Iconic producer and rapper Dr. Dre (aka Andre Young) and Entrepreneur Jimmy Iovine (R) attend the 8th Annual California Hall Of Fame Induction Ceremony at The California Museum on October 1, 2014 in Sacramento, California.
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Dr. Dre Lost $200 Million In His Apple-Beats Deal

Dr. Dre Lost $200 Million In His Apple-Beats Deal

Published Fri, May 6, 2022 at 11:00 AM EDT

The 2014 Beats Electronics joint venture with Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine was one of the biggest in the industry and worth $3.2 billion, but it almost didn’t happen. An excerpt from New York Times reporter Tripp Mickle’s new book, After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul reveals that the infamous video where R&B singer Tyrese boasts about Dre. being in the “Billion Dollar Boys Club” caused Apple to cut $200 million from the agreement.

The excerpt reads: “It was a sum that Iovine and Dre could barely fathom. As the lawyers worked through final details, Iovine summoned the leadership team of Beats to his home near Beverly Hills. He told everyone that they were on the cusp of finalizing a massive deal. The only thing that could spoil it would be for word of the deal to leak.”

Mickle's book claims that Iovine warned Dre and the rest of the team of the importance of keeping the deal confidential.

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They even go so far as to compare it to a scene from the 1990 movie GoodFellas, where Robert DeNiro's character Jimmy Conway tells his guys after a big score, "Don’t buy any furs. Don’t buy any cars. Don’t get showy. Don’t move." After the drunken studio video was leaked to Facebook, Diddy allegedly called Iovine the next day and informed him that Tyrese shared the celebratory video to social media.

Another excerpt from Mickle's book reads:

“At 2:00 a.m., Iovine got a call from Puff Daddy, who was screaming that Dre and Tyrese, a rapper, were talking about the deal in a Facebook video. Iovine pulled up the video and cringed as he saw Tyrese bragging about being drunk on Heineken in a recording studio. When word of the video reached [Tim] Cook, he summoned Iovine and Dre to [Apple’s headquarters in] Cupertino.

“He invited them into a conference room for a private conversation. Iovine was anxious and afraid that Cook was going to kill the deal. He told the music executives that he was disappointed and wished that Dre’s social media outburst hadn’t happened but said that the video hadn’t shaken his conviction that buying Beats was right for Apple.”

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