Rick Rubin didn't work on Jay-Z's new album
Jay-Z’s gold-selling mobile app ‘Magna Carta Holy Grail’ has been announced with a series of documentary promo clips (embedded below) featuring #legendary behind-the-scenes footage of the rapper in the studio listening and explaining his way through parts of the new album with producers Timbaland, Pharrell Williams, Swizz Beats and Rick Rubin for company. The quartet have all worked with Jay-Z before and have appropriate clout, so it was assumed that they’d all been a part of the recording process.
However, Rick Rubin has told XXL that he has no part in making the album and said he was invited to be a part of the documentary: “Just listen to it and talk about it”. It turns out that being reclined and shoeless on the studio couch chatting to Jay-Z was actually all Rubin has to do with ‘Magna Carta Holy Grail’.
Rubin, who was recently called in to pare down Kanye West’s latest album ‘Yeezus’, also talked about the difficulty in moving from that “very alternative and progressive headspace” to Jay-Z’s “more traditional hip-hop record.”
The album is out on the 4th July for the first million Samsung Galaxy owners to download a tailor-made mobile app (made available on the 24th June), and will be available to everyone else three days later. The album will immediately go platinum on its release, following a change in procedure by the Recording Industry Association of America, who have decided to award digital album certificates from the moment of release rather than 30 days afterwards to honour the fact that Samsung have already bought a million copies of the album to give away.
