by Khari Gzifa
I am submitting a name for the title of Greatest/Biggest Gangsta Rapper of all time and many people may disagree 
with my choice, but hear me out. That name is: Dr Dre. Recently I read a NYT article that stated that the Beats By Dre headphones that we have all seen adorning the necks of some of the world’s most recognizable celebrities and costing north of $400 for some versions... cost a measly $14 to make. Now as far as I’m concerned that makes Dr. Dre the preeminent gangtsta rapper, the one who not only talks the talk but also walks the walk. Based off of this move alone, he should be considered gangsta rapper emeritus. Now let’s look at why I say this.
First, the background. Many young people think that in addition to his other talents Dr Dre is also some sort of STEM graduate as well and he actually spent hours and hours tinkering and developing these headphones. Nothing could be further from the truth. The idea for what has become the most popular headphones ever, began in the minds of father/son team Noel and Kevin Lee, the principals at Monster, Inc. (a high end audio cable company). That company took a financial beating when they made a failed attempt to get into the speaker business and needed a windfall of some sort and quickly. So once they had a prototype in place the younger Lee, Kevin, was dispatched to LA to make meetings with some of the town’s tastemakers to drum up a partnership that would boost the profile of the product and make it easy to market. The one meeting that changed everything was with one Jimmy Iovine, chairman of Interscope Records. That meeting was fortuitous for Mr. Iovine because this was the mid '00s and the music industry as a whole was searching for anything that could bring in money like they used to with records but were now unable to. It led to a round of negotiations with Monster but in the end Jimmy (along with Dre and all that Interscope brought to the deal) decided to walk. The duo of Jimmy and Dre, now with the Beats By Dre brand in hand, tried to take the concept to another manufacturer (SLS Audio) but the product that was the fruit of their partnership was just not considered marketable. So 6 months later, "Beats" is once again reaching out to Monster.
This time, Monster was even more motivated to make this partnership work because they still had not recovered from their speaker fiasco. So the younger Lee went into the company coffers and spent around $1.5 million to develop the prototype that we are now all too familiar with; before he had a deal in place and largely without the elder Lees knowledge. "Beats" loved it! Legend has it that Dre played “In The Club" on them and described the sound as "The Shit" and just like that, "Beats" was on-board. But that’s when it got ugly. Now was the time to negotiate exactly how this "partnership" was gonna break down on the costs/profits/responsibilities/ownership front? On the "Beats" side of things, this was essentially the corporate behemoth Interscope Records with their cadre of corporate lawyers and then on the Monster side there was...Kevin Lee. So, I don’t even need to waste the space telling you who came out on top. In the end, the "partnership" left Monster with the responsibility of manufacturing all of the products and at the end of the assembly line turning over ALL ownership, patents and everything, to "Beats"! That same one-sided contract also allowed "Beats" to sell 51% of the company to HTC for $300 million and completely eliminate Monster from the deal altogether. So the Lees were sent packing after only a couple of years and with a cash payout that was more like severance pay considering the types of numbers that the product was putting up. The company did $519 million in sales the year that they dropped Monster. So that’s how the product came into being, Monster did ALL of the work and "Beats" proffered their approval on the sound. Yeah, that’s gangsta.
Second, the product itself. Though it is a good product, it is not nearly the BEST product. As a recording musician myself, I have had the opportunity to be around and record in some top flight studios. I have NEVER seen anyone use Beats headphones in that professional setting or even heard them mentioned. Conversely, the Sony MDR V6 or the MDR 7506 seem to be considered the industry standard for recording professionals and it’s not due to cost, it’s due to the fact that the sound quality of those phones is far superior to that of the Beats models, period. So bottom line, the consumer is not getting a quality commensurate with the price they are paying for the headphones that now dominate the market. Yeah, that too is gangsta.
Given that the duo of Dre and Iovine pretty much muscled the ownership of the product away from someone else, then marketed it as if it were some sort of game changer when in fact it is anything but, I think my nomination for Dre as the King of All Gangsta Rappers should start to carry a little weight. I mean if being a gangsta rapper literally breaks down to being a gangsta who raps, NOBODY is fitting the bill better than Dre. And I know some people may want to point out some of the incarcerated Scarfaces out there, that we have known as rappers but in time turned out to be more involved in illegal chicanery (the list is so long, I will refrain from even starting it) as examples of one upmanship I will qualify my term a bit with this caveat .... and gets away with it! Dre is a gangsta in the true American gangsta mold, like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Warren Buffet, The Walton’s, Bill Gates, etc. Once you add in the recent "Beats" sale to Apple for $3 billion and it making Dre the first hip hop BILLIONAIRE, then I think it’s hard to debate. Now if that ain't gangsta...
The real point of me writing this piece though is this: I hope to start a conversation about what we value and where we are headed. As this is being typed, our nation is in the midst of an invasion of sorts from all over central and south America with people who quite understandably want to leave some of the hellholes from which they come, but often come looking for handouts that we simply can’t afford; there is an "out of control" Ebola outbreak in W. Africa, the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement is still making its way toward becoming official and putting the final bullet in the temple of the American economy, companies like Black Rock are turning the foreclosure crisis into a new financial bubble by using rental agreements on foreclosed properties as bundled securities being sold and bet on (for and against) and insured on Wall St., our veterans are committing suicide at a rate of about 1 per hour and the tales of woe go on and on. And with that as a backdrop Dre, who is already rich beyond most of our imaginations, still finds time to sell dreams to the underclass. The headphones, as I hope I clearly lay out above are not an innovation or needed technology, they are fashion more than anything else.
I like a term I heard from Ishmael Reed once, Pathology Pimps. Essentially that’s what the Dre brand has become. He comes from a similar background and knows that Black America certainly, but more and more all of the 99%'s biggest pathological beliefs is that by obtaining status symbols, one can gain acceptance in this increasingly financially polarized society. He knows it’s not true, but it’s a lie that is so pervasive it’s almost believable. In the '80s it was designer jeans, everybody had to have Jordache or Sassoon or Vanderbilt or whoever or you just weren’t cool. In the '90s it was pagers and then cell phones and then game consoles. In the '00s it was smartphones, tablets, etc. Now its Beats headphones and an assortment of other non-essential items that are supposedly your ticket to the mainstream acceptance you have always yearned for and deserved but could never quite grasp. All of that is one elaborate lie, one big con to keep you in the casino putting your money in the slot and pulling on the handle hoping for a payday that’s never coming. So the question is when are we going to stop wasting our time, money and energy on schemes and products that are designed to make you LOOK like somebody, and start investing those things in efforts that will make us BECOME somebody who is truly worthy of admiration and emulation? As this story so clearly demonstrates, there will always be a Dr Dre or somebody else who is willing to exploit our pains and weaknesses to make a pile of cash for themselves, but we are lacking in the group of people who will always be willing to offer critiques like these and more importantly ideas and opportunities for us that will give us a better outcome than a shiny new gadget and an empty bank account. I say we all could use a few gangstas like that to come around. I will continue to hold out hope but it’s getting hard to do so. And that my friends aint very gangsta at all.