An intern slipped famed record producer Jimmy Iovine a mixtape of then-unknown Eminem. Dr. Dre got hold of it and the rest is history.
In an earlier documentary about their fateful meeting, Dr. Dre describes what happened:
"Well, I first heard Eminem’s music at Jimmy Iovine’s house. He just happened to have gotten Eminem’s tape maybe a couple of days before. He actually got it from an intern that used to work at Interscope. He popped it in and then I heard it. And I thought it was incredible. At this time, I had no idea he was a white guy. I didn’t find that out until a few days later. And I was just like ‘What the fuck is this? I really need to meet this guy.’ The first thing that we did was ‘My Name Is.’ I had already prepared a sample that I thought he would sound great on. Immediately after I put it on he just went ‘Hi, my name is’... When I heard he was gonna start his own label, I thought it was an amazing idea. I was excited to see what they were going to be able to do with it.”
This is a clip from HBO's The Defiant Ones, a new biographical series documenting the "unlikely and wildly successful partnership of Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine."
Here's its trailer: https://youtu.be/qT5FeylUWO0
(reddit)
