I've got an extra-specific story about Dr. Dre. I saw him when I was 9 years old in Compton - him and Tupac. They were shooting the second 'California Love' video. My pops had seen him and ran back to the house and got me, put me on his neck, and we stood there watching Dre and Pac in a Bentley.
For me, surviving Compton is surviving the men, because Suge and Dre are from Compton. So in my world, in my mind, I survived their mentality.
Dre's from Compton, I'm from Brooklyn, and we both wanted to make a better life for ourselves, right? And we both - somehow, we're both recording engineers, that's how we got our break.
I can say is if anyone gets a chance to work with [Dr.]Dre, it's a moment you will always take with you throughout your career. And as of right now, the Compton album is the only thing to talk about.
Thank you to Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Universal Studios, and the Grammys for telling the story of what Compton was and is becoming.
When Dre and I started making the 'Straight Outta Compton' record, every day on our way to the studio, we would listen to the 'It Takes A Nation' album.
I got to pick the mind of a genius, and I realized why he was a genius. And I realized the man behind the veil or whatever you want to call it. Do you know what I mean? I got to see what makes Dr. Dre Dr. Dre, and I got to interpret that. It's hard to put it into words, so the only thing I know how to do is put it on the screen.
I think when people think of Compton, of course, they always think of gangster rap. But if you ever had an opportunity to go to Compton, you would know that Compton is a beautiful city.
Then instead of introducing Dre as the guy from N.W.A., Jerry Heller would say Dre was my producer! Dre would come to my interviews with me - he'd come to all these places that would never have had the guy from N.W.A. Wasn't it genius?
Kendrick Lamar represents Compton's evolution, embodying the New Vision for Compton - Purpose, Prosperity, and Progress.
I don't necessarily make much art myself, but after I wrote 'Warped Passages,' I was fortunate to get involved a little in the art world. I got invited to write a libretto for what we called a projective opera, and I also got invited to curate an art exhibit.
Kendrick Lamar is from Compton, but his Compton and how he expresses that is completely different than NWA and Eazy-E even though they were from the same environment.
Suge is more mature than Dre, believe it or not. He came from a married household. He knew what love was. Dre may have missed that window.
If you can create an environment where people are invited to do their best work and the best ideas always win, then the project itself will win.
I will have nothing to do with a bomb! [Response to being invited (1943) to work with Otto Robert Frisch and some British scientists at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project to create the atomic bomb.]
You have to be invited to the party. You have to be invited to work, which is weird. That can be frustrating. But gender inequality is pretty similar through almost every industry, unfortunately.