Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are looking
at a figure who is, I mean, he's essentially
a living paradox. That's a good way to put it.
We're talking about a guy who built a billion
dollar empire on, you know, a foundation of anti
-establishment rage. Right. A guy who is arguably
the most famous producer in music history yet.
He openly admits he doesn't write his own lyrics
and barely plays the instruments on his own tracks.
Which is just fascinating. We are looking at
the architect of the West Coast sound, Andre
Rommel Young. Better known to the world and definitely
to the bank as Dr. Dre. Dr. Dre. And look, usually
when we do these deep dives, we're kind of tracking
a linear progression. You know, someone starts
small, gets big, maybe fades away. A pretty standard
arc. But looking at the research here, Gray's
career doesn't look like a line. It looks more
like a heart monitor. It's these massive spikes
of industry defining success. And then they're
followed by these like flat lines, legal disasters
and just periods of total silence. That's a great
way to visualize it because he didn't just change
hip hop once. He did it three distinct times.
Right. In three completely different decades
with three totally different sounds. And then.
You know, as if that wasn't enough, he pivoted
and completely changed the hardware industry
with beats. Right. But before we crown him the
king of Midas, I kind of want to challenge that
narrative a little bit. Okay. Because there's
this great man theory around Dre where everything
he touches just turns to gold. But when you really
dig into the notes, and we have a lot of them
today, you see a lot of wreckage. Oh, for sure.
You see failed supergroups, you see scrapped
albums, a trail of lawsuits, and a... a very
dark history of personal violence. So is he a
genius architect or is he just the guy who survived
the chaos long enough to cash out? That is the
central question, isn't it? And I think to answer
it, we have to look at a theme that runs through
his entire life, which is control versus chaos.
Control versus chaos. Yeah. Dre is obsessive
about control in the studio. I mean, we're talking
Kubrick levels of perfectionism. But outside
the studio, his life has been defined by... absolute
unmanageable chaos. And his success, it seems,
usually comes down to whether he can build a
wall thick enough to keep that chaos out. Well,
let's see where that wall started building. Yeah.
Because the origin story isn't straight out of
Compton. It's... Straight out of a swimming pool.
It is, yeah. Andre Young, born 1965 in Compton.
And you're right, the image of the hard -bitten
gangster rapper doesn't usually include a speedo
and a swim cap. But at Fremont High School, Dre
was a diver. A diver. I am trying so hard to
picture the guy who made the chronic doing like
a reverse pike off a diving board. Apparently
he was pretty decent, but this is where we see
that first crack in the discipline. He had the
physical talent, but he just... He didn't have
the academic focus. Right. He was missing classes.
His grades were tanking. There's actually a detail
here that I love. He tried to get into an apprenticeship
program at Northrop Aviation. To build planes.
Yeah. Seriously. Exactly. I mean, can you imagine
a timeline where Andre Young becomes an aerospace
mechanic? The whole music industry would look
completely different. Completely. But his grades
were just too low. He couldn't get in. So the
diving team is out. The aviation career is out.
And his mother, Verna, she essentially gives
him an ultimatum. Get a job or get an education.
And he chooses. Neither. Well, he chooses a night
shift. He starts focusing on the social scene,
on the music. And this is where Dr. J is born.
Dr. J, like the basketball player Julius Erving.
Julius Erving, yes. That was his favorite player.
So before he was Dr. Dre, he was spinning records
at a club called Eves After Dark under the name
Dr. J. Yeah. And we really need to linger on
Eves After Dark for a second because this isn't
just a venue. It's basically a laboratory for
him. This is where he meets DJ Yella, right?
He meets Antoine Caraby. Yeah, DJ Yella. But
more importantly, this club had a back room.
And in that back room was a small four -track
recording studio. So while everyone else is out
front, partying, Dre and Yella are back there,
and they're not just playing records, they're
dissecting them, they're splicing tape, they're
learning how to layer sounds. This is that crucial
transition from just being a DJ to becoming a
producer. And that's when the name changes. Yep.
He eventually modifies it to Dr. Dre, the master
of mixology. Okay, but we have to address the
elephant in the room here. Or maybe the sequins
in the room. Because you look up photos from
this era, the world -class Wrecking Crew era,
It is. It's jarring. It's the visual that Dre
probably wishes he could scrub from the Internet.
Describe it for anyone who hasn't been lucky
enough to see it. We are talking about shiny
purple sequined body suits. It's a lot. Lace
gloves. Stethoscopes worn as fashion accessories.
I mean, it looked like Prince had a fever dream.
It looks like a disco cabaret. So how do we reconcile
this guy with the guy who terrified suburban
America just, what, five years later? Is the
hard image a lie? Or is the sequin image the
real costume? Context is key here. I mean, you
have to remember, this was the mid -80s West
Coast electro -hop scene. Okay. The dominant
sound wasn't gangster rap. It was fast electronic
dance music. Think Afrika Bambaataa, Planet Rock
style. If you wanted to be a star in Compton
in 1985, you wore the sequins. So it was just
the uniform for the job. It was the uniform,
and they were stars. I mean, their song Surgery
sold 50 ,000 copies just locally. That's huge
for that time. Surgery. I guess the doctor theme
was consistent, at least. It was. The theme was
there. But that disconnect you're pointing out,
the difference between the shiny suit and the
actual reality of Compton, that is exactly what
triggered the first major pivot of his career.
And that's where Eazy -E comes in. Enter Eazy
-E, Eric Wright, the drug dealer turned record
executive. Right. Eazy had the money, he had
the strength credibility, but he didn't know
a thing about music. He met Dre, and the whole
dynamic shifted. EZ basically looked at the world
-class wrecking crew and said, this, this isn't
what the streets are actually like. So they form
in WA. But was it an instant switch? Did Dre
just like take off the lace glove and pick up
a microphone and suddenly he's a gangster? No,
it was a calculated pivot. They looked at what
Public Enemy was doing on the East Coast, that
political, noisy, revolutionary rap. Very conscious.
Very. And then they looked at their own lives
in Compton, the police brutality, the crack epidemic,
the gang warfare, and they decided to make reality
rap. Which the media immediately branded. Gangsta
rap. A term they hated, by the way. They always
called it reality rap. But the sound. This is
where Dre's genius really starts to show. NWA's
production wasn't just loud, it was abrasive.
It was designed to make you feel uncomfortable.
Yeah. And when they dropped straight out of Compton
in 1989, it did something that should have been
impossible. It became a nationwide hit with virtually
zero radio play. That's the part that I struggle
to comprehend in today's world. Yeah. How do
you go multi -platinum? Without the radio. How
does anyone even hear it? You rely on the taboo.
The fact that you couldn't hear it on the radio
made you want to buy the cassette tape even more.
It makes it forbidden. Exactly. And then the
government gave them the best marketing push
they could have ever asked for. The FBI letter.
Milt Alarich, an assistant director at the FBI,
sends an official letter to Ruthless Records
condemning the song, Fuck They Police. Which
is just, I mean, that's the best marketing campaign
in the history of music. You couldn't pay for
that kind of publicity. It validated everything
they were saying it proved to every kid in America
that they were dangerous It turned them from
a rap group into a First Amendment issue Wow,
but Going back to our theme of control versus
chaos, NWA was pure chaos, and Dre wasn't in
control. Jerry Heller and Eazy -E were controlling
the money. Correct. Dre was the sonic architect,
Ice Cube was the primary writer, but Eazy and
their manager Jerry Heller held the checkbook.
And Cube leaves first. Cube left first because
he did the math and it wasn't adding up. Dre
stayed a bit longer, but eventually he realized
the same thing. He was building a mansion and
being forced to sleep in the shed. So he leaves.
1991. the biggest, most controversial group in
the world, and he just walks away. And this brings
us to Suge Knight. The infamous Suge Knight,
the bodyguard who whispered in Dre's ear he got
Dre out of that ruthless contract. Allegedly
using some very persuasive tactics. Yes, allegedly
using some very intimidation -heavy tactics involving
baseball bats and lead pipes, and they go off
and found death row records. And this is where
the sound completely changes. And I want to get
technical here for a second. Because people say
G -Funk and they nod their heads. But what is
G -Funk? What did Dre actually do to the music?
This is the critical innovation. This is pivot
number two. Before the chronic East Coast hip
-hop production, you know, I think the Bomb Squad
with the Public Enemy, it was really dense. A
wall of sound. A total wall of noise, collage
-style sampling, very heavy in the mid -range
frequencies. It was designed for boomboxes and
headphones. It was frantic. It was noisy. Yes.
And... Dre, he slowed it all down. He dropped
the tempo way down. But sonically, he scooped
out the middle. He focused on two things and
two things only. Extremely low frequency sub
bows and high frequency synthesizer leads. That
high pitched whistle sound. That worm sound,
yeah. Now, why did he do that? Because of where
people in Los Angeles listen to music? They weren't
on the subway with Walkmans. They were in cars.
They were in cars. Lowriders. Right. He engineered
the frequency range specifically to rattle the
trunk of a 64 Impala. If you played a public
enemy record in a car with a massive subwoofer,
it just sounded muddy. If you played the chronic,
it felt like a controlled earthquake. Okay. That
makes perfect sense. Yeah. But there's another
layer to this control aspect. You mentioned something
in the pre -show notes about interpolation versus
sampling. Yes. This is the secret sauce. This
is so important. Most producers back then would
just take a snippet of an old Parliament Funkadelic
record and loop it. That's sampling. Dre stopped
doing that. He would find the record. Let's use
Leon Haywood's, I want to do something freaky
to you for nothing but a G -sang. And instead
of sampling it, he would hire world -class musicians
to come into the studio and replay it. Why go
through all that extra trouble? Two reasons.
One is business. If you replay it you own the
master recording of the new track and you pay
way less in royalties to the original artist.
Smart. But the second and more important reason
for Dre is sonic control. If you sample a record
from 1975 you are stuck with the tape hiss, the
mix, The slightly loose timing of the 70s drummer.
All the imperfections. All of them. But if you
hire a guy to replay it, you can quantize it.
You can lock the drums to a perfect computerized
grid. You can tune the bass so it doesn't clash
with the kick drum. It allowed Dre to make funk
music that sounded like a machine. It was clean.
It was polished. It was totally pop ready. So
he basically cleaned the grit off the funk to
make it more palatable. He sanitized it just
enough to make it palatable for the suburbs while
the lyrics were made absolutely terrifying. And
that combination, that smooth, polished music
with those hard, violent lyrics, it was unbeatable.
And the Chronic drops in 1992. And it's a phenomenon.
It ends up being the number six best -selling
album of 1993. It's everywhere. And this is where
he introduces the world to Snoop Dogg. His stepbrother,
Warren G, actually introduced them. And Snoop
was the perfect vocal counterpart. Dre's beats
were so laid back. Snoop's flow was just as laid
back. It was a seamless marriage of sound and
voice. Then they turn around and do Doggy Style.
First debut album ever to hit number one on the
Billboard charts. Unheard of at the time. Then
they sign Tupac. They do California Love. I mean,
they are literally on top of the world. But the
cast is creeping back in, isn't it? The chaos
didn't just creep in. It kicked the door down.
Death Row Records under Suge Knight was... It
was a house of horrors. There are stories of
producers being beaten up for using the wrong
phone, people being forced to drink urine. It
was a mob operation masquerading as a record
label. And Dre, the control freak, is just watching
all this happen. He's watching his sanctuary,
the studio, turn into a gang hangout. Tupac is
getting more and more volatile, Suge is getting
more and more violent, and Dre realizes... I
can't work like this. I can't sit here and perfect
a snare drum sound when I'm worried about a drive
-by shooting. So he leaves. Again, 1996. He walks
away from death row, leaves the rights to The
Chronic, leaves Tupac, leaves millions and millions
of dollars on the table. He burns the entire
empire down to save himself. He does, and he
starts Aftermath. But this is the part of the
story that I think people forget. Aftermath didn't
work, not at first. These are the wilderness
years. The wilderness years from 96 to 98. Dre
releases a compilation called Dr. Dre Presents
the Aftermath. It gets pretty mixed reviews.
Then he tries to launch this super group called
The Firm with Nas, Foxy Brown, and AZ. On paper,
that sounds incredible. Nas and Dr. Dre, that
should be a classic. On paper, yes. It should
have been amazing. In reality, it was glossy,
it was overproduced, and it was just boring.
It flopped. And that's when the whispers started.
Dre fell off. Dre lost it. Maybe Siege Night
was the real reason for the success all along.
That has to be his absolute nightmare. It was.
He was staring down the barrel of total irrelevance.
And then Jimmy Iovine, the head of Interscope
Records, walks into his office and says, Hey,
I have this tape from a kid in Detroit. Marshall
Mathers. Eminem. Now, we have to pause here and
really contextualize 1998. Hip -hop was incredibly
segregated. The only reference point most people
had for a white rapper was Vanilla Ice, who was
a punchline. Right. They told a joke. So for
Dr. Dre, the godfather of gangster rap, to sign
a scrawny white kid who rapped about murdering
his mom and doing shrooms, it looked like career
suicide. People must have told him not to do
it. Everyone told him not to do it. His own business
partners, his own associates told him he was
ruining his legacy. And Dre's response was legendary.
He just said, I don't care if he's purple. If
he can rap, he can rap. And when they got in
the studio. It was instant. The story is. Dre
played a beat. Eminem just started chanting,
hi, my name's Iz. And they had the single recorded
in minutes. Why did that combination work so
well? They seem like polar opposites. Because
they gave each other exactly what the other one
lacked. Dre gave Eminem credibility. If Dr. Dre
co -signs you, the streets have to at least listen.
But Eminem gave Dre a new kind of energy. It
wasn't G -funk anymore. It was frantic, psychotic,
cartoonish energy. It totally revitalized Dre.
Which leads directly to 2001, the album. Yeah.
Which came out in 1999. Yeah, don't even get
me started on the title. Suge Knight, just to
be petty, released a compilation called Chronic
2000 to troll Dre. Unbelievable. So Dre had to
call his album 2001 to avoid a trademark dispute.
The pettiness is just incredible. But the sound
of 2001, this is another pivot. There are almost
no samples, right? Very, very few. This was his
stripped -down era. Think about the song Still
D .R .E. It's just a simple piano riff, a bass
line, and a drum beat. It's ominous. It's clinical.
It sounded like the future. And interestingly,
on that track specifically, Dre didn't write
a single word. That was Jay -Z, right? Jay -Z,
the king of New York, wrote the definitive anthem
for the king of the West Coast. Still representing
for the gangsters all across the world, a guy
from Marcy Projects wrote that line. Does that
bother you? As a music fan. The idea that the
most personal manifesto of Dre's career was written
by someone else. You know, it used to. It really
did. But then you realize, Dre isn't really a
rapper. He's a director. Steven Spielberg doesn't
write every line of dialogue in his movies. He
curates the vision. He brings the best people
in. Dre's talent is knowing that Jay -Z could
write a better Dr. Dre verse than Dr. Dre could.
That brings us to his methodology. Because the
stories about him in the studio are, I mean,
they're terrifying. We call him a perfectionist,
but it sounds more like psychological warfare
sometimes. It definitely borders on it. There's
a famous story from Snoop Dogg about a rapper
named Bishop Lamont. Bishop is in the booth.
He's excited to work with the legend. He wraps
a bar, traced off the tape, again. Okay. He does
it again, again. He does it again, again. How
many times are we talking? Snoop swears it was
107 times. 107 times. Oh. For one bar of music.
One bar, not a verse. A single bar. Can you imagine
saying the same 10 words for like three hours
straight? By the end, Bishop is exhausted. His
voice is raspy. He's probably incredibly frustrated.
And Dre goes, that's it. That's the take. What
on earth was he hearing on take 107 that wasn't
there on take 50 or take 100? Maybe the struggle,
the fatigue, or maybe just a micro inflection
in the breath that nobody else on the planet
could hear. Dre treats the human voice like it's
a synthesizer. He wants to tweak the knobs until
the frequency is absolutely perfect. But... And
here is our control versus chaos theme again.
This perfectionism, it became a trap for him.
Detox. The great white whale of hip hop. The
most famous album that never happened. It was
announced in 2002. It was supposed to come out
in 2004. Then 2005. Years went by. He released
snippets in Dr. Pepper commercials. I remember
that. He had, by his own admission, 20 to 40
songs done for it. And he scrapped all of them.
Why would you do that? I think it was paralysis.
He had set the bar so impossibly high with The
Chronic in 2001 that the idea of releasing something
that was just good wasn't enough. It had to be
earth shattering. It had to change the world
again. And because he couldn't guarantee it would
be perfect, he simply didn't release it. The
control freak couldn't let go of the product.
It's fascinating that while he was creatively
paralyzed, he made the biggest business move
of his entire life. Let's talk about beats. This
is where he stops being a musician and becomes
a tycoon. 2006. The iPod is everywhere. But everyone
is listening on those cheap white plastic earbuds
that came in the box. And the sound quality was
just trash. It was terrible. So Dre and Jimmy
Iovine are walking down the beach one day and
Dre's lawyer says, hey, you should sell sneakers.
And Jimmy looks at Dre and says, screw sneakers,
let's sell speakers. Meaning headphones. Right.
But here's the cynical truth that nobody wants
to admit. Eats headphones didn't actually sound
that good. Right. I remember the audiophiles
hated them. They despised them. They were incredibly
bass heavy and muddy, but that wasn't the point.
So why did they sell in crazy? Marketing. Pure
marketing genius. They didn't market them as
a piece of tech. They marketed them as a piece
of jewelry. They got LeBron James to wear them
into the arena. They got every athlete at the
Olympics to wear them. They made bulky, expensive
headphones a status symbol. And then Apple comes
knocking. Yeah. 2014, $3 billion. The largest
acquisition in Apple history at the time. But
here's the interesting part. Apple didn't just
want the headphones. They wanted the streaming
service. Beats had started this service called
Beats Music. I remember that. And it had a curated
playlist algorithm that was way better than anything
Apple had at the time. So Apple basically bought
Beats to jumpstart what would become Apple Music.
But the deal almost died. because of a Facebook
video of all things. Oh, the Tyrese incident.
This is pure comedy. The deal is being finalized
in a secret war room at Apple headquarters. Strict
NDAs are signed. Nobody is supposed to know.
Super secretive. And Tyrese Gibson, the actor,
is hanging out with Dre in the studio. They're
maybe having a few drinks. And Tyrese decides
it's a great idea to post a video on Facebook.
I remember this video. They're celebrating. It's
shaky. It's so shaky. And Tyrese is screaming
into the camera. The first billionaire in hip
hop. The Forbes list just changed. And Dre's
in the background laughing, pointing at the camera.
And Tim Cook is presumably not laughing. The
executives at Apple went nuclear. I mean, Apple
prides itself on secrecy and control. Jimmy Iovine
panicked. He got a call from them essentially
saying, what the hell is this? Did it actually
cost them? It did. The rumor, which is pretty
well sourced, is that Apple knocked $200 million
off the final purchase price because of that
video. That is a $200 million selfie. It's the
most expensive selfie in history. But the deal
went through. Dre became an executive at Apple.
The kid from Compton who couldn't get a job at
Northrop Aviation was now sitting in board meetings
at the most valuable company on Earth. It really
is the ultimate American success story. Yeah.
But. We can't tell this story, honestly, if we
ignore the wreckage. We have to talk about the
violence. Because there is a very disturbing
pattern here that ran parallel to all of this
incredible success. We absolutely have to talk
about it. And for a long time, the media and
the fans, and I'll include myself in this, we
sort of compartmentalized it. We separated the
art from the artists. But when you look at the
source material, the accusations are brutal.
Let's start with Dee Barnes. The year is 1991.
Dee Barnes hosted a popular hip hop show called
Pump It Up. She aired an interview with Ice Cube
after he left N .W .A. and he insulted his old
group. Dre felt disrespected. He saw her later
at a record release party in Hollywood. And he
didn't just yell at her. No. According to the
court documents and multiple witnesses, he assaulted
her. He slammed her head and face into a brick
wall. He kicked her. It was severe beating. She
eventually settled out of court. But what's so
chilling is Dre's reaction at the time. What
did he say? He gave an interview to Rolling Stone
magazine and just said, I just threw her through
a door. He completely trivialized it. He basically
said she deserved it. And that wasn't an isolated
incident. Michelle, his ex -fiancee. the mother
of his son. She has been incredibly vocal about
this for years. She accused him of repeated domestic
abuse, black eyes, broken ribs. In her biopic,
Surviving Compton, she alleges that he actually
shot at her once. Why did he get a pass for so
long? I mean, if a rock star or a pop star did
this today, their career would be over. Why was
Dr. Dre so bulletproof? I think part of it was
the era. The 90s were just a less accountable
time. But another part of it was the brand. His
entire brand was gangsta. Violence. was baked
into the marketing. So when he beat up a TV host,
strangely, it almost reinforced his street credibility.
It blurred that line between the character Dr.
Dre and the human being Andre Young. Did he ever
actually own up to it? Not for decades. But in
2015, when the NWA movie Straight Outta Compton
came out, the filmmakers completely omitted the
Dee Barnes incident. They just pretended it never
happened. And the backlash was fierce. People
said, You can't just rewrite history like this.
So he was forced to apologize. He was. He issued
a formal statement to the New York Times. He
said, I apologize to the women I've hurt. I deeply
regret what I did. And he blamed it on being
young, drinking too much and having no structure
in his life. Do you buy that apology? It's hard
to say. In the Defiant Ones documentary, he calls
it a major blemish on who I am as a man. It feels
like he understands the gravity of it now, especially
as a corporate executive. You can't be an Apple
exec and have that hanging over your head without
addressing it. But for the victims, a press release
25 years late doesn't really undo the trauma.
It brings us right back to that control theme,
doesn't it? The violence seems to happen when
he feels disrespected or like he's losing control.
It's this really ugly side of the perfectionism,
the need to dominate his environment, whether
that's a mixing board or a person. That's a very
sharp insight. The need for dominance is the
through line, for good and for ill. And recently,
that dominance has been seriously tested. His
personal life in just the last few years has
been a complete disaster. It really has. We mentioned
the great man theory earlier, but Dre is human.
In 2008, his son, Andre Young Jr., died of an
overdose, heroin and morphine. God, that's awful.
To lose a child. I mean, that breaks anyone.
And then in 2021, Dre himself almost died. He
had a brain aneurysm. I remember the headlines.
He was in the ICU. It sounded really serious.
It was worse than we knew at the time. He just
revealed last year that he actually had three
strokes while he was in the hospital. Doctors
were literally inviting his family in to say
their final goodbyes. And while he is lying in
a hospital bed fighting for his life, his marriage
is publicly exploding in the tabloids. The divorce
from Nicole Young. After 24 years of marriage,
and at the ugly fast, she accused him of abuse,
she challenged their prenup, claiming he tore
it up in front of her as a romantic gesture years
ago. Which, knowing Dre and his business sense,
he probably regretted deeply. The legal battle
was vicious. In the end, he had to pay $100 million
settlement just to finalize it. And we saw that
pettiness resurface one more time. The balloon
photo. He posted a photo on Instagram of himself
sitting in a chair smiling in front of these
huge silver balloons that spelled out divorced
AF. It's so childish. But also, knowing what
we know about him, it's him reclaiming the narrative.
It's him saying, I won. I'm free. I'm in control
again. Exactly. And then he takes the ultimate
victory lap. The Super Bowl. 2022. The halftime
show. Dre, Snoop, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Mary
J. Blige, 50 Cent. That wasn't just a concert.
That was a coronation. That was Dr. Dre standing
on the biggest stage in America and saying, I
built this. And he did. He built the sound of
the West Coast. He built the careers of almost
every superstar on that stage. And he built the
headphones that half of America was probably
listening on. So as we wrap this up, I want to
go back to the methodology. We've talked about
the sequins, the G -funk, the abuse, the billions.
If you had to boil Dr. Dre's success down to
one single trait, what is it? Because it's clearly
not rapping. And technically, he hires other
people to play the keys. So what is it? It's
the ear. It's as simple and as complicated as
that. It's his ability to hear potential where
no one else does. He heard a superstar and a
lanky, laid -back kid from Long Beach named Snoop.
He heard a generational talent in a volatile
white kid from a trailer park in Detroit named
Marshall. He heard a billion dollar business
in a pair of overpriced plastic headphones. And
he heard a symphony in the rattling trunk of
a lowrider. He just listens better than anyone
else in the history of the business. But I keep
thinking about the empty space. Yeah. You know,
the scrapped albums. The myth of detox, the long,
long silences between the hits. And that leads
to my final thought for you to consider. We glorify
Dre's perfectionism. We call it genius. But I
wonder if the studio is the only place where
Dre actually feels safe. What do you mean? In
the studio, he can tell Bishop Lamont to do a
take 107 times until it is perfect. He can mute
the track. He can cut out the bad parts. He's
in total control. You can't edit real life. Exactly.
You can't edit a messy divorce. You can't edit
a brain aneurysm. You can't hit undo on the death
of a son. So maybe the perfectionism isn't just
about making great art. Maybe it's a shield.
Maybe he stays locked in the studio for years
at a time because it's the one room in the entire
world where he is God. That is a heavy thought
to leave on. The music is the order. The life
is the chaos. Precisely. Well, whether you see
him as the villain, the hero, or just the architect,
you absolutely cannot deny the impact. Dr. Dre,
thanks for taking this deep dive with us. Take
care.