Rick Rubin

We all have our own relationship to it.

Everyone has their own relationship to it.

So any of these metrics of which is better, like the idea of the Oscars or the Grammys where we're saying which album is better than another, it doesn't make any sense to me because it's always apples and oranges.

The only people who we can honestly compete with is ourselves.

It's like, is this the best I can make today?

Have I gone further than I've gone before?

That's all we can do.

That's the only competition that makes sense is continuing to evolve and push ourselves artistically and not get complacent, especially in success.

It's easy to get complacent once something works.

It's like, I'll just keep doing more of that.

It ends up maybe one more time you can get away with it.

But once three are similar, it stops being interesting.

It's the obsessive nature of being really into something that once you start down a thread, you just keep pulling forever, if you're interested.

Many of the artists that are great at what they do are great at what they do for that very reason.

They fall in love with this thing,

And then they just want to know everything they could possibly learn about it.

And there are no distractions.

I'm working on a project now, a documentary project with comedians.

And one of the things that they talk about is their commitment.

Like when other people are doing things on the weekend, going out with their friends, they're going to perform every, you know, every night that they can possibly go out and perform on