H I P H O P M AT T E R S
Phillips heard a young white Memphis crooner named Elvis sing for
the first time in his studio, the unthinkable had come true: a white singer who could ride the beat and sound like a black singer. Phillips understood the implications immediately. Here, he thought, was the
perfect opportunity to carry the music he enjoyed to a larger and
much more lucrative market, young white music buyers.
Dre’s discovery of Eminem is reminiscent of the find Phillips
made more than forty years earlierâ€"but with several important
twists. It was Dre, a black music producer, who recognized the op-
portunity to carry a black musical style to white consumers. Whereas Elvis’s whiteness made rock ’n’ roll palatable to whites, it was Dre’s blackness that made Eminem believable to young white music buyers. Dre certainly recognized Eminem’s rap skills, but he also recognized the lucrative opportunities that existed if the right sound, style, and image could be crafted. Based on his experiences with N.W.A.
and Death Row, he knew that the big money in rap, despite the
genre’s intimacy with ghetto America, was in selling music to young
whites. The hard knock realities of the music business had a sobering eĆłect on Dre’s views about rap, race, and commerce.
Earlier in his career, the thought of producing a white rapper
would have seemed outrageous, even treasonous given the racial au-
thenticity claims so pervasive in hip hop. But by the time he met Eminem, Dre was more than a little contemptuous of the music business
and hip hop’s racial assertions. Dre believed that he had been burned not once, but twice in the industry by shady types who used his creative talents to sell millions of records and then cheat him out of
what he believed were his just desserts. That both of these instances involved black businessmen made it all the more painful and any
claims of racial loyalty, from his vantage point, superficial.
Dre was the musical mastermind behind N.W.A., but he con-
trolled neither the financial nor business aĆłairs of the group. Those duties rested with fellow rapper Eazy-E (Eric Wright) and his business associate Jerry Heller. Over the course of a brief but bodacious
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