Hip-hop legend Dr. Dre hasn’t been shy in naming rock artists as some of his influences — something viewers were reminded of when Dre identified the late Nirvana bandleader Kurt Cobain among his “musical heroes” in a July 13 interview with Kevin Hart on the comedian’s Hart to Heart talk show.
In the past, Dr. Dre has even named Nirvana as his favorite rock group of all time.
It’s an aspect The Pit dug up in a report about the Dr. Dre interview with Hart. After all, in one scene of Dre’s 2017 four-part TV documentary, The Defiant Ones, the hip-hop artist and Beats by Dre mogul listens to Nirvana’s “Stay Away” while extolling the virtues of the genre-defining grunge band.
“Yo, I’m starting to sweat right now just listening to this shit — it’s bananas,” Dre says of the classic grunge act. “Nirvana, Kurt Cobain — that’s my favorite rock group of all time.”
In The Defiant Ones, Dr. Dre goes one step further and calls Nirvana’s 1989 debut album Bleach one of his favorite records.
“That’s one of my favorite albums ever made,” Dre says. “I still listen to that shit to work out.”
The cross-genre fandom is especially astonishing now given that Bleach arrived via Sub Pop Records in June 1989 with very little fanfare — even for rock fans. In fact, it failed to crack the Billboard 200 at the time.
Still, back then, a definite buzz was building in Seattle about Nirvana and their sound. And as rock fans now know, the Kurt Cobain-led band would go on to completely change the face of rock with their 1991 follow-up, Nevermind.
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