STREAM EXCLUSIVE ORIGINALS

Allen Hughes and Jimmy Iovine Share the Origins of Their New Doc, 'The Defiant Ones'

The one-of-a-kind story airs on HBO.

One of the most iconic partnerships in music history to stand the test of time remains that between music executive Jimmy Iovine and hip-hop legend Dr. Dre

Their improbable partnership led them to many triumphs in both their careers and the careers of those they mentored and helped mold at the time. With the help and vision of celebrated film director and producer Allen Hughes, they are bringing their story to HBO in the form of a four-part documentary titled The Defiant Ones and have spoken exclusively with BET.com about how it all came to be.

"In 1958, there was a film called The Defiant Ones starring Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier and they were two escaped convicts chained together — a white guy and a Black guy — and they had to make it work," Hughes said on the documentary's title inspiration. "They had to survive and thrive and Jimmy and Dre had been through so much together and in the '90s, you see in part three how it got dangerous."

Iovine expounded a bit more on his journey with Dr. Dre, detailing that this story is not a vain depiction of their rise to fame and success.

"I think what you have here is a story about two guys and staying together in the very difficult circumstances," Iovine added. "From that point of view, they're very really taken. That point of view is very different. This is about fear and overcoming it. This is not about, 'We did this, and we did that, and we did this.' It has more of the 'why?' in it, not the 'what,' and the 'why?' is probably the most important question that you can answer in something like this and that's what we try to get."

Hughes and Iovine also touched on why the 1990s, which Hughes called the "last hurrah of great recording artists," is still considered the golden era of music, and much more, in the video, above.

Part one of The Defiant Ones premieres on July 9 at 9:00 p.m. on HBO.

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