A celebrated hip-hop-oriented entertainer and educator, Andre “Doctor Dre” Brown long ago established himself as a savvy creator of popular culture. He has made his mark on radio and television, in the movies and in print, working successively as a DJ, composer, talent scout, program host, actor, author, and critic. Dre is likely best-known as the co-host with Ed Lover of “Yo! MTV Raps” (1989 -1995), the tv show that did more than any other to make rap music and hip-hop culture a global phenomena.
A child of the New York City’s Long Island suburbs, Andre Brown adopted the name Doctor Dre when he began hosting “The Operating Room,” a pioneering rap radio show for Adelphi University’s WBAU in 1983. In July of that year he conducted the first-ever radio interview with a new group by the name of Run-DMC. Soon enough, Dre’s rap group, Original Concept, was signed to Def Jam, the record label co-founded by Run’s older brother, Russell Simmons. Original Concept released two influential singles and an album between 1986 and 1987. It was during this same period that Dre wrote “Proud to Be Black” for Run-DMC’s triple-platinum Raising Hell album, traveled the world as the DJ for the Beastie Boys on the “Raising Hell” and “Licensed to Ill” tours, and introduced Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons to the talents of Chuck D, an ambitious fellow DJ at WBAU who would go on to establish Public Enemy.
Dre is now in the midst of plans for a new tv series, a fast-moving talk-show centered around the national epidemic of Type 2 Diabetes, a disease with which Dre himself has been struggling for the last half-dozen years. The show’s format, according to its creator, will be “Doctor Oz meets Doctor Dre.”
His foundation, the Doctor Dre Victory Foundation, is a nonprofit that provides empowerment for people with disabilities including but not limited to blindness, for amputees, and for diabetics, through financial assistance and future workforce inclusion.
