the real recordings don't have and we ended up putting out those so but again that we didn't go into the process to do that we discovered it through the process and sometimes it's the opposite way where you may you have a clear vision of what it's gonna be and you do it all the way and it it tells you through that process it wants to be this entire other thing it wants to be it wants to be you're saying that as if it's got a mind of its own it does well I'm only saying it does because

1:47:17it shows you know what you think is wrong try it like this you sort of personifying you sort of yeah I'm personifying it doesn't say it in words but it's clear the indicators are clear what we get back is hmm we thought it was supposed to be this fast when we listen to it it's clearly much too fast we have to play it slower we thought it was gonna be a loud electric song turns out it wants to be a really quiet song we didn't know that has there been a time when you thought something was just the most amazing thing ever and then when it went out into the world the world didn't subjectively think it was amazing for sure it probably happens often and how do you rationalize that on the basis of where as soon as I decide that I like it enough to share with the world I'm done I move on to the next thing I can't the what anyone else thinks doesn't really impact it it's fun when people like it I love it when people like it but that's

1:48:23total bonus the real work is I like this enough to put it out into the world my name's on the back of the record the artist names on the front they like it enough to put it out I like it enough to put it out here you go what's next and what comes of that you're treating like none of your business correct because anything that I think of past that is going to totally undermine the creative process the creative process is a pure delicate process to be protected and if you think about what happens next totally undermines it the house of cards humbles when we're working in the studio and something starts sounding good and somewhat one of the artists might say oh this sounds like it could be a single like we're not talking about that that has nothing to do with what

1:49:25we're doing what are you doing making the best thing we can make we're making the best thing we can make and I always use this I was thought of it as greatness like we're working towards greatness times greatness didn't know what it meant and more recently I came to realize we're making it has an offering to God and if we're making it as an offering to God things like the numbers that's a much that's insignificant this is we're doing our best as an offering there's nothing deeper than that there's no metric that can be with that I didn't always know that but it was always the same was there a point when you realized that yeah a few years ago and it felt good when I realized it was like of course you know 35 years in do you remember the moment I have a vague memory I don't

1:50:32remember the specifics I remember I was sitting on a lifeguard chair in Hawaii and I remember thinking about it there but I don't know if that's the moment where it struck me but I remember it was like it was a total epiphany even though it was only you know for me it didn't apply to anything else it was just like I realized what I've been doing all this time without understanding it it just became clear it's like oh that's what it is yeah it was a great it was a great feeling of like now it all makes more sense do you mean in the literal sense you think that you are making offerings for a higher power very literally I'm saying God and God defined as the higher power we can call them the father okay and you're literally so the art you make the music you you make he is actually the customer in some respects

1:51:36know because it's a gift so he's not it's not a customer he's the beneficiary but he's not the customer and it's like a I want to I want to show you my best out of love and thanks gratitude here's the best I can do that's what it is this is my best if anybody else likes it great but if not we're good does he have a good feedback I want to say that when other people like it I might I might take that as a good sign but I don't know I don't really think about it but I feel like when a lot of people like it's like the energy of it is positive all the way around interesting to think about fun to think about do you think that's why we're here because I'm

1:52:38now trying to figure out why there'd be such a relationship with God where we were offering gifts and how that links to maybe higher purpose well I think we're here to show who we are we're here to self express I am here I'm here to tell you this is me this is how I see the world and it's say to you show me who you are tell me how you see the world and the way we make sense of it is we discuss that and we may in some areas we may line up in some cases we may differ but that's how we figure it out and everything we do is this is how I see the world and then other people say I never saw it that way but yes I'm on board with that and other people are like no that's not for me and that's fine but we are here our purpose is to self express through several different means three any different way any self expression comes in a lot of in a lot of forms

1:53:41but the best version it's never because they did it this way that's a self expression copying that they were successful and I'm copying them that's not self expression that's a different game that's not what we're here for you can do it it's fine it's fine but I don't think that's why we I sat with someone who's an expert on consciousness he's a physicist who just you know is very spiritual one of the things he said to me which is really stated with me is he was positing that potentially consciousness itself is God has divided consciousness into lots of little pieces into my French bulldog Pablo into Rick into someone in China and he set us all off to go and explore and understand the world and by doing so consciousness is seeking to understand itself very strange idea and then I went to I think Malta and I was driving down the road in Malta and I looked and I saw these tourists and with that idea in mind that consciousness has divided itself to go and understand itself into these pieces into a fish so we can

1:54:44go check the bottom of the ocean I saw these tourists and they were all just looking up at this mountain and like with in the abstract that's they it looks like a very strange thing that we're like fascinated by the novel and so I started to think maybe that is true maybe this thing called consciousness is this exploration to understand itself and it's turned some consciousness has gone into Rick and Rick is experimenting and creating to understand and to and kind of what you were saying they reminded me of it because sounded like you were talking about consciousness itself and the self expression of consciousness so it could be it's beautiful idea strange idea isn't it that's strange to me nothing is off the table nothing's off the table one of them one of the great artists you've worked with we talked about is um was Jay Z yes and you have this wonderful eight-part documentary yes coming out with Jay Z which I was fascinated enough to I went and fascinating to watch it's right out on the 18th of September and one of the clips that I

1:55:49watched from it just how does it run down is the story of um this brand yes a sub spades I found it really fast including a story that Jay Z told about this brand a sub spades um for many reasons but it also it rhymes with some of the things you're saying about integrity and how you feel and his decision to um abandon another brand and at the cost at a near-term cost against his near-term incentives and pursue launching his own yes and what's interesting what what's most interesting about that story and it's not we don't make a lot of it it's just a passing remark but what happened was he decided not to support a company going forward crystal yes which he had made very popular in the hip-hop community he was the first person to drink it nobody knew what it was he talked about

1:56:50it in in records in songs and it became a very popular drink in the hip-hop community and the person who ran crystal said some disparaging remarks about it about hip-hop people drinking crystal I can't get them to stop drinking it yeah and Jay was insulted rightly so and he said you know what no more I won't do that anymore now he that didn't happen and then he thought I'm going to go start my own that's not what happened that happened and almost immediately someone came to him and said I'm thinking about starting this brand do you want to do it with me and all they had was the bottle which you love the shape of the bottle and you love that it was a gold bottle and it's like the universe allowed first he gets this negative comment

1:57:50he reacts following his belief stood for what he believed in removed it from his clubs yes and this new opportunity that he was not looking for arrives and it's like you couldn't write the story I mean you could write the story but it seems almost unbelievable the way it happened but that's how it really happened and that's again like the miraculous nature of Jay did the right thing and in response for doing the right thing he ended up owning a champagne brand do you believe that's how the universe is working yes I know it I know it is that karma what is that well that's part it you could call it that's like there's a lot of there's a lot of names there's a lot of labels but you can call it karma when he took that action he wasn't thinking about how he might benefit not at all all he knew was these guys are insulting this movement and I'm not going

1:58:56to have anything to do with them anymore after I was telling everybody this is the best stuff they insult us they're we crossing them off they're not for us anymore we will not give them our business he wasn't thinking about starting a business he wasn't thinking about that at all but it became a great business it became a great business but it's it's the universe filled the void this is another thing we can talk about it's interesting idea you're in a you're dating someone you think maybe this is not this is not right for the long term but you're going along with it and then you think well maybe I'll meet someone while this is happening and then if I like that person more then I'll get out of this relationship for that relationship and switch a lot of people do this I feel like it's not the way I don't I don't think that's the way it works I think when you know that something isn't working and you end it and you

2:00:04create that vacuum you create that space the good thing that you're looking for can come into fill it Jay wasn't looking in this case he wasn't looking for a good thing to fill it but he did create a vacuum in his life there's a thing that he's out there representing and now he decides based on their action I'm not going to represent this anymore and the universe steps in says you know what you're doing a good job representing that thing how about representing one for yourself that you can feel good about representing it's funny what you were saying there about creating a vacuum we encultured like generally in society we celebrate starting so like you know you start on your job you start anything but obviously from what you've just said logically you can't really start anything big in life without first doing something which none of us really glamorize actually top is it we say never quit don't quit yeah but that is the necessary first step to starting to

2:01:04starting a brand which in Jay Z's case went on to be worth 630 million dollars at the time when he sold his stake we have a weird relationship with quitting we need certainty I need the branch yeah no I think that's it's an empowering thing it's like taking control I just had a conversation about this recently with someone who's a very high up person and a very high tech company who is who's decided to step down and he's stepping down for the right reasons and he's concerned that people the perception will be he's being fired that that'll be the outside world but he's really stepping down because he doesn't like what's going on there and usually people don't leave jobs at that level so it's an interesting it's an interesting moment in time when that when that happens so that's what you're saying about getting artists to step outside of their genre to quit their genre yeah yeah this is something that I've made for you I realized that the Diabesio audience are strivers

2:02:10whether it's in business or health we all have big goals that we want to accomplish and one of the things I've learnt is that when you aim at the big big big goal it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards the way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tiny small steps and we call this an R team the 1% and actually this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here so what we've done so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have is we've made these 1% diaries and we released these last year and they all sold out so I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back but also to introduce some new colors and to make some minor tweaks to the diaries so now we have a better range for you so if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation that I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again and you can get yours at the diary.com

2:03:11and if you want the link the link is in the description below I hear you used to make music with one of these things here I've never used that particularly device but it looks beautiful you know if I came to you Rick and I went I love that yeah and clearly I mean objective it wasn't great I don't know good great but if I was like right I want to put that out do you really believe it's great if you really believe it's great I support you putting it out really if you really believe it's great yes would you enter giving me this hypothetical with like what if this thing that's bad if I tell you I think it's great it's like you don't believe it's great I trust when you tell me I really love this thing I want to play it for people I support that even if you it doesn't matter if you it doesn't matter and if I don't like it I'll say you might

2:04:12want to try these things but I always support somebody who makes something that they love that's beautiful for the world is there an example of that with artists you've worked with where they presented you with something you didn't really get it you didn't feel it you didn't like it they put it out and it was a huge success for them but also for the audience I can think of one but I don't really want to talk about it but yet I could think of one it has happened is there anything you can tell me about it without identifying what the song was or the person was I was working with an artist and there were lots of good songs and there was one song that I felt like this one doesn't fit with all the rest it feels like it doesn't go with the others and the artist chose to include that one and it ended up becoming a big hit wasn't the first single but it did become a big hit and it's anytime I give my opinion this isn't this is a really

2:05:17interesting idea this idea of I'm asked how do I have the confidence because when I say I don't like something I really mean it it's like well how could you have the confidence that it's not good it's like well I have the confidence that I don't like the pizza it doesn't mean more than that you know it ends I was asked to produce guns and roses for a stableman I turned them down because I went to see him live playing a little club in a basement maybe 30 people there and they were they were a hair band at the time would make up and stuff and I just looked like I don't really get it now they went on to become guns and roses it's good that I didn't work with them because if I would have worked with them it might have turned into something different than what they did without me so it wasn't the right it wasn't the right fit um do you know what I'm saying it's like yeah it's I'm honest about what I see and it's true but it's only true for me

2:06:23I'm wondering if you can be at the inverse of that if you can be a great creative and never become actually successful ever absolutely for sure for sure probably more often than not that's probably the that's probably regular because becoming successful has so much to do with other things beyond being talented like the talent is a piece but then the stars have to align like for anything to break through and get successful so many things have to go right so many totally out of your control you must have worked with a lot of artists where you thought I know this person is so talented yeah um but for whatever reason they they just didn't yeah it happens the world wasn't it happens and that also could be a karmic thing like there could be maybe for some reason this

2:07:26person is good as they are that's not their path on this life maybe success is not part of their life path who knows that's it's a different that's a different question you know you co-founded deaf jam when you are a very young young man I think you're 21 years old when you co-founded deaf jam right then through that process you you got to mean you know in some incredible people I've got some of the albums that you produced around that time and published um but one of those people threw throughout your career and then thereafter was Jay Z what was special about Jay Jay wrote it in a way that no one else wrote all the other rappers that I worked with spent a lot of time writing lyrics and I never saw Jay write lyrics and when I got to work with him I got to see him not physically write lyrics and when I played him the beat for 99 problems he said okay just keep looping I keep playing it over and over again and he sat in the back of the

2:08:31room and it went on long enough that I almost forgot that he was there because I was talking the engineer and it's just playing over and over and he's silent in the back on occasion you could hear mumbling or humming and then after 20 or 30 minutes he's like okay I got it ran into the other room and did the first verse totally the whole thing no nothing was written just he just remembered it and he did it he did several takes and each of the takes the words were the same but the cadence was different like almost as if a saxophoneist was playing a solo and you know how the solo goes but every time you play you play a little different that's what it was like like it had emphasis in different places and the cadence was a little different and one word might be featured in one version whereas in the next version that word just kind of went by less important and then so he did let's say three takes and then he came in he listened to him he's like yeah I

2:09:34think second one's good and then he's like okay keep playing it and all and he sat back down and he did the same thing again about another half hour later like let's do the next one till he was ready so he just it just happens in his mind what is that that taste is that I don't know it's a it's a real and unusual skill set very unusual I don't know how we how we can remember because it's complicated it's not like in a rock song there might be four lines in a verse pretty easy to remember but rap songs have a lot of words and it's complicated but so that was that was the first thing that really I would say separated him for everyone else from me as I just process was totally different than anyone else I ever worded with which is interesting because other people might arrive at the same outcome but take a different journey that they might you know write lots of things down and yeah so there's not a correct process no there's no with all of these things in art there's never a right way but what works for one person doesn't

2:10:38mean it works for someone else and that's one of the real dangers of getting advice from people is someone tells you I wrote it this way and it was really successful so this is how you have to do it but that's not true that it might work but that might be the way that it works for that guy not you hmm so always be wary when getting advice because again people give you advice with the best intentions but they're giving you advice based on their story not your story so why do we get advice from I would say listening to a lot of stuff it depends on what what the sub like what where where what what medium we're working in but I would swim deeply in that medium whatever it is and then really listen to what's going on in you it has to do with you how you see it it's an

2:11:38internal it's an internal compass that tells you where to go and I'll also say there may not only be one answer there may not even be a right answer and that's where it really comes down to like this internal feeling of I would take as I would hear as much information from as many people as possible hopefully conflicting and then really check in and take as much time as it takes to internally get to a point of where you know what you know what the right answer is you know what the right answer for you is there is no right answer but you know what the right answer for you is and that's what you always want to get to what is the right answer for me how do I know you'll know it and if you don't know it you don't have enough there's not enough you haven't done enough research yet because you it has to come from you it has to come from you of

2:12:41I've gotten to the point I've done enough homework of conflicting information where I can listen to myself and I feel good about it one of the ways that that noise that voice inside of us gets conflicted is we have our parents I know your story I know your parents you know they kind of thought maybe you'd be a doctor but you didn't like needles so they were like okay he can be a lawyer a lot of people say they have that voice if my parents and and it's sometimes hard to untangle what voices me and my wishes versus external yes I remember when I first went to college and moved out of my parents house it took me probably a year to understand what in my head was me and what in my head was them I was definitely confused but I had to create that space or lucky enough to create that space to allow it to happen again I didn't go to college

2:13:47for that to happen but in college being outside of the house I started to understand who I was and who they were and where we were aligned and where we saw the world differently and it was fine but it took time because I didn't know that I didn't know that if you ask a lot of people who they want to be or in your case in music you know what what music they want to make or what their goal is they will say things that they don't realize have come from somewhere else yes happens a lot in my life I'll interview someone I say what do you want to be and they'll say something just arbitrary and big and fancy and then oftentimes when you like ask well questions there's nothing behind it so they got it from Instagram or they got it from their parents how how can we cultivate a better understanding of our own truth so when I played you that bad song you started trying to you you went in such a truth how can I how can I know how can I pass out what is me and my lineman and what is inherited from somewhere else as I said before

2:14:55I think you need to find some practices that ground you in yourself meditation is a great one I'm sure there are others but you have to get in touch with the with you maybe therapy works for some people we got to get to where who you are it's a it's a it's a big job it's a big job and it's not it's not a quick there's no quick fix her remember the first time I ever was in a talk therapy session I remember not knowing how to talk I didn't know how I felt about anything I didn't know how to talk I didn't know about my inner state at all and only through repetition and doing it over time and you start understanding so it's just another skill set to develop I never looked inward even with all the years of meditation I never looked inward are you that I think so do you

2:15:55know who you are I think I don't know that I could explain it but I feel like I feel like I am grounded in myself and I feel it pretty clearly what's the difference between when you want and now that you are is it a feeling or is that is there a symptom is it happiness I would say there's more of a no there was happiness there too so it's it's not happiness there was happiness in in the time that I didn't know who I was I probably didn't know why but I I remember being happy um it's not happiness yeah I think I come back to the word knowingness just like you feel it when you ask me something I can tell you how I feel I could tell you how I see it I don't know if I

2:16:55was able to do that before I'm talking about when I was young I don't know if I could do that you know I still like the things I like my taste was still my taste but I don't think I could um I don't know that I could access it as well as I can now it's happiness a goal to aim for well I like happiness I don't think it's a goal but but I definitely would rather be happy than not joyful is beautiful um I think maybe the word is peace getting to a point of because peace like resting in peace seems like a really good state and I guess when things get if things get too high there's always the other side you know like even if if I if I find myself

2:17:56in a really great mood which does happen sometimes sometimes the next day I'm just in a bad mood and it almost feels like it's a it's uh maybe it's a chemical thing maybe if you burnt if you really use the feel good chemicals maybe there's a deficit the next day I don't know I don't know how it works but it feels like if everything's cool and if that keeps going I like that and notice that very familiar with the highs and the lows one of my favorite artists is Kanye and you've worked with Kanye I want to ask the same question about what made him different what makes him brilliant in your point of view he's um I've said this to him I'm totally fearless when it comes to art he's totally fearless always he's fearless in life I'm not fearless in life I'm a good collaborator for him and when it comes to art because I am fearless in art and not everybody is

2:18:59but he's always fearless and it's um it's really something to behold great strength it's rare to have that many um successes when you're taking such big risk that's what fascinates me about him yeah I don't agree with that really no no no no I I think the risk and the successful hand in hand it's only through the risk that the greatness has shown so it's not possible to sort of produce more of the same and still be considered a great I don't think so I don't know it doesn't seem right to me feels like there's this edge there's a tight rope and you're walking on the tight rope and if you make it it's really good and if you don't make it it's not so good but the only choice is the tight rope the risk yeah and then you will achieve greatness

2:20:04well if you if you make it yes if you make it yes but that's the risk and it's the risk that I I hold heartedly support whole heartedly why because that's where it's at like that's if the goal is to make the beautiful most beautiful thing you can and to self express in the purest way it's a razor's edge walk there's nothing ordinary about it it's beyond ordinary there's nothing normal about it normal is nothing to aspire to average is nothing to aspire to if you're looking for greatness sometimes eggs get broken but that's just but that's what comes with it that's how it works oh we will cut out for greatness because it comes with a cost and walking tight reps is not for everybody yeah I think we all have potential and when I say greatness it's like

2:21:08we all have potential to be the greatest version of ourselves you know we we can be you can be the best version of you I don't know what that is compared to other people who have graded other things you know I it doesn't mean you'll be the best F1 driver but your light can shine brighter than anyone else doing what you do and I'm into that I support that I want to see that with these great people this big list of people that I have in front of me that you've worked with I mean it's just this endless endless almost unbelievable list everybody from like Justin Timberlake to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to helping I mean Kanye on his the record runaway which is one of the most incredible records of all time to we've talked about Jay Z and System of a Down and AC DC and Mick Jagger and I mean there's a list list when I look at it I go with these people all great yes and with a great from birth or or is are they ordinary people that

2:22:14made a decision there I would say they're ordinary people who made a decision maybe some of them had some particular gifts but others were ordinary and cultivated a gift that list they're not special they're not the only ones like that but they really rode that wave I think of M&M as a good example M&M as someone who's always writing he's always writing because he wants to be able he wants to be the best he could possibly be and he's insanely obsessive about that so his entire life is focused on sitting in a notepad writing all day and all night it's all he does that's what makes him him even if he's not publishing an album all doesn't matter it's not he's not writing I asked him one point looking at his notebooks is like is all this commit you know is are all these fructies like

2:23:15no no no 99% of this stuff no one will ever see I just want to be good I want to I'm practicing I'm I want to get better at what I do he's in training always if you think of it like an athlete you know there are athletes who there are some athletes who train in the offseason and there are some who don't and the ones who train in the offseason are usually better and usually have a longer career it's like that when we sat down you asked me a question you said um you said Stephen you did this podcast have the guests changed you yes and much of what I've shown here is how you've changed people's lives through being a coach or a producer or however you might define that my question to you is can you give me a couple of example of artists that for whatever reason fundamentally changed you yeah first one I'll say is Johnny Cash because I got to spend time around someone who was so so humble and quiet and smart and didn't offer much like like if you didn't if you didn't draw him out

2:24:22he wouldn't say anything but anything you asked him about he knew about and had a really incredible point of view but he wasn't um he didn't have a need to let you know that it was all going on inside and he was a beautiful spiritual person and I loved him and I feel like my life was really improved getting spent so much time with someone so so inspiring that's one what is the emotion where there's some emotion yeah yeah it's beautiful man beautiful man next one would be um Tom Petty who was he was the ultimate craftsman so in the Beatles you have John and Paul and John was more of a

2:25:23rawnerv who tours chest open and led with his heart and then Paul was more of a almost like a a savant of music like like a crafts person Paul could take anything and make it good John was like a rawnerv who could just show his soul and there two very different skills and together that's what makes it the Beatles also the fact that George Mingo and Kratapal I mean we're even with you know even as great as as Paul and John are it's only the Beatles when it's the four of them Paul is the craftsman Paul knows all the parts Paul knows how to put it together he's the only one of the Beatles who knew how to do that other than George Martin whose job was to do that but Paul understood that side of it Tom Petty was like Paul he could do he could play

2:26:29anything he saw all ways around it he knew how to make it and in addition to that was a great song writer so he had kind of what was great about John and Paul both in him so being around him was really inspiring also as a record producer I learned a lot from getting to work with him I offered a outside perspective I was younger different so I brought something to the table but I learned a tremendous amount because at the time that I worked with him I had only worked with artists who you know made different albums like new artists and he was a very established brilliant studio recording artist so I got to learn a lot for him what did he teach you if that had to just be one lesson you pull down one of the things he talked about was everything always had to be in time

2:27:29and in tune you have to understand every word of the vocals seems like an obvious thing but so many records you can't understand every word and he would listen back and he's like ah this word it's supposed to be plural and you can't hear the s I have to re-record it or after maybe we could punch in the s because if you can't understand it it loses something in translation you have to understand every word so timing tune um he also was another person who would work forever on it until it was right he would he was not at all lazy he would never want it to be done the first album we worked on together was called Wildflowers and I think we probably worked on it not every day but we worked on it over two years probably two and a half years it's a long time for now at that point in time especially it was a long time but there was no hurry it was just like well we're making progress let's keep going let's keep going let's keep going and um so I learned a lot from him

2:28:35also about patience some might say that's perfectionism and people think of perfectionism as a form of procrastination and yeah there was no procrastination in it and I've been around but like I've been around procrastinating artists too it's a whole different thing how do you know how do you know if you're a perfectionist or a procrastinator is there a symptom yeah the real the real procrastinators get to the points usually has to do with being afraid to put it out into the world so there's some artists I know famous artists you you know who they are who haven't put out album but haven't put out album for 10 years I think the longer you wait the harder it gets in general why the pressure like the longer you wait the more it feels like it can never live up to what the expectation is it's a difficult position to get into and the perfectionist their reason for delay is not to do with fear it's to do with something else

2:29:41is what you're saying hard to know hard to know I don't know yeah I don't know so those are two artists that you've mentioned that changed you Johnny and Tom is there any others that front of my let me see Adele she's really good when she's amazing she's like it's like everything she does is great when she sings everything stops as she can do it over and over again and it's always great it's not like some singers work for a long time singing a bunch takes some piecing them together to get the good one she'll sing a song 30 times in a row and it'll be great 30 times might not be the same 30 times it'll always be great you produced her 21 album umm about some songs in there some of that did you know she was great when you met her

2:30:42was there something that made her distinctive from these other great artists at a time when most pop artists at that time didn't write their own songs she was more like a throwback to the 70s singer songwriters so there was something about her I also got to work with Shakira who also writes her own songs and there's something about those pop artists who write their own songs that it's different than someone who can just deliver a song well um so I feel like it's a little bit of an anomaly in a pop world where so much of it is more I want to say manufactured meaning a bunch of people work on the song and then the singer sings the song Adele a key piece is that it always comes from her and you can feel that in the songs and it's more personal and I love that you can feel it seeing her live as well it feels like this the first time she's ever sung the song when you we experience her life Rick what is the most important thing

2:31:44we haven't talked about that we shouldn't talked about should have talked about as it relates to creativity and the art of making great things or good things or whatever the measurement stick might be I think we've kind of covered it that the main idea really is stop listen to what anyone tells you be true to yourself work hard never give up don't quit and just keep going and and don't put undue pressure on your art find a way to live that doesn't put pressure on your art so that you could be totally free and the things that you're making for them to be the dream version and hopefully at some point the dream version takes over and it becomes your whole life not just your passion why did you make this documentary with Jay-Z well I had made a documentary with Paul McCartney a

2:32:44few years ago that was six episodes and the reason for that one was there were no I never I never saw any documentaries about either Paul or the Beatles about musicianship there were always about either the songwriting or about Beatlemania and I thought without the musician ship there wouldn't be Beatlemania and yes you need yes the songs you couldn't deliver the songs without the musician ship so I thought there was this big void in the in the story of Paul if you were to make a list of the best bass players of all time Paul belongs at number one but most people wouldn't even put them on the list because you don't think of them as a bass player you think of them as Beatle Paul and I just thought there was an opportunity to shed light on something that I love and through I thought that was going to be a more traditional documentary but it turned into a different kind of documentary happened by itself wasn't pre-planned turned into this interesting

2:33:48thing that was different than anything else that had been made with Paul or about the Beatles and people liked it it felt like a dream for me to be part of it and after that happened I was thinking about who else is I want to say misunderstood because that's kind of what it is like yes Paul's great and everyone knows Paul's great but people don't think of them as a great musician they think of them as something else and I started thinking about Jay Z why because Jay Z is thought of today as this incredible businessman and he's you think of him as billionaire businessman behind the scenes genius married to a famous singer most of what we think about him isn't poet that's not the first thing you think of and even the people who like Jay Z

2:34:49might not really know the depth of the writing and I thought it's an interesting story like the lyrics are really intricate and really difficult and it's astounding what he does and he's famous but and and that's the reason he's famous but nobody knows it people see him in a different light so I thought shedding light on the poet the lyricist the artistry of Jay Z was a really interesting thing and luckily I've shared the idea with him and when he when I told him the idea he said he said I like it a lot I'm not going to say yes because if I say yes we're going to make it and I don't know so I'll let you know so okay and that we didn't talk about again for probably a year and then I called a friend of his and I say you know I shared this idea with Jay a year ago we haven't discussed it since what do you think he's like

2:35:55calm and ask him I said I feel like I already told him the idea don't you think he should just call and ask tell me he wants to do it he's like if you don't call him it's not going to happen he's like just call him and ask him and he'll and he'll either say yes or no but at least you could ask him it's still I heard that that was good information given to me of what to do and I probably didn't call for six months eight months just because like felt uncomfortable really discussed it and eventually I can't remember if it happened in a call or if I ran into him or if I went to see him can't remember but the next time we talked about it's like well I'll sue it so okay no we did it it's stunning it's stunning I think because it's different it's different in a way that's quite surprising and so a couple of observations I had is things are usually shot in a certain way it felt like you had again once again abandoned the rules of how to shoot something like that

2:36:58even like the color the color grading the like sort of black and white color grade that I saw on the screen and then some of the angles were a bit off I'm like that's not how you shoot it interview but for some reason it felt like I was spying on a personal conversation that's what it was it was a deeply personal conversation and in all the years of seeing interviews with Jay-Z he doesn't do so many but the ones that you've seen he's never like that yeah he's never like that so I felt like I was really who he is like you really after you watch this you'll really know who Jay-Z is which is incredible it's an incredible privilege to have that point of view of a real intimate view into someone so great clearly he felt very safe with you as well because you do get that real side of Jay-Z that I think is really rare speaking of incredible things this book is also an incredible thing I know that in part because so many of my guests have

2:38:00come here and talked about it really so many of them and so many people hold it up as their favorite book on creativity I think because it's challenging I think which is the essence of Rick Rubin in some respects is to be a challenging coach this book I think finds itself being the same which is a very challenging coach so I think it came out in 2023 I'm going to link it below for anyone that hasn't got it if you haven't got it I think it might be the challenge you need and I don't necessarily think it's a book necessarily about creativity it's it's really just I consider it to be a philosophy book don't I say yeah tarot cards some people noticed I think that you have it's 73 78 we call them chapters areas of thought areas of thought in this book and that tarot cards have 78 is there a link there is and there isn't I'll tell you the link and it's a pretty funny story originally there were I want to say 60 I think there were 63 areas of thought when I first

2:39:03thought of areas of thought and giving them names there was this period where the book wasn't separated into the ideas and it was just a lot of pages of ideas and then try to move them after years of unsuccessful organizational methods got to the point again through a lot of failed experiments and some successful experiments moved from 1400 pages into a little bit of a shape with the when the areas of thought came to be and there were I think they were 63 I have them their hand written and I have a photograph of them in my phone the original 63 areas of thought and then once we separated all the ideas into the 63 they're ended up being more and I think they're ended up being something like 80 82 or 83 84 they're in the 80s and then the book was done

2:40:05and there were 80 something of them and I have a collaborator named Neil who is a friend of mine who lived in my neighborhood great writer who wanted it who was helped me from the beginning although not an official capacity until the end he he was involved the whole way and I was working with another another writer and it just didn't work out and then we got to the point where there were these 83 or 84 areas of thought and it was all done and everybody was happy and I remember calling my friend Neil and saying okay book's done we have 83 areas of thought I'd rather it be 78 he's like what are you talking about what do you mean I said well I wanted to be related to something the tarot cards of 78 if we had 103 I would say let's make it a hundred eight to get it up to 108 because that's another there's certain numbers that are good numbers 78 108 144 is a good one it's some good

2:41:08numbers I want it to have a reference to something else in the world of a number and he's like why that's just that's how I feel that's how I want it and I remember him saying it's like you're insane he's like you've been working on this book for eight years now you want it to be randomly 78 instead of 83 it's good be happy it's good be done I said how we have to get it figure out how to make it 78 why just a feeling so listen what happens next I have an assistant at that time named Dylan and we work on the 83 sections independently so they're almost like separate essays and when we work on it we would work on let's work on 37 whatever it is whatever the title is and just work on that section we work on each section independently and I said okay

2:42:12put them all here's the order put them all in order and he put them in order and the next day came when you were in Italy I remember this is the day after the conversation with Neil we tell me I was crazy and he said it's weird as thing I put them in order and there are 78 sections I said no there were 83 yesterday he's like now there's 78 I said where are the others there are no others that happened so did somebody miscount or something or don't know nobody knows but we were sure there were 80 something and it turned and I wanted it to be 78 and the next day there were 78 and nobody did anything some day you're gonna Neil's gonna find four chapters not mention it maybe or maybe call excited like I told you you were crazy Rick we have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for if you could make a phone call and you had 60 seconds to call anybody and it had to be

2:43:17an apology who would you call and what would you say and why it's a hard question for me to answer for several reasons one I almost never make a phone call and I'm not really a phone person so the only reason I would call somebody would it would have to be some sort of an emergency situation and I feel like there are not a lot of outstanding apologies to make what about a thank you thank you would be great I could call anyone and thank them if you could only make one last phone call to say thank you a one last phone call I would probably call moodyelle my wife and just thank her for being in my life and maybe either her or my child to just thank them for bringing so much light into my life how did that change you

2:44:23it's it's different totally different um it's beautiful being in a relationship we travel as a pack we go everywhere together we've we've never been a part they don't think I think maybe in the 15 years that I've been with my wife we've maybe spent three nights apart in 15 years something like that and we're everything we do we travel together this this is a long time that I'm away from them so I'm looking forward to getting back with them and becoming a thought it's just so much fun he I get to see the world in uh I get to see the things that he's excited about that remind me of things I was excited about and I get to show him things that I like and sometimes he likes them and sometimes he says things that I I can imagine how he how he knows them there's a real

2:45:30wisdom that's uh it's baffling it's just fun you're talking the book about how children are the great reminder of what you know creativity might be at at its essence yeah before we fuck it up yeah and it's the it's the thing is that when you're a little kid you haven't yet no one has told you what you can and can't do yet how the world works you really look at things with wonder and that's the perspective of a great artist they're walking around in wonder in awe of things that maybe seem ordinary to everyone else but the the world is filled with just incredible beauty it's breathtaking it's breathtaking people are amazing talk to anyone it's interesting people are interesting if you just slow down and really listen Rick thank you thank you for the inspiration and

2:46:38the wisdom and for being a challenging coach to many millions of creatives all around the world and being fearlessly yourself and this is a fantastic but I'm going to link it below for everyone that hasn't yet read it but also the hbo documentary with jz the eight part documentary we we referenced is out now on hbo comes out on September 18th so if you're watching us after that it's already out um thank you Rick my pleasure it's on movie in the rest of the world Rick thank you my pleasure as I found a building a business when I was in my early 20s I think I always had a deep sense of imposter syndrome because there was something that I wasn't good at and that thing was finances finance and understanding your financial position as a small business is the great enabler of all

2:47:44of your dreams I was running from it until I discovered a platform called zero zero is an accounting and financial management platform specifically for small businesses and it brings accounting payments payroll and analytics all into one place even for people that don't love doing finances zero wants to do the financial work for you but its core ambition is to go beyond keeping the financial record because zero wants to help you understand what's happening in your business and increasingly and this is maybe the most important thing is help you make decisions finally we have a partner who can enable us in a simple way for those people that are both left brain all right brain and enable our dreams you can learn more about zero by going to zero dot com thank you to zero thank you for sponsoring this podcast but also thank you for helping me to scale my business as somebody that quite frankly has never loved finances that much