ETHS class of 2001 grad Alex Rubin (the youngest son of retired ETHS Spanish teacher Marianne Rubin) has been quietly rebranding himself as an artist since he left Chicago to join software company Qualtrics in Utah in late 2019. 

I have never seen someone come to create original lyrical content so quickly. 

While filling a demanding enterprise technology sales job as his 9-to-5, Rubin has recorded over 130 studio originals – mainly hip hop – since  April 2020. 

While no one could have predicted what was in store for 2020, something inside of Rubin seems to have known. He got himself in position as a firebrand anti-Trump Evanstonian in a very red state, with the distance necessary to analyze the ills and pitfalls of hyperliberal ideologies common in places like Evanston. 

On March 9, 2020, the night before being sent home for quarantine, Rubin tried skiing for the first time (being in Utah and all) and tore his MCL, or medial collateral ligament. The following day, when he learned everyone is to be at home by themselves for the foreseeable future, he felt a strong mandate to write. He hasn’t put down the pen since. 

I am positive the press will come to know Alex Rubin. With this being his hometown, though, it should start here.

He has been making 6 to 12 new studio songs every month for the last year plus. And he is not slowing down. In his music, you will see that Evanston and Chicago are places which he holds dear to him, which he is concerned for and which he has tried his best to call home. 

Khaled Silverstein-Saud