Ruy López-Nussa Lekszycki was born in 1957 in Mexico City; his family relocated to Havana, Cuba the following year, and Cuba has been his home and musical base ever since. He completed his intermediate-level percussion studies in 1976 and graduated from Havana's Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in 1982 with a degree in percussion. He began teaching percussion at an art school in Pinar del Río in 1976 and moved to Havana's Alejandro García Caturla School in 1979, work he continued alongside performing for the rest of his career; he later joined the faculty of the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory as well. His professional performing career began in 1980, working with a rock ensemble and as accompanist to singer Beatriz Márquez, and from 1981 he became the regular drummer for singer-songwriter Pedro Luis Ferrer, one of the defining voices of Cuban nueva trova.

Over the following two decades López-Nussa built a session and touring career spanning Havana's popular-music, trova and jazz scenes. He was Santiago Feliú's drummer across multiple decades, appearing on the full albums Náuseas De Fin De Siglo (1991, Alerce) and Sin Julieta (2002, Unicornio), and worked with singer-songwriter Gerardo Alfonso on El Ilustrado Caballero De Paris (2001, Egrem). He is also a documented full-album drummer for pianist Roberto Fonseca, one of contemporary Cuba's most internationally recognized jazz musicians, on Elengó (Afrocuban Jazz) (2001, Egrem) and across most of Tiene Que Ver (1999, Egrem). His work reached beyond Cuba as well: he plays drums on Norwegian singer-songwriter Ole Paus's Den Velsignede (2000, Kirkelig Kulturverksted), and in 2003 he toured internationally with Ibrahím Ferrer, the Buena Vista Social Club singer, in the years after that project's global success.

In 2009 López-Nussa founded La Academia, his own percussion ensemble and teaching project built around Cuban rhythmic tradition, folkloric forms and jazz. He released the group's self-titled album, Presenta La Academia (2012, Habanico Kultural), as his first outing as a bandleader, produced by his brother, pianist Ernán López-Nussa. His standing as one of Cuba's leading drummer-educators is also reflected in a string of major international endorsements, from Paiste (1997) and Sabian (2011) to LP and DW Drums (2017), and in his percussion method book Ritmos de Cuba, first published in 2004 and reissued in a second edition in Germany in 2008.

López-Nussa is the patriarch of a three-generation musical family: his brother is pianist Ernán López-Nussa, and his sons are pianist Harold López-Nussa and drummer Ruy Adrián López-Nussa, who has since become Harold's regular touring and recording drummer. The four appeared together for the first time in a single 2006 concert piece organized by López-Nussa, then reunited for a full European tour in 2013 billed as "La Familia López-Nussa," later documented on DVD. That family thread also runs through the recorded catalog: on Harold's Canciones (2007, Colibrí Producciones), Ruy Adrián plays drums on most of the album while López-Nussa himself and Ernán appear together as guests on a single track; on Harold's Mack Avenue album El Viaje (2016), Ruy Adrián is again the album's regular drummer while López-Nussa (credited as Ruy Francisco López-Nussa) plays a guest track of his own.

His profile outside Cuba grew further in the 2010s and 2020s. In 2018 he recorded full-album drums on Italy Meets Cuba: Vivaldi And Other Follies (Alfa Music), a jazz-classical crossover session with violinists Maurizio D'Alessandro and Massimiliano Caporale and the Cuban chamber ensemble Camerata Romeu. In 2026 he became part of Dot Time Records' Cuban Notes project, the label's series of recordings made with Cuban musicians in Havana: he is the drummer in pianist Alejandro Falcón's working band on Falcón's own leader album for the series, Falcón In Blue, and he plays drums across all seven tracks of the project's second release, guitarist Roni Ben-Hur's Abriendo Puertas (Dot Time Records, June 26, 2026), recorded in Havana with an all-Cuban band. Unlike trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, who performed the Abriendo Puertas material live with a separate touring sextet at Dizzy's Club in New York in June 2026 but does not appear on the studio recording, López-Nussa is one of the Havana musicians who actually played on the album itself. He and Falcón also teach together on the faculty of Ben-Hur's winter jazz camp in Havana.

López-Nussa's playing is rooted in Cuban folkloric and popular rhythm, brought to the drum kit rather than kept separate from it: rumba, tumbadora patterns and other Afro-Cuban traditional forms run through work as different as trova accompaniment, jazz-piano trio sessions and classical-jazz crossover dates. Havana Music School, the Cuban institution profiling him, describes him as "one of the island's master drummers and a teacher of generations of percussionists," a description borne out by his four decades split between performing and formal teaching at three different Havana-area schools. He is also, distinctly among Cuban drummers of his generation, the head of a working three-generation musical family: his brother Ernán and sons Harold and Ruy Adrián are all professional musicians in their own right, and López-Nussa's La Academia project treats passing on Cuban rhythmic knowledge to younger players as a stated part of its mission.