MASS APPEAL recently caught up with Jimmy Iovine in lead-up to Sunday night's [July 9] premier of The Defiant Ones on HBO.
The legendary producer-turned-music executive has helped some of the biggest artists of the past four decades advance their careers, and although many of them were rock and pop musicians, most will argue that Iovine's biggest impact was made through the hip hop he helped usher into the world.
In his talk with the music-media company, Iovine touched on his relationship with the gamut of artists he served as a gatekeeper for while running Interscope Records. From his adoration for Dr. Dre, with whom he's long had a famously tight partnership with, to his tolerance of 50 Cent, in reference to whom Iovine offered, "When I have a lot of success with somebody I'm not going to dislike them," one gets a sense of the kind of flexibility it took to be able to work with the likes of such edgy figures as Tupac, Suge Knight, and Eminem during a time when the genre still faced scrutiny from the chambers of government.
Those on the fence about setting their usual Sunday night schedule aside to get an in-depth look into the Iovine/Dr. Dre era can get further insight on what to expect through some of the brief accounts Iovine gives MASS APPEAL. Check out what it was like to sign and then lose Tupac, to be given a nickname by Eminem, and to have to maintain a working relationship with DJ Whoo Kid as he went about leaking the artist's music to the company's disfavor.
Source: youtube.com
