In May 2014, Dr. Dre and actor Tyrese Gibson leaked the news that Apple was buying Beats Electronics for $3.2 billion in a drunken, boastful video posted to Gibson’s Facebook page late one night.
Dre’s friend, filmmaker Allen Hughes (Menace II Society), had just started rolling cameras on HBO’s The Defiant Ones (Sunday, 9 ET/PT), a four-part documentary series about the rap icon’s longtime partnership with storied producer Jimmy Iovine, with whom he co-founded the headphone giant. The premature revelation threatened the Apple deal, and left the film’s prospects similarly shaky.
“No one told me it was over, but I (thought) it was because Jimmy went silent on me,” Hughes says. But weeks later, he breathed a sigh of relief when the Beats purchase was made official, leaving Dre and Iovine’s friendship intact. “The fact they made it through that (ordeal was) a true testament to what their bond is.”
Defiant continues Monday through Wednesday, and will be available to stream in its entirety Sunday night. The project tracks the parallel rises of the music giants through archival footage and candid interviews with their collaborators, including Bono, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Gwen Stefani, Snoop Dogg and Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor. Dre, 52 (real name: Andre Young), got his start as a DJ in Compton, Calif., before co-founding gangsta rap group N.W.A and branching out into a successful solo career.
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