Pilot: Walk on Water

00:00:15Speaker 1: Pushkin. The following podcast contains explicit language. Not long ago, I went to see the music producer Rick Rubin. He lives in Malibu. We'd never met in person before, but we've been talking for a couple of months about doing a project together which would be a place for us and others to tell stories about music, all kinds, where songs come from, how they're made, why they work. Rick lives in a strange minimalist house overlooking the ocean, and he has a room which is all white, white walls, white floor, with nothing in it except a white couch and this elaborate sound system. We'd only been talking half an hour and he said, I won't to play you a song. It was something he produced. It wasn't finished yet, but he'd played me the most recent version. He didn't say anything else. I listened and it floored me. Him. Malcolm Gladwell, this is Broken Record, the new podcast from me and my friend's legendary producer, Rick Rubin, a long time New York Times editor of Bruce Heaven. A full season is coming soon, but before we start officially, we thought we'd do a little teaser about a song from an old friend of Rix I'm guessing you've heard of him, eminem. Yeah, I remember the first run I wrote. I don't remember everything I wrote, but I was at my great an in this house and it was so much of LLL. It was so much of a bad bite. But I said, I'm sneaking up behind you, and before you can bleak, I'll have one hundred million rounds and like a ship, you will sink, like you know, when I retire, I'll be washed up like an old battleship. Like this is the thing when when you start out in your career, you have a blank canvas so you can paint anywhere that you want because the shit ain't been painted on yet. And then your second album comes out, you paint a little more, and you paint a little more. By the time you get to your seventh and eighth album, you've already painted all over that there's nowhere else to paint, you know what I'm saying. So it's like, where do you go? And people are always expecting something different from you. I want him to talk about this. I want him to talk about that. I want him to just spit. I don't like when he just spits. He does too much rapidy rapidi shit. I don't like when he self loads. He does that shit too much. I don't like when he, you know, puts all them syllables together but they don't mean anything. You start running out of there's less places to go that you haven't already been. So that's kind of how I feel like. All the time Rick worked with eminem on his last album. They know each other well. They would sit together. Rick would play songs for inspiration. My experience with him is everything is written during the process. I may play him a bunch of different ideas to see if there's one that sheds light on a direction to start from. Do you remember any of the music you played, the songs you guys were listening to when you were trying to get inspiration for this album. I remember I played him a Frank zapp a song that I thought had some really which one so really early when I can't remember, but it was a protest song, and I thought the energy of this might be right for him, and out of that came something new. The song is called Walk on Water. It was recorded at Chenggula, which is just up the road from Reuben's house. Bob Dylan used to record there In fact, one of Dylan's old tour buses has been converted into a studio. It's high up in a hill. Everything's white, of course, and wide open. The song is about that line written from long ago, when I retire, I'll be worshiped like an old battleship, and how it didn't come true. The song's chorus is this beautiful hook written by Skylar Gray. I walk on water, but I ain't no Jesus. I walk on water, but only when it freezes. I didn't even play it for him, like, listen to this, this is great. It was more like I happened to be listening to it and he came into the control room and he said, oh, what's that And I said, oh, it's a hook Skylar wrote. And he's just sat there and he's listening to it, and he's like, hmmm. They've just been talking about the rise of mumble rap, and there was something about that line, I walk on water, but only when it freezes, that touched a nerve. So for him it's it's a little bit of a culture shock because there's a new wave of hip hop that's not really what he's about. So he was just talking to me about how that felt. What did he say? I could see he was frustrated by it. He's fanatical to a point that I don't think I've ever seen before in anyone just to his attention to detail. He has a perfect memory of everything about the music, and he gets inside of it and writes to whatever is good or bad about it. He wants the rhythm of the words to bounce off of the beat in a very particular way. After Rick and I talked, Rick called up Eminem to talk about where the song came from. I've been a student of hip hop and I've always studied rap, and one of the things I learned from Tupac was whenever he was like I don't know how, he just always knew the right words to say on the right chords. And it was almost like if he wanted to make this statement. I remember when he's my broken down TV some cartoons in my living room. Hey on Unconditional Love, a song he had, I was like, oh my god, he could have said that on the bar before it and it wouldn't have men as much. But he said it right here where the chord got sad and the you know, like I just I studied that so much and was like, oh my god, he was so genius at like doing that. It was like he never said the wrong thing on the wrong chord. Listen to Dear Mama and my Mama had big seventeen years old, keeped out on the streets, go back at the time. I never thought i'd see your face hate a woman to live, that I could take my mama's place. Strimming through school, I'm starting to go home. I was the fool with every single thing, every single thought, every single word, every bar was like so in place where it should be, just because of he was so smart about picking his beats and just you know, like Tupac always said, feel me, and you have to feel him and not just hearing. Here you have an artist whose identity is in his craft, and now suddenly, in some unconscious way, maybe he feels like the ground is slipping ever so slightly out from under his feet. That anxiety is the price of obsession. It's a very mortal song. It's I mean, like you know, it's it's mortality. It's you know, not being Superman. And what if I can't come up with the best shit I've ever wrote? Every single time I think these feelings cross the mind of everyone who's ever cared deeply about something. Walk on water. But I know, Jesus at all we freezes? Why our expectations so high? Is it the bar? I set my arms, I stretched, but I can't reach a far cry from it, or it's in my grass butters As soon as I grab squeeze, I lose my grip, like the flying trap peas into the dark eyed plumbing. Now the sky's black knee. I know the mark's high. Butter flies rip apart my stomach, knowing that no matter what bars I come with, you're gonna heart griping. That's a hard fighting in the swallow. So I scraped these. This pressure increases like khakis. I feel the ice cracking because I ain't you Jesus, but all freezes. It's the curse of the standard that the first of the matter's disc set always in search of the burst that I haven't spent yet. Will this step just be another misstep to turnish? Whatever the legacy love a respect I've garnered. The rhyme has to be perfect, the delivery flawless, And it always feels like I'm hitting the market till i I'm sit in the car listening pick it apart, like this shit is garbage. God's giving me all this. Still I feel no different, regardless kids look to me as a god. This is retarded if only they knew. It's a facade and it's exhaustive. And I try not to listen to nonsense. But if your bitches are trying to strip me in my confidence, mission accomplished. I'm not God's sitting nas Roy Kimpok, big James Todd Smith. And I'm not printing I ain't Jesus, but only when peezes, because I'm only h just like it taking mama. Stay So if you know, I don't think you should believe me the way the children. It's true. I'm a rubics, a beautiful mess at times juvenile. Yes, I goof, and I jest a flawed human, I guess. But I'm doing my best to not pluing your expectations and meet him. But first the speed him verse Now, big Sean, he's going too fast as he's gonna shout a curse out his mom. There was a time I had the whirl by the ball's eating out my palm. Every album song I was spausing the fuck out on and now I'm getting clowned and frowned on. But the only one who's looking down on me that matters. Now it's to sean Am I lucky to be around this long begs the question, though, especially after the method, don't it's yesterday, fates and the dress thing home is burnt to the ground, and all that's left in my house is long. The crowds are gone, and it's to wash out. The blonde sales decline, the curtains drawn, the closing the set. I'm still poking my head from out behind, and everyone who has doubt, remind now take your best rhyme. I'll do it, now, do it a thousand times. Now let them tell you the world no longer cares it gives a fuck about your rhymes. And there's I grow out of sight, out of mind. I might go out of mind, because how do I ever let this might go without a fight when I made a fucking tight rope out of twine. But when I do fall from these heights to while be fine, I won't power to cry or spiral down the wine, but I'll decide if it's my final power this time around, because find Jesus only with freezing it's sum only you, just like you making mamastake. So if you only know, I don't think you should believe in me the way that you do because I'm tired. Fine, you know, walk on water out dry because I'm just the man. But as long as I gotta Mike, I'm God lights on me. You are not a like bitch I wrote Stay. Broken Record is a panoply production brought to you by Rick Rubin, Bruce had Lemon Me Malcolm gladwas coming soon our first full season Broken Record. Liner notes at the Digital Age. When I first got introduced to hip hop, I started with Iced Tea and NWA came out and Audio two and Alliance and Loving coolg Rath and Big Deaddy Kane and Master Ace and the whole Juice Crew, Beastie Boys, God, Third Base. Everything that was good hip hop, you know it just you know, got trapsed, naughty by nature, the whole Flavor Unit, Kim Shabaz, Biggie and Big Hell and Poor Righteous Teachers, y z Rock, Kim Kiss One Woutang, leaders of the New School, jay z nas a z oh Man. I was such a nerdy kid