Most everyone under 45 or so knows who Andre Romelle Young is, or they know him by his stage name, Dr. Dre. But fewer people may know who Jimmy Iovine is. Iovine is a record producer and businessman whose experience spans five decades, from John Lennon through to today, and the story of both men's rise in celebrity and industry is discussed in the HBO series The Defiant Ones.

The show originally aired as a four-part documentary series that was directed by Allen Hughes (From Hell) and includes interviews with Dre and Iovine, and includes a Who's Who of individuals both men have worked with; you have Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube and Eminem on one side (Dre) and Gwen Stefani, Trent Reznor and the late Tom Petty on the other (Iovine). You also have industry professionals like David Geffen talk about working with Iovine on the business side of their two-headed powerhouse.

The series starts off with, well, a defiant tone, as word of Dre and Iovine's "Beats" headphones sale to Apple for $3.2 billion(!) is recounted, along with how word of the sale first came out during a party Dre was holding. From there, the episodes parallel both men's lives and show their respective origin stories. Both men discuss them in reasonable detail and do get into their flaws from time to time as they talk about them. Things like the genesis of Beats are shown, the East Coast West Coast feud and the infamous Source Awards show are recalled and given solid discussion accompanied by lots of video both already known and a lot of news footage and home video. Few stones are unturned when it comes to illustrative examples or context for a story and it's welcome to see here, better than I was expecting.

The series is a very good retelling of how Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine became the moguls that they are and shows their desire to repay the community (both gentlemen are having/have had schools rebuilt and/or added new additions for additional study), and how their past personal issues have faded away into the past it would appear. And though it is slow to reveal itself, the reason for Hughes' naming of the show as The Defiant Ones becomes clearer as you watch more of it. It's about a couple of people, an Italian from New York and a rapper on the other side of the country from Compton, their common bond in the desire of perfection and work and their desire to rise against a multitude of things, whether it was Dre's socioeconomic background and the acceptance of rap music, or Iovine's desire to be a success as a producer, or later when the two discussed how Beats became a multibillion dollar enterprise against common business traditions. That they managed to maintain their personal value system in the process is all the better for everyone.

The Defiant Ones steps into some fairly well-regarded territory quickly. It's probably among the best documentaries (or documentary series) of 2017 and may be the first very good music documentaries for the Generation X and subsequent demo crowd. It's good to look back at these roots of rap and some of the historical elements in rock, as well as how some of the more pop culture moments are discussed. It's a pleasant, easy viewing that I think will improve as time goes on.

The Defiant Ones is in 1.78:1 widescreen and looks excellent. Or more to the point it handles material from a ton of different sources nicely and appears natural, and the contemporary interviews look excellent, with lots of vivid color reproduction and image detail (the salt and pepper in Dre's beard as he walks you through his under construction house is very discernible), and the older sources do have some inherent flaws but otherwise look fine. *Looks* Oh, Universal did this transfer, well, can't say I'm surprised then.

Look, this is four and a half hours that is centered around Dr. Dre, so one would think that The Defiant Ones would have a little bit of music and sound good in the process right? Right, and it delivers on that front. The music sounds fantastic from the jump, possessing a lot of dynamic range and low-end fidelity (I liked Eazy E's "Boyz N the Hood" at the end of the first episode as a particularly good example of this), but the other songs sound superb, and the interviews are just as consistent through the show from the subjects. Can't complain when it's quite this good.

Zippo.

I remember seeing a preview of The Defiant Ones before it aired and I was curious to see it. It turned out to be as good, perhaps better, than I expected it to be, and the profiles of Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine were funny, fascinating and captivating, sometimes all at once, with an extensive videography to back it up. Technically it's also what you'd hope it would be, with the only blemish being a lack of extras like additional interview footage for instance. Otherwise, it's a really enjoyable documentary about two interesting people, one of whom happens to be a cornerstone in the rap music industry. Definitely worth seeking out.