My guest today, Rick Rubin, has been a major player in the music industry for four decades.

He started DevChem Records out of his college dorm room, and in 2007 MTV called him the

most important music producer of the last 20 years, and he hasn't slowed down.

He's been a producer for everyone from Metallica to Adele, from Jay-Z to Johnny Cash, from

public enemy to the chicks.

And now, for the first time, he's put on paper the idea is driving his creative process.

The ideas in the book are like smoke, they're very difficult to grasp.

Stuff that when you read it, you feel like you already know it, but it's difficult to hold

on to.

Welcome to People I Am Mostly Admire with Steve Love It.

This new book is entitled The Creative Act, A Way of Being, and it's not at all the book

you might expect from a big wig in the music industry, it's a book about, I just can't

even explain what the book is about, even though I loved it, I'm going to need Rick Rubin

to do that for me.

But before we get into the book, I am hoping to explain to me how a white college student

in the early 1980s became foundational to the development of hip-hop.

So Rick, I spent some time on the internet learning about you in preparation for our conversation,

and I actually laughed out loud at one point because the same adjective is used over and

over to describe you, the legendary, the legendary Rick Rubin.

Do you like having the legendary as your adjective, or would you prefer a different one if you

got to choose?

I would prefer none, just my name is fine, it's odd having any label attached to anything

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