Dr. Dre says he is working hard not to let the decisions he made in his twenties define who he is today. The 61-year-old producer made the comment on the first episode of Listen & Laugh, the new weekly podcast from Ice Cube and Mike Epps that premiered Friday, Nov. 6. Dr. Dre said there are a few mistakes he would take back if he could. He also said people still judge him for those years, even though he has become three different people since then.
The episode also included bigger news about his career. Dre said he plans to step away from music for a year or two, and he estimated that about 80% of the music he has made since 1985 has never been released.
What did Dr. Dre say about his past?
About 56 minutes into the episode, Dre said that as he has gotten older, he has worked to make sure his younger self doesn’t shape the man he is now. He said it is hard to move past mistakes when people keep seeing you through them. He added that his critics still bring up stories from four decades ago to attack him.
He did not say which mistakes he meant.
What mistakes was Dre talking about?
Several women have accused Dre of abuse over the years. Journalist Dee Barnes has said he attacked her at a Hollywood party in 1991, and Dre pleaded no contest to a battery charge in that case. Singer Michel’le, the mother of one of his children, has also accused him of abuse. His ex-wife, Nicole Young, made abuse allegations during their divorce, which was finalized in 2021.
In 2015, Dre published an apology in The New York Times to the women he had hurt, saying he deeply regretted his actions. Barnes has continued to speak out publicly. In a 2023 Rolling Stone interview, she criticized the Recording Academy for naming its Dr. Dre Global Impact Award after him.
Listeners will have different reactions to Dre’s words. Some will see a man in his sixties who has done real work to change. Others will point out that the women he harmed are still living with the consequences of what happened in his twenties.
Why does Dre’s comment land differently on Ice Cube’s show?
There’s a detail most coverage has mentioned without pausing on it. According to reports, the 1991 attack on Barnes followed an interview she did with Ice Cube on Pump It Up! after Cube left N.W.A. More than 30 years later, Dre talked about his regrets while sitting across from Cube himself. Neither host pushed him on the specifics during that moment of the episode.
Is Dre stepping away from music?
Yes, for now. Dre said that for the first time in his adult career, he plans to go off the grid for a year or two. He explained that even outside the studio, his mind is always on music, and he wants to find out whether something else could excite him the way music once did.
He also described a huge vault of unreleased beats, songs and vocal ideas. He said he keeps sending beats to artists he wants to work with, including Cube, and hopes someone will want to experiment with him.
What did Dre say about Eminem and AI?
When Epps joked about whether Dre ever hesitated before signing a white rapper, Dre laughed. He said he knew the move would be controversial, but he believed Black listeners would not reject Eminem if the music was good. He said he stopped thinking about Eminem being white soon after they started working together, and that the two are still close friends who talk all the time.
Dr. Dre and Cube also disagreed about artificial intelligence. Dre said he is excited about AI in music and film and compared it to sampling. Cube worried about computers taking control of the creative process, and the two agreed to disagree. Dre also named Larry Smith, the producer behind Run-DMC and Whodini, as the greatest hip-hop producer of all time.
What comes next for Dr. Dre?
Cube told Complex that the soundtrack for Last Friday, which begins filming in April, could include a song produced by Dre. Whether that happens before his planned break is unclear. New episodes of Listen & Laugh come out on Fridays.
