Dr. Dre Talks N.W.A Biopic, Eazy-E’s Death, Eminem and Making New Music
Dr. Dre recently sat down with L.A. radio DJ Big Boy for a wide-ranging chat, discussing everything from his beginnings in N.W.A to producing Eminem. He spoke at length his involvement in the upcoming N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton. “We want to show the heart of the guys and everything we went through…before the demise of the group,” Dre said. Over the course of 16 info-packed minutes, Dre shared stories about recording Snoop Dogg in a jail cell and opened up about how he made things right with Eazy-E days before the rapper’s death. Here are the most eye-opening parts of the conversation.
1. He was worried about the Straight Outta Compton movie to begin with.
“I was just nervous about putting a blemish on our legacy. The story had to be told right. And it’s incredible, man. I’m really excited about it. We had our ups and downs with the filming process, but now the edit is almost done. We’re working on music and what have you, and I think everybody’s going to appreciate it, especially everybody from Los Angeles.”
2. It was Ice Cube who sold him on it.
“I didn’t even want to do the movie. Cube actually quarterbacked it. He went out and got the first draft for the script done. I read it and was like, ‘OK, we can work with this. We can turn this into something. And when [director F.] Gary Gray got on board, that was it. I was in.”
3. Seeing an actor play Eazy-E was hard.
“We wanted to be as authentic as possible. There’s this actor, Jason Mitchell, he plays Eazy and he did an incredible job. I mean, there’s a couple of times where I got a little emotional on set. When E’s in the hospital and he finds out he has the disease and what have you, his acting was that great. Goosebumps.”
4. Dre gave the actor who played him carte blanche with the character.
“Me and him [Corey Hawkins] had some conversations beforehand, we went out to dinner a couple of times, and I told him, ‘Listen man, I don’t want you to try to copy my mannerisms or the way I speak, I just want you to embody the character and turn it into what you feel it is, and I’ll let you know if you’re doing something wrong.’ That made him feel a little more comfortable about approaching it.”
5. He wants Straight Outta Compton to correct people’s perceptions of how N.W.A treated women.
“We really wanted to get across, one of the things, was how we feel about women because there’s a big misconception, how much we respect our women.