Rick Rubin |
Rick Rubin
Landmark work Run DMC, Raising Hell; Johnny Cash, American Recordings
Highly anticipating upcoming release Metallica’s next album, as yet unnamed
Wrestling name Sasquatch!
The attempt to identify a Rick Rubin sound quickly involves one in Zen-like complications. He made LL Cool J sound like LL Cool J, and Slayer sound like Slayer. Johnny Cash, trembling with age, laid the flesh of his voice over skeletal acoustic arrangements and summoned his own forgotten essence. So is that what Rick Rubin does? Simply wave his hand and grant these artists permission to be themselves, in all their barbarous originality? Not quite. A sonic polymath he may be (who else could work with Danzig and the Dixie Chicks?), but the important thing about Frederick Jay Rubin is his deep-down beardie-weirdie metalheadedness. As a metalhead, he is a bigot for the riff. As a metalhead, he can’t even hear a song unless it locks together like a line of 17th-century verse. As a metalhead, he likes the good bits, the rockin’ bits — he likes his music fat-free, as it were. And as a metalhead, he has a monkish affinity for detail. From the apocalyptic clang of Dave Lombardo’s ride cymbal on Slayer’s Reign in Blood (1986) to the wheezy harmonium of Neil Diamond’s 12 Songs (2005), a single aesthetic has prevailed: every part of the whole must be kicking ass, at all times.
— James Parker
Swizz Beatz |
Swizz Beatz
Landmark work Beyoncé, “Upgrade U”; Jay-Z, “Money, Cash, Hoes”
Highly anticipating upcoming release singles by Madonna, Britney Spears, Ja Rule, and Mary J. Blige
Wrestling name Earthquake!
This Ruff Ryder’s best ’90s beats were hard, minimal, and synthesized on the cheap at a time when — both sonically and culturally — hip-hop lived large off lush, sample-heavy soul-funk productions. I remember in high school hearing “Money, Cash, Hoes” the first time — that ringtone of a beat — and wondering aloud whether it was just Jay-Z shilling for a cell-phone provider. Then, seven years later, rap followed Swizz’s cue, going stark minimal, and now almost every beat sounds like a ringtone. By then, Swizz had moved on. His latest boom-bap trades in fat industrial-strength kicks and clangs, his songs often composed of multiple, unrelated movements stitched together one after the other — Busta’s “Touch It” probably the best example, Swizz’s own “It’s Me Bitches” a close second, T.I.’s “Bring ’Em Out” and “Get It” at third and fourth. He’s had plenty of misfires — just two months ago Swizz released One Man Band Man, his first solo LP and ill-advised emcee debut — but when he hits hard, the ground tends to shake.
— Nick Sylvester
Timbaland |
Timbaland
Landmark work Missy Elliott, Under Construction; singles by Björk, Aaliyah, Justin Timberlake, and Jay-Z
Highly anticipating upcoming release Eve’s Here I Am
Wrestling name Sweet Potato!
I’m watching old Missy videos on YouTube right now, the one for “Work It,” before that the one for “Get Ur Freak On.” What strikes me isn’t Timbaland’s stuttering drum patches, or the way he used space like a hip-hop Miles Davis, or the thefted Eastern music accouterments, but the indisputable fact that mainstream rap will never be the fuck-it-all free-for-all it was even five years ago. More than any one thing sonically, what defines the “Timbaland sound” is his implicit belief that anything can, and should, go into hip-hop/r&b. Which might be why his work with Missy stands out, even next to solids for (among others) Justin Timberlake, Aaliyah, and Jay-Z: here were two telepathic weirdos from Norfolk, Virginia, one a sexually ambiguous, overweight black female rapper, the other a cheesy beatmaker with a penchant for bad ad-libs, cartoonish sound effects, and vocoders, bragging they’re the baddest in the game, blindsiding both their peers and the public with the unfamiliar and uncompromised. Somehow everyone loved it. What?!
— Nick Sylvester
