Out of Nothing: The Art of Creating Art

Rick Rubin is one of the greatest music producers whose career spans decades. He helped popularize hip-hop (and turned the Beastie Boys into one of the most powerful hip-hop groups in history), worked with pillars of metal (Metallica and Slayer), alternative rock (The Cult, Red Hot Chili Peppers), hard rock (Aerosmith), nu-metal (Linkin Park, Rage Against the Machine, System of a Down), and country (Johnny Cash and the Dixie Chicks) — and this is just the tip of the iceberg. In the mid-2000s, Rick Rubin was recognized by MTV as the most important producer of the last 20 years, and Time magazine included him in its list of the 100 most influential people in the world. All musicians who have worked with Rubin say one thing: he is the person who helps you reach your peak, unlock the potential within you that you didn't even know you had when you walked into the studio. This is how the perfect producer works, and it requires absolute sensitivity and an open mind. Rubin understands creativity like few people in the world, teaches us to create out of nothing, and suddenly it turns out that we are constantly generating new ideas at every step, no matter what we are doing.
Read the book straight through and follow the author — or open it to a random page and use whatever you find there in any order. See what happens. The paths of creativity are nonlinear and inscrutable, and we are all capable of creating.