Dr. Dre and Jimmy Lovine are not only business partners but very good friends. They met shortly after Iovine finished working with U2. They began to chat about music and Dre gave Iovine his debut solo album, The Chronic, to listen to.
After listening to The Chronic, Iovine said at the time; “I don’t know hip-hop, but I know my speakers,” – meaning he liked what he heard. He then asked, “Who engineered it?”
Dre’s confirmation that he was the studio engineer sparked Iovine’s interest in rap.
He compared Dre’s situation to “making a record falling out of a building,” and described the band as “a bunch of guys with no money.”
It inspired Iovine to try something new and step outside of his comfort zone. “Wow! If you can do it under those circumstances, let’s go!”, he said to Dre.
Since that day, Iovine and Dre began collaborating musically and in business.
Iovine said he felt energised by the new challenge. His record company, Interscope Records, became a marketer and distributor for Dre and Suge Knight’s Death Row Records in the early 1990s.
Their collaboration went far beyond record production and in 2006, they founded Beats Electronics in Santa Monica, California. The company created and sold headphones with exceptional sound quality as well as personality.
They entered the streaming market with Beats Music after launching the headphones. Over the next decade, the company grew from strength to strength, eventually selling to Apple for £3 billion in 2014.
In May 2013, Iovine and Dr. Dre gave $70 million to the University of Southern California to establish the Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology, and the Business of Innovation. The Academy’s first class began in September 2014, with 31 students.