Money is nice, fame is dizzying, and professional accolades can be rewarding. But the truest measurement of a life lived well — or at least strategically — may be the quality of the biographer you can persuade, or hire, to tell your story.

In the case of Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, the story is a doozy. Mr. Iovine began as a recording engineer and producer for Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks and others, then became the defining music executive of the 1990s and 2000s via his perch at Interscope Records. Dr. Dre essentially built gangster rap from the ground up, from his days in N.W.A through his solo career, and was crucial to introducing Snoop Dogg, Eminem and 50 Cent to the world. Also, the two men make headphones.

“The Defiant Ones,” a glossy, rapidly-paced, ambitious and often fun four-part biographical documentary that begins Sunday on HBO, contains a sufficient amount of awe at their history — which embodies the tremendous potential of American popular music and culture — but not an overwhelming, suffocating, corporate-endorsement amount. Instead, the mood is intimate, trusting, a little slick, making what could have been hagiography something more invigorating and frank.

The director Allen Hughes (“Menace II Society,” “American Pimp”), who worked on this project with the documentarian Doug Pray, balances reverence with wryness, and has a keen ability to tweak his subjects just gently enough to recalibrate carefully sandpapered narratives.