“As music mogul Jimmy Iovine and rap star Dr. Dre shopped their Beats Electronics headphone company and streaming service to Apple Inc., Mr. Iovine did most of the talking,” Hannah Karp reports for The Wall Street Journal. “But behind the scenes, Dr. Dre — whose real name is Andre Young — has quietly played an equally powerful role developing and protecting the Beats brand, eschewing market research for gut instinct at every turn. Though his main obsession is perfecting the sound of the company’s signature high-end headphones, the 49-year-old fitness-obsessed music producer weighs in decisively on everything from TV ads and font styles to the wordiness of descriptions on the Beats Music streaming service.”

“As one colleague says, Dr. Dre serves as Beats’ ‘cultural barometer’ of what is cool,” Karp reports. “But Dr. Dre’s process is mysterious, colleagues say: His assessments are usually immediate, personal and articulated sparely. He often dismisses ideas such as posing for clichéd photos in a recording studio as too ‘corny’ or ‘cheesy.’ Or he’ll wave them off with a terse ‘I’m not feeling that.'”

“Dr. Dre’s perfectionist impulse, coupled with his disregard for artificial deadlines, have meant that ‘he doesn’t put out a lot of material,’ despite being a workaholic, said Paul Rosenberg, a lawyer and manager of one of Dr. Dre’s protégés, rapper Eminem,” Karp reports. “That could portend friction at his new employer, Apple, which agreed to buy Beats for $3 billion last month. But like Dr. Dre, Apple has also boasted about not doing market research. The company’s late founder, Steve Jobs, made no secret of his belief that consumers don’t really know what they want until someone else shows it to them. Colleagues predict that at Apple Dr. Dre could also cede some decision-making power and become more accommodating.”

“Bringing a gangsta rap pioneer into the ranks of the squeaky-clean, image-obsessed tech company was a bold move for Mr. Cook, who hired Dr. Dre despite the violent, criminal subject matter and profane lyrics that define much of the rapper’s oeuvre. Just last month, before Apple announced its acquisition, Dr. Dre appeared in a YouTube video with several friends, boasting about becoming ‘the first billionaire in hip-hop, right here from the motherf— West Coast,'” Karp reports. “But Apple has never censored the music it sells on its iTunes Store, while Dr. Dre has long been known to risk everything to do what he thinks is right, colleagues say.”

Much more in the full article here.

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