*In a new book from New York Times reporter Tripp Mickle about the late Steve Jobs and the history of Apple, the author claims Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ is responsible for Dr. Dre losing $200 million in his Apple-Beats deal.
Beats Electronics is a joint venture with Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, and was purchased by Apple in 2014. As reported by Vibe, Mickle claims in his new book titled “After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul,” that Apple cut $200 million from the initial $3.2 billion agreement after Dr dropped a video in which he declared to be “the first billionaire in Hip-Hop.”
“It was a sum that Iovine and Dre could barely fathom. As the lawyers worked through final details, Iovine summoned the leadership team of Beats to his home near Beverly Hills. He told everyone that they were on the cusp of finalizing a massive deal. The only thing that could spoil it would be for word of the deal to leak,” an excerpt from the reads.
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Per the report, Mickle claims Iovine warned his team, “Whatever you do, don’t talk about this,” and he told Dre, “Remember that scene in Goodfellas where Jimmy tells the guys, ‘Don’t buy any furs. Don’t buy any cars. Don’t get showy’? Don’t move.”
Dre apparently refused to take his advice and instead celebrated the deal in a video shared online.
Per a book excerpt, via iMore: “At 2:00 a.m., Iovine got a call from Puff Daddy, who was screaming that Dre and Tyrese, a rapper, were talking about the deal in a Facebook video. Iovine pulled up the video and cringed as he saw Tyrese bragging about being drunk on Heineken in a recording studio. When word of the video reached [Tim] Cook, he summoned Iovine and Dre to [Apple’s headquarters in] Cupertino.”
The excerpt continued to explain, “He invited them into a conference room for a private conversation. Iovine was anxious and afraid that Cook was going to kill the deal […] He told the music executives that he was disappointed and wished that Dre’s social media outburst hadn’t happened but said that the video hadn’t shaken his conviction that buying Beats was right for Apple.”
Dre was unable to attain billionaire status once the $200 million was cut.
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