Watch Rick Rubin Go Back To Def Jam’s Beginnings

It’s impossible to not feel old when you watch Dave Grohl give into nostalgia with projects like Sound City and the upcoming Sonic Highways HBO docu-series where he’s re-visiting his old stomping grounds and paying respect to the history of music. Wasn’t Grohl Nirvana’s 8-armed drummer a few years ago?

The same thing goes for Rick Rubin, the co-founder of Def Jam records and the iconic record producer who helped establish The Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, and Run DMC. What business does Rick Rubin have being 51 years old, touring the halls of his old stomping grounds at the Weinstein dormitory on the campus of NYU where Def Jam began for a new video for Rolling Stone?

The fact is, while the music still resonates and feels like the anthems of our youth (even if we found them a few years after they dropped), the people behind those separate revolutions are now greyhaired and maybe a little wistful for days gone by. Like I said, it’s a weird thing because the last thing I’m about to do is start feeling old while grooving to Cookie Puss, but I suppose I could and maybe I should.

That brewing existential crisis aside, though, it’s kinda cool to hear Rubin and some of his compatriots talk about the start of Def Jam and it’s amazing to realize how humble their beginnings were and how close knit and casual the whole thing was at that time. It’s also astonishing to me that that dorm room hasn’t been roped off and put on display. I can’t deal with the possibility that there have been kids sitting in Rick Rubin’s old dorm room rocking out to Kelly Clarkson or Ke$ha over the last few years. Has a Baha Men album ever bounced off of those historic walls? Honestly, I can’t even.

Source: YouTube via Rolling Stone

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