Dr. Dre: From Compton To USC - The Complex Legacy Of A Hip-Hop Icon

Let me get this out of the way right off the bat: I love Dr. Dre. I have nothing but respect and admiration for the man. I celebrate his entire catalog. And it’s not just his music; it’s also his amazing business success story. How do you not absolutely love someone who took himself from the streets of Compton to the Boardroom of Apple with a multi-billion dollar business acquisition? He’s a true American hero. As of this writing, we estimate that Dr. Dre's net worth is $820 million. With that said, I do have a teeny bone to pick with Dre…

Earlier today, Dr. Dre took to Instagram to brag that his daughter got into the University of Southern California. He included a photo of his daughter, whose name is Truly Young, holding her USC acceptance packet. He included the following caption:

“My daughter got accepted into USC all on her own. No jail time!!!”

The caption is a not-so-subtle reference to the recent college admissions bribery scandal that has engulfed a bunch of schools, including, perhaps most famously, USC. Dr. Dre is poking fun at fellow celebrities like Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, who were recently arrested after they allegedly broke the law to get their children into colleges through backdoor bribes and SAT testing scams.

Unbelievably, Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli reportedly paid the USC rowing coach $500,000 to get their two (presumably) dimwitted daughters into USC. So sure, Dr. Dre has every right to brag that his daughter got into USC without having to pretend to be a star rower and without a $500,000 bribe to a greedy coach. And I guess we can also assume that she didn’t cheat on her SATs like the little Huffmans. It’s very possible that Truly Young was an exceptional student with exceptional SAT scores and extracurricular activities who deserved her USC acceptance all on her own merit.

But I do also want to point out this teeny, tiny fact that Dr. Dre failed to mention in his Instagram post – in May 2013, Dr. Dre and his Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine gave USC $70 million to found the “Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation.” So maybe Dre didn’t give a coach $500k, but he did give the school $35 million. That’s somewhat notable, no? That might have greased her application a little, right?

And to be clear, I actually don’t have a problem with parents donating money to a school to give their kid a boost in the admissions process. The reality is that lots of other kids will benefit from Dre and Jimmy’s $70 million, and that’s the greater good. I just might hold off on the Instagram brags if my daughter might literally take classes in a building that bears my name 🙂

Update: Dr. Dre ended up deleting the post.