The Defiant Ones
A new series about the men who changed music
Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine practically defined popular music in the 1990s, and their long-lasting friendship is being turned into a four-part HBO documentary. The Defiant Ones borrows its title from the seminal 1958 drama starring Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis as handcuffed prison escapees who are forced to cooperate despite their seemingly incompatible backgrounds.
Jimmy Iovine got his start as a record engineer for timeless rock and roll acts like John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, and Meat Loaf; in 1990, he founded Interscope Records, and quickly signed Tupac Shakur to a recording contract, one of the game-changing events in both of their lives.
In 1991, Andre Romelle Young, also known as Dr. Dre, had just left N.W.A., one of the most popular rap groups of all time. Eventually, Dre joined Suge Knight‘s newly-founded Death Row Records, which just-so-happened to be a subsidiary of Interscope Records.
The documentary follows the story of Dre and Iovine‘s contrasting upbringings and how they changed the music industry individually and together, as well as their collaborations beyond making records (they teamed up to create the famous Beats by Dre line of bass-heavy audio equipment). The series, directed by Allen Hughes (Menace II Society, The Book of Eli), features interviews with legends like Bruce Springsteen, Will.I.Am, Bono, Eminem, Ice Cube, and many more on Dre and Iovine‘s odyssey through their disparate versions of Americana.
The Defiant Ones premieres on HBO on July 9.
