What do Dr Dre, Eminem and John Lennon have in common?
Dr Dre and Eminem are two of the most influential figures in hip-hop, helping to shape, popularise, and ultimately make it what it is today. Few figures can reasonably claim to have left their mark upon such an important part of modern music as these two, but John Lennon, for all he did with The Beatles and in his solo career, is obviously one such person.
Lennon and The Beatles are perhaps the most significant figures within popular music, laying the groundwork for so much of what came after them. Given its sheer scope, it seems inconceivable that their legacy will ever be outdone, but, in more limited terms, there are artists that have had seismic impacts upon specific strands of popular music. Dre and Eminem are examples of this—at least according to Dre himself.
Way back in the year 2000, about a year after his seminal 2001 album had been released, Dre gave an interview to NME, during which the subject of John Lennon came up. The topic of conversation wasn’t actually about Lennon’s music, as such, but was rather about the level of controversy that he had courted throughout his lifetime.
This interview took place around the height of Slim Shady fever, with Dre’s protégé Eminem making headlines all the time with his antics and statements. Dre, too, was hardly a man unused to causing scandal throughout his own career, so the comparisons to Lennon’s controversial cultural impact were fairly apparent.
The interviewer’s question to Dre was stark. He asked him if he feared being “bumped off by the CIA, like John Lennon?” Whether or not one agrees with the conspiratorial premise of that question is one thing, but Dre, for his part, ran with it and started drawing links between himself, Em and Lennon.
“John Lennon was a wildcat,” he said. “Any time you’ve got genius and you’re presenting it to the masses, um, you’re going to be looked at in a certain way, especially because most people are afraid of change, you know what I mean?”
Dre argued that these “genius” figures within a culture—people who are “so different” and “have the ears of so many people”—can be perceived as “dangerous” by more orthodox figures within a society. They are thus vilified.
“And I believe John Lennon was one of those people,” Dre asserted. “I believe I’m one of those people. I believe Eminem is one of those people.”
Like Lennon, Dre claimed that he and Eminem were challenging established cultural ideals—and that is why they courted so much controversy throughout their careers. “So that’s the reason we’re getting so much flak,” he said. “That’s the reason NWA was getting so much flak because we had every kid in the ghetto’s ears and they were ready to wear what we wore and say what we said, y’know? And that’s the reason for all the turmoil with Eminem.”