This may very well be the last article I ever write. No, sadly,
I’m not being promoted. No, I’m not graduating. I will
write no more because I fear that soon I will be dead. In the name
of good journalism, I’m undertaking what is likely the most
foolhardy course of action in my career: I’m taking on Dr.
Dre.
I’m fully aware of the consequences of arousing the
Doctor’s ire. Watch his videos: you mess with Dre, you might
as well be signing your own death warrant. If he doesn’t get
you, then one of his 9,000 friends will. They’ll splatter you
all over the walls and then write a best-selling rap tune about it.
Once he gets his hands on this article (since I’m sure he has
little better to do with his time than kick back and read the Daily
Bruin), he’ll just make a quick call and I’ll be
history.
Still, I can’t keep my big mouth shut. Although I love
Dre’s music, admire his skills as a businessman, entertainer
and producer, and envy all those cool cars he drives, he’s
crossed the line. His recent antics with Napster have just ticked
me off too much.
The controversy regarding the online music trading service has
burned pretty hot lately. Once Napster came up with this snappy
little program that turns your computer into a veritable free
Wherehouse, the music industry got a little peeved.
A clear divide emerged, with artists angrily lining up on both
sides. In the pro-download corner, kickback guys such as Moby, the
Offspring and Limp Bizkit publicly supported Internet music
trading. They were in stark contrast with the anti-download folks,
most notably, Metallica and Dre.
The Napster-haters claimed that the music service was
trafficking in illegally obtained copyrighted material. Napster
fired back, claiming that it merely provided a program to transfer
files, and that it didn’t actually deal with the content at
all. Much squabbling ensued, with Napster eventually challenging
the offended parties to prove that the program was being used to
download the artists’ music.
Metallica was the first to take up the challenge, delivering an
extensive list of all the users who had obtained tracks. Napster,
looking to cover itself, then blocked those users from further use
of the service. Dre soon followed suit, offering up a list of the
fans who had been sampling his material via the Internet.
Now Metallica’s actions didn’t bother me so much.
I’ve never cared for the band’s music anyway. So if
they wanted to be jerks, that was fine with me. Listening to
drummer Lars Ulrich snottily whine about how it’s his right
to control every aspect of the music, I just kind of wrote him off
as a megalomaniac and went happily about my day. He seems to be
employing some kind of twisted logic that Metallica knows what its
fans want, and thus should have control when they listen to it. Dre
hasn’t been quite so vocal about this; he just coughed up the
list.
I ought to point out that legally, all the bands who want no
part of Napster are within their rights. Annoying as he is, Ulrich
isn’t a moron. Neither is Dre ““ they’re both just
trying to protect their work and get the money that they’ve
duly earned. I think we all can understand that.
The way they’re doing it, though, is what makes me mad.
Metallica can be stupid if it wants to, but I expected more out of
Dre. After all, this is the man who made the majority of his money
from gangsta rap. Not law-abiding, play-by-the-rules rap. Gangsta
rap. He sings about his guns and his cars, not his lawyer and his
subpoenas. For him to be throwing in with the industry fat cats is
a betrayal of the style that he helped popularize.
If there’s one thing that the Doctor ought to know
especially well, it’s that you don’t sell out your
homies. Perhaps he’s forgotten that and traded his Glock for
a cease and desist order, but the fact remains that Dre’s
turned his back on the people who got him where he is today: his
fans.
It was the fans who bought those NWA albums back in the
’80s. It was the fans who jumped all over “Ain’t
Nothin’ but a “˜G’ Thang.” It was the fans
who ate up the work of his proteges Warren G., Snoop Dogg and the
hyper-obnoxious Eminem. He used to be their homie, he used to be
their ace, and now he’s snitched on them.
I think we’ve all seen enough of the gangster movies that
he models his lifestyle after to know what happens to snitches. No
one respects them because they’ve sold out their kin in
exchange for a quick buck. While Dre hasn’t taken the most
drastic measures ““ it’s not like he’s personally
hunted down everyone who snagged a bootleg copy of “Let Me
Ride” and popped a cap in them ““ he has nonetheless
violated the most basic conventions of homeboy etiquette.
The people who downloaded his tracks broke the law, sure. But
judging from the picture gracing the inside of his latest album,
which shows him sniffing a bag of chronic so large you could hide a
large rat in it, Dre isn’t exactly a stranger to operating
outside of legality.
Interestingly enough, he’s even on the other end of all
this copyright foolishness, with Lucasfilm wrangling with him over
his use of the THX sound to kick off “Dr. Dre-2001.”
I’d imagine he won’t exactly roll over in court and
say, “Yeah, I realize that unauthorized use of copyright
material is wrong.”
If Dre wants to protect his product, that’s fine. He can
sue the pants off Napster if he wants, and you won’t hear me
crying wolf. When it comes to naming names, however, he should draw
the line. If the cops were slapping him around, telling him to give
up one of his friends as a suspect in a crime, you can bet
he’d go to his grave before giving in. It should be the same
way with Napster.
So there go my last thoughts on music. If you need me,
I’ll be on the run, trying to escape Dr. Dre’s
minions.