Dr. Dre Lost $200 Million & Billionaire Status After Prematurely Revealing Details Of His Beats Deal With Apple, New Book Reveals

Dr. Dre

Dr. Dre Lost $200 Million & Billionaire Status After Prematurely Revealing Details Of His Beats Deal With Apple, New Book Reveals

Looks like Dr. Dre‘s Beats deal with Apple would’ve made him the first hip-hop billionaire, if only he’d kept quiet.

A new book titled, After Steve: How Apple Became A Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul, reportedly details the events before and after the massive deal was completed. In the novel, written by New York Times reporter Tripp Mickle, its revealed that the buyout of Dr. Dre‘s popular Beats headphones was initially valued at $3.2 billion. However, after posting a seemingly intoxicated video with R&B singer/actor Tyrese, the book claims Dr. Dre breached the contracts confidentiality agreement. Ultimately, costing the musician $200 million off the deal, and leaving him short of the highly coveted billionaire status.

According to the book, when Dr. Dre and his business partner Jimmy Iovine received the offer by Apple to buy Beats headphones, they didn’t believe it. The author wrote:

“It was a sum that Iovine and Dre could barely fathom. As the lawyers worked through final details, Iovine summoned the leadership team of Beats to his home near Beverly Hills. He told everyone that they were on the cusp of finalizing a massive deal. The only thing that could spoil it would be for word of the deal to leak.”

Dr. Dre

Despite Jimmy’s warning, unintentionally leaking details of the deal is exactly what hip-hop icon Dr. Dre proceeded to do. Shortly after the papers were signed, understandably so, the music mogul was videoed in a pleasantly euphoric state with Fast & Furious star Tyrese. In the video, Tyrese repeatedly references “billionaire boys” and suggests that Forbes needed to redo their billionaire list. Dr. Dre, never directly addressing the deal wit Apple, hyped Tyrese’s insinuations stating:

“The first billionaire in hip-hop. Right here from the motherf****ng Westcoast. Believe it.” 

The novel states that another hip-hop icon, Sean Combs – known professionally as Diddy, was the one who brought the video to Jimmy’s attention with a 2 am phone call. Subsequently, the book claims a meeting with Apple exec Tim Cook ensued, where Jimmy believed the deal would be axed. The author wrote:

“When word of the video reached Cook, he summoned Iovine and Dre to Cupertino….Iovine was anxious and afraid that Cook was going to kill the deal.

Then continued:

“Instead of the anger and cursing that would have poured out of Jobs in a moment like that, Cook exuded calm. He told the music executives that he was disappointed and wished that Dre’s social media outburst hadn’t happened but said that the video hadn’t shaken his conviction that buying Beats was right for Apple.”

The author says that Tim Cook leveraged Dr. Dre‘s video to reduce the initial deal by $200 million, bringing it’s value down to $3 billion. Effectively causing Dr. Dre to be millions shy of being titled “hip-hop’s first billionaire”. A few years later, the honor was given by Forbes to another hip-hop legend, Sean Carter known professionally as Jay Z.

[VIA]

What are your thoughts on Dr. Dre’s stunt that cost him being named hip-hop’s first billionaire? Leave them in the comments section!