Dre's got the beat - just don't bother him about the music

REVOLVER: BRIAN BOYDon music

SHORTLY AFTER 9/11, all the big, tough American rappers were too scared to get on an aircraft. So the international media (who were only scared of customs officers with their pesky duty-free limits) were brought, mountain-to- Muhammad style, to Los Angeles. There they were deposited in a hotel and, in a peculiar scenario, waved towards a whole floor where behind every door was a big, tough rapper waiting to fulfil his international press obligations.

I didn’t bother turning the tape recorder on for most of them, but one who did stand out – for his graciousness and his penetrative analysis of the music industry – was Dr Dre.

I remember him looking out the hotel window at one stage and pointing to a girl crossing the street.

“See her? I could take her, or any random person, put them into the studio and make them a multi-million selling artist,” Dre said, referring to the sophisticated tech tools that were coming on stream at the time. The prediction would later become horribly true as an army of talentless identikit marionettes now clog up the top reaches of the charts.

Dre also spoke about Napster, which had just been shut down by The Man a few months earlier. He said it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference as he had already come across various Napster clones online. Years before it actually happened, he solemnly stated: “The game is up for record sales.”

Ten years later and Dr Dre is back fulfilling international press duties, but all has changed. In New York last week, music journalists lined up for their 20 minutes with the man were told that they could not ask any questions about music. This must be a first: the day that a musician’s PR instructs music journalists that if they ask the musician questions about music, the interview will be terminated.

Dre was in New York to talk up his new set of “Beats” headphones. Instead of actually releasing albums over the past few years, he has been busying himself in the development, production and marketing of the now hugely successful headphones. Another line was crossed a few months ago when Craig Oliver, David Cameron’s communications chief (he’s the new Andy Coulson), was seen walking into 10 Downing Street wearing his Beats headphones like the ghetto brutha he is.

Dre alighted on the idea of becoming a headphones businessman because, a good few years back, he predicted the rise of the mobile and how in the future music would be listened to on these devices. However, with the sound quality so awful there would be a demand for good over-ear equipment. He had tinkered with the idea of bringing out a Dre sneaker range until Interscope label boss Jimmy Iovine astutely advised: “Screw sneakers, sell speakers.”

I handed over my own hard cash for some Beats a while back, and can independently testify that they (and Bose) are probably the two best on the market. They are all the rage with Dre’s fellow musicians: Lady Gaga (“Heartbeats”), P Diddy (“Diddybeats“) and Justin Bieber (“Justbeats“) all have their own dedicated “Beats” sub-range, while Bono had his own “Red Beats” version made for his Red Charity. The sonics behind them are also used in Hewlett-Packard computers.

There's been a 13-year wait for Dre's new album (the hugely anticipated Detox). But, really, why should an artist of his stature bother with ye olde worlde songs when headphones, endorsements, patronage and product placement is the real future of the music economy?

Where Dre goes – and not just musically – others follow.

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