In a new episode of Kevin Hart’s interview show Hart to Heart, available on Peacock, legendary rapper, producer, and business mogul Dr. Dre revealed some possibly regretful information about his career’s history. First, he spoke about how pop icons like Michael Jackson and Prince wanted to make music with him, but he declined their offers because he did not feel he could do anything to enhance their already-great music.
“Nah, they just asked me to work with them and I just [was like], ‘What the fuck am I gonna do with them?’ Those are my fuckin’ heroes man,” he told Hart.
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Further elaborating on the instance with the late Jackson, Dre explained that he refused to work with MJ because he prefers collaborating with up-and-coming artists.
“Somebody approached me about working with Michael Jackson, and I did say no because I like working with new artists or people that I’ve worked with in the past,” he said. “I can develop them from the ground up. There’s no set standard that I have to live up to or anything like that. All I have to do is go in the studio, and basically, they’re going to bust their ass to come in there and do their thing the way it’s supposed to be done.”
Then, if this wasn’t painful enough for Hart to hear, Dre told another story about how he rejected an opportunity to work with Stevie Wonder. According to him, while he was working on his 2015 studio album Compton, which coincided with the release of the N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton, he made a song using production from an old Wonder song.
Because of this, Dre needed to hit up Wonder so he could clear the song. At first, Wonder did not like Dre’s lyrics to the song and made him rewrite it. Once Dre fulfilled Wonder’s request, the latter asked the former if he wanted to meet up in the studio to work together on a track.
“He called me back like, ‘Okay, Dre. Now I like the lyrics. Why don’t we work together and just write a song together?’ [I was like], ‘Yeah. Alright. Alright, Stevie,’ and yeah, I didn’t show up,” Dre said. “What the fuck am I gonna do in the studio with Stevie Wonder? Huh? Touch the drums? No. Touch the keyboard? No. What the fuck? Nah. I went that way.”
Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame