Jakob Rabitsch is a multi grammy-nominated, platinum selling music producer, composer and artist.
Born into a musical family, in Vienna, Austria, Jakob Rabitsch has been surrounded by music from the very beginning. After starting to take classical piano lessons at the age of ten, he soon joined his first band at the age of eleven.
When he was fourteen, he attended the only music high school in Vienna, the Musikgymnasium Wien. With the school’s choir, he got the chance to perform in the historical Musikverein concert hall on an annual basis in the years 2007-2011. At the age of fifteen, he delved into the world of jazz, which left its mark on much of his musical identity, and later works.
In Fall 2012, he started studying “Contemporary Songwriting and Production” with a minor in “Writing for TV and New Media” at Berklee College Of Music as a scholarship recipient, graduating summa cum laude in 2016.
Photo by Gabi Lamb
After moving to Los Angeles, where Jakob worked as an intern for legendary film composer James Newton Howard, he was hired as a staff composer for advertising music house Butter Music + Sound, scoring ad campaigns for companies such as Hyatt, Hyundai, Toyota, Amazon, Pepto Bismol, Cartier, Dom Perignon, Nina Ricci, or Airwick. He then became Butter’s Creative Director in Berlin, Germany.
Jakob Rabitsch's range of musical endeavors remained broad. He has provided scores and arrangements for Austrian TV productions Tatort and Dancing with the Stars.
Since 2016, he has been receiving exceptional commercial and critical success, as well as industry-wide recognition as a music producer under the name Yakob. He was a writer, instrumentalist and producer on R&B artist 6lack's debut album FREE 6LACK. The album reached No. 1 on the iTunes R&B/Soul album charts, as well as No. 8 on the R&B Billboard album charts. It was certified platinum for selling over 1,000,000 units and was nominated for a Grammy award for Best Urban Contemporary Album at the 2018 Grammy awards.
His work with 6lack continued, as Yakob went on to function as executive producer on 6lack’s sophomore album East Atlanta Love Letter (Sept. 2018) which debuted on #3 of the US Billboard 200, selling 77,000 units in its first week, and would go on to sell over 1,000,000 units and being certified platinum in 2023. He produced and co-wrote 7 of the 14 songs on the album, including the track Pretty Little Fears (feat. J. Cole) co-produced alongside world renowned producer T-Minus, which was nominated for a Grammy award for Best Rap/Sung Performance at the 2019 Grammy Awards, and was certified platinum.
In 2021, he received his third Grammy nomination at the 63rd Grammy Awards, as he was a part of Giveon’s album “Take Time”, which got nominated for Best R&B Album.
In 2022, he worked on SZA’s album “SOS” on the song “Love Language”.
The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart with 318,000 equivalent album units sold and stayed at the top for ten non-consecutive weeks, making as the longest running number one album by a female artist on the chart for the current decade.
“SOS” and “Love Language” was nominated for Album Of The Year, Best Progressive R&B Album and Best Traditional R&B Performance respectively at the 2024 Grammy Awards, and ended up winning Best Progressive R&B Album. On top of that, Rabitsch also worked on 6lack’s third album “Since I Have A Lover”, which is also up for a Grammy in the category Best Progressive R&B Album.
Other notable works of his include his work with pop star Lauv, Korean pop band EXO (whose song Hear Me Out, which topped the No.1 position on the worldwide iTunes songs charts in over thirty-seven different countries was co-produced by Rabitsch) and international Latin/R&B singer Kali Uchis, among others.