Dr. Dre is arguably the greatest producer in Hip Hop history who could work with any artist he wants to, but he’s now revealed that he previously turned down working with both Prince and Michael Jackson.
The legendary producer sat down with Kevin Hart for his Hart To Heart series on Peacock, and said that he decided not to work with both iconic artists because of the massive enamor associated with each musician.
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After Hart asked if he created a demo tape for the dynamic artists, Dr. Dre elaborated on his answer. “Nah, they just asked me to work with them and I just [was like], ‘What the fuck am I gonna do with them?’ Those are my fuckin’ heroes man. Yeah, that happened.”
Check out the clip below:
The then 35-year-old Grammy Award-winning musician spoke to MTV Radio in 2001 about declining the opportunity to produce Invincible, MJ’s first album in over a decade at that time.
“Somebody approached me about working with Michael Jackson, and I did say no because I like working with new artists or people that I’ve worked with in the past,” he told MTV. “I can develop them from the ground up. There’s no set standard that I have to live up to or anything like that.
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He added: “All I have to do is go in the studio, and basically they’re going to bust their ass to come in there and do their thing the way it’s supposed to be done.”
Later in the Hart To Heart interview, Dr. Dre also shared that he recently declined working with Stevie Wonder for the exact same reason as he did with Michael Jackson and Prince.
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“So I’m workin’ on an album with Marsha Ambrosius, right?,” he begins. “She’s amazing. We did a song using Stevie Wonder’s music, and he had to clear it. And he called me up, ‘Yo, Dre’ — for some reason, Stevie Wonder calls you like super early in the morning, like six, seven in the mornin’ or somethin.’ Like, just ’cause you can’t see the time.
He continued: “True story, [he was like], ‘I don’t like the lyrics. I don’t like the lyrics, Dre.’ Okay, we went in and changed the lyrics. What the fuck is the difference? Like 5 a.m. or 5 p.m. for Stevie? So this shit happened.”
After the changes were made alongside Marsha Ambrosius, the Aftermath Entertainment head honcho stated that he got back on the phone with Stevie Wonder.
“He called me back like, ‘Okay, Dre. Now I like the lyrics. Why don’t we work together and just write a song together?’ [I was like], ‘Yeah. Alright. Alright, Stevie,’ and yeah, I didn’t show up.”
“What the fuck am I gonna do in the studio with Stevie Wonder? Huh? Touch the drums? No. Touch the keyboard? No. What the fuck? Nah. I went that way.”
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In other Dr. Dre news, the N.W.A. legend surprised 50 Cent for his birthday last weekend by popping up at a party in London.
The G-Unit boss turned 48 on July 6 and celebrated with close friends in the English capital, where they threw him a party at a Somali restaurant called The Village.
There was plenty of history in the room as Tony Yayo, Interscope Records and Beats By Dre co-founder Jimmy Iovine and Eminem’s longtime manager Paul Rosenberg also attended the low-key shindig.
