Yes, dear reader, you read that right—just over three decades ago, famed producer Rick Rubin held a funeral for an adjective on August 27, 1993. The morbidly tongue-in-cheek affair was held at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, and the guest list was a real who’s-who of the music industry.
As Sir Mix-a-Lot told MTV Brazil: “I’m tripping. I hope this many people come when I’m out of here.”
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From Underground Slang to the Pages of Webster
Rick Rubin co-founded Def Jam Recordings in his New York University dorm room in 1984. A truly underground endeavor, the label’s first release was a punk-rock 7” that Rubin and his colleagues distributed in a brown paper bag. Still, Rubin’s uncanny ability to produce and create star power quickly led to larger distribution deals and a shift toward hip-hop, rap, and R&B.
Soon, Def Jam Recordings became so pervasive in the American zeitgeist that the Webster Dictionary added “def,” slang for “cool” or “excellent,” by the early 1990s. “Def” was no longer vernacular for the in-crowd. Squares, the straight-laced, and the decidedly un-cool were using the term unironically. For Rubin, this shift was the antithesis of what “def” was supposed to represent.
If you wanted to get particularly dramatic (which Rubin clearly did), def’s meaning died by ubiquity. And what does one do when someone, er, something dies? Hold a funeral with your most famous friends, obviously.
Rick Rubin’s Dramatic Funeral For an Adjective
Rick Rubin pulled out all the stops for his “def” funeral in late August 1993. There was a casket full of records, Reverend Al Sharpton gave a eulogy, a mentalist addressed the crowd about the word’s death, and a New Orleans-style funeral procession escorted the “mourners” into the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Rubin attended the festivities, of course, stoic and clad in dark sunglasses.
Just about every other iconic musician at the time was there, too. From Sir Mix-a-Lot to Tom Petty to Flea, to say the guest list was star-studded would be an understatement. Everyone played along with the sardonically morbid act. When an MTV reporter asked Petty how he would describe the funeral as they proceeded through the cemetery, he somberly replied, “Well, you’re gonna have to find some new words to describe this event. You certainly couldn’t call it def.”
Rubin later cited the Summer of Love’s “Death of the Hippie” as inspiration for his party-slash-wake. “When advertisers and the fashion world co-opted the image of hippies, a group of the original hippies in San Francisco literally buried the image of the hippie,” Rubin told the New York Times in 2007. “When ‘def’ went from street lingo to mainstream, it defeated its purpose.”
Still, just like the “Death of Hippie” didn’t stop the hippie movement’s trendiness, the “Death of Def” wasn’t the end of the label. Although Rubin went on to establish American Records in lieu of his “deceased” former label, Def Jam has proven its immortality, continuing to host artists and produce records well into the 2020s. Nevertheless, Rick Rubin’s funeral for an adjective certainly made for a memorable Hollywood party.
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