Take It Personal (Ep 53: YO! MTV Raps Tribute) with Doctor Dre

It’s not every day you get to go back to your old school and talk with your teachers. Today, we got that chance to speak to one of them. Doctor Dre was the only doctor I knew growing up besides Dr. Spock. Dre, along with Fab Five Freddy and Ed Lover, were instrumental in our early exposures to hip-hop. They helped educate and they definitely helped entertain us. If not for YO! MTV Raps, many of us wouldn’t have even known these classic rap videos existed. There was no internet back then. Certainly nothing remotely close to Youtube. If you didn’t catch Music Box, Pump It Up, Rap City or Yo!, chances are, you just missed out!

While Fab Five Freddy took on the more serious role as the teacher who dropped knowledge all day, it was the fun-loving duo of Doctor Dre and Ed Lover that really captivated you. They had you laughing from the start of the class to the end of it. They left you wanting more. Doctor Dre knew how to kick dunn language, like on Knowledge Me, and he and Ed both knew how to have fun like Back Up Off Me. There has never been a team like Doctor Dre and Ed Lover and considering how the music industry is today, especially MTV, there never will be. Before mainstream TV really embraced hip-hop, before you had In Living Color, Martin, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or New York Undercover, it was YO! MTV Raps that was pivotal in the hip-hop movement in mainstream America.

On this episode, we pay homage to YO! with 2 ridiculously dope DJ 360 mixes. We also speak to the great Doctor Dre. We talk about his early days at Adelphi University with Chucky D and Flavor Flav. We talk Original Concept, Def Jam and some interesting stories about Rick Rubin. We cover touring with the Beasties, how Bill Cosby did a very Bill Cosby thing when on YO!. We find out Don Cornelius felt threatened by their success. We talk about RUN-DMC not giving Dre the proper credit all the way to dropping an album on Def Jam in ‘88 along with Slick Rick and Public Enemy. We talk a lot of P.E., even Dre’s love/hate relationship with Flavor Flav.

We cover a lot of ground here. From Who’s The Man, to who was the man behind the selections on the the soundtrack. But - what would this interview be without the amazing history and stories of YO!? We take you to the final episode, where that infamous freestyle session goes down between Rakim, Chubb Rock, Erick Sermon, MC Serch, KRS-One, Redman, Method Man, Large Professor, Special Ed and Craig Mack. We learn who Doctor Dre felt had the best verse on that iconic episode. So much and more. Don’t miss our YO! MTV Raps Tribute Show featuring Doctor Dre!