Producer Rick Rubin has pivoted into podcasting lately, hosting the interview show Tetragrammaton featuring musicians (Trent Reznor, John Mayer), actors (Tom Hanks, Robert Downey Jr.) and sketchy pop culture figures (wacko politician Robert F. Kennedy Jr., "trad life" food influencer Carnivore Aurelius). This week, his already strange show took an even weirder turn, as Rubin posted a fake interview with Doors singer Jim Morrison.
The episode, titled "UNEXPECTED CONVERSATION: Jim Morrison" and published on September 7, features Rubin supposedly speaking with Jim Morrison (who died in 1971, when Rubin was eight years old).
The 40-minute conversation sounds more or less like Rubin's other interviews, and Tetragrammaton doesn't openly cite a source for the interview, with the episode description only noting that "Rick connects with Jim Morrison."
It's seemingly not AI-generated; rather, Rubin has taken Morrison's 1969 interview with The Village Voice and replaced interviewer Howard Smith's voice with his own (as well as cleaning up the background noise and making the whole thing sound a bit muffled). It's unclear why Rubin felt that he needed to insert himself into the interview, rather than simply sharing the original conversation.
Kendrick Lamar used a similar trick — to much greater effect — with Tupac Shakur on his 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly.