Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Over the course of 4 episodes, the HBO documentary series The Defiant Ones has chronicled the lives of two of music’s most important figures; producers Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre. Iovine rose from New York City recording engineer to producer of landmark records by Tom Petty and U2, and eventually founded Interscope Records. Dr. Dre is of course one of the founding members of legendary gangsta rap group N.W.A., and went from producing records to being a solo star in his own right, before helping to launch the careers of Snoop Dogg and Eminem, among others. Since crossing paths in the early ‘90s, the two men have collaborated on hit records and billion dollar business deals, including the sale of their company Beats Electronics to Apple in 2015.
Episode Four of the series brings things up to the present day and delves into the two men’s personal relationship. If previous episodes saw director Allen Hughes play with gangster motifs and portray the duo as music industry outlaws, by this point in their careers Iovine and Dre are far removed from their roughneck roots (think Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part III). It opens with footage of Iovine toasting Dre at the former’s 50th birthday party, and saying, “He’s been making me look like a genius for 12 years now.” Standing by the sonic architect of West Coast hip hop through the Death Row years gave Iovine bullet proof credibility, an invaluable asset in an industry preoccupied with the notion of the artist as the personification of personal freedom. Likewise, Iovine helped Dre become an adult after his former label dissolved in acrimony, chaos and literal bloodshed. “I guess I’m a grown up now,” Dre says while driving his sports car at the legal speed limit, the slightest trace of regret in his voice.
Reinvention for Dr. Dre wasn’t as easy as it seemed, though. After splitting from Death Row, he formed Aftermath Entertainment but faltered through his first few efforts. It wasn’t until Iovine put him on to an unknown and outrageous, young white MC named Eminem that Dre’s comeback began to take shape. As Iovine says, “We weren’t looking for a white controversial rapper, we were looking for great.” The pairing produced immediate results and pushed Dre to complete his sophomore effort The Chronic 2001. It was the dawn of a second gilded age for the producer, as his name was connected to classic records by 50 Cent, The Game and the bleach-blonde trouble-maker, whom he affectionately refers to as “my Caucasian partner.”
Despite his protégés success, and the continued prosperity of Interscope Records, Jimmy Iovine knew the music business was in trouble. File sharing posed an existential threat to not only record sales, but to the long form album format itself. He began to look for a new business model and, ever the networker, latched onto Apple’s Steve Jobs in the same way he had cozied up to music industry giant David Geffen when he wanted to launch a record label.
According to Dr. Dre, his and Iovine’s most lucrative joint venture was the result of a casual 10-minute conversation. Beats Electronics would do for music headphones what Air Jordans did for sneakers, blending stylish design sense with high-end audio, a natural fit for these two studio geeks. Iovine eventually saw a way to convert the hardware company into a software company, buoyed around his advocacy of streaming music services. When he realized he would never be able to accomplish his goal as well Apple could, he began negotiations with them to sell the business, naturally securing a plum position at the company in the process. As the episode comes to an end, it rushes through Iovine and Dre’s philanthropic efforts and presents them as upstanding members of society, no longer the music business brigands that made record executives cower beneath their gold records.
While four hours is a lot of time to devote to any documentary subject, breaking The Defiant Ones into four episodes prevents it from becoming a laborious viewing experience. And if the series seems a bit self-congratulatory at times, Dre and Iovine’s aesthetic and commercial success rate certainly warrants a victory lap. While the finale ends with a litany of celebrity accolades, it’s the albums they worked on which tell everything you need to know about their importance, from Iovine engineering Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run to Dr. Dre nurturing the career of Kendrick Lamar. And as Iovine associate Steve Berman says, “The journey isn’t done yet.”
You can stream all four episodes of The Defiant Ones on HBO Go and HBO Now.
Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.
