Dr Dre, Lovine, a story of an unlikely music business duo

The Defiant Ones is a new documentary series about the relationship between rapper and business mogul Dr Dre and record producer Jimmy Lovine.

It illuminates the passion that drove the two to success. The documentary touches on ideas of money, fame, and business, all of which are topics both Dre and Lovine are more than familiar with. The series premiered on Sunday on the network HBO

The Defiant Ones charts the duo’s influence over music from the ‘70s on, and begins with a $3 billion deal jeopardised by, of all things, a Facebook post.

The Defiant Ones, written and directed by Allen Hughes, spends all of its four episodes on Dre and Lovine, covering their separate lives and their “improbable partnership” together in a gripping, digestible deep dive that always remains intimate.

In the four part series the network will devote five hours to perhaps the unlikeliest and most influential partnership in the modern music industry. It begins as the two were angling to sell their company Beats Electronics to Apple. According to Lovine, he told Dre not to say anything until all the details were finalised.

According to Variety, Lovine recalls in the documentary,

 “I said, ‘Dre, remember DeNiro’s character Jimmy in Goodfellas? Where Jimmy told the guys, ‘Don’t buy cars, and don’t get showy’? I said, ‘Don’t move this weekend.’ “

But later that evening, Dre and actor Tyrese Gibson broke that silence by posting a video on Facebook proclaiming Dre the first hip-hop billionaire. In the documentary, Black Eyed Peas front man will.i.am says that, in that moment, his friend Lovine was seriously worried.

“He was like, ‘We could potentially lose this. But it’s the horse I rode in with,’ “Will.i.am remembers. Still, the deal ultimately went through, and Dre and Lovine cashed out on the largest acquisition in Apple’s history.

At the end, The Defiant Ones is an absorbing look at two men, one white and raised in Brooklyn, the other black and “straight outta Compton, who overcame a lot, and have accomplished a great deal.

The story is told with the help of several interviews with key players in both Dre and Iovine’s lives, including Eminem, Nas, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, will.i.am and more. The documentary also benefits from exclusive footage from recording and writing sessions with artists like Eazy-E, Bruce Springsteen, and JJ Fad as well as N.W.A.