The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers presented Dr. Dre with their inaugural Hip Hop Icon Award.
The music industry group established this accolade on the 50th anniversary of hip hop and decided that Dr. Dre would be an ideal accolade to represent the whole culture at the ceremony. And, of course, to be the first hip hop artists ever to receive this award.
Snoop Dogg presented a prize, shaped as a record player with Dre’s name engraved on a vinyl plate, to his longtime friend and collaborator. In the introduction speech he said:
Dre, you my brother. It’s an honour to know you, to work with you, to hang out with you and to present you with this very first ASCAP Hip Hop Icon Award.
Dr. Dre responded with his acceptances speech, musing over his officially recognised icon status:
Thank you to all of you, thank you to ASCAP, and absolutely thank you to hip hop. I feel so fortunate to have been a part of a movement where disenfranchised Black youth had a hand in revolutionising our culture. And I hope that the next generation of artists are inspired to use my blueprint to progress in art form that I really and truly love. I can’t imagine where my life would be without hip hop. I was thinking about what it means to be an icon. Someone or something worthy of great respect. You probably need to be around for a while to be worthy of this type of respect. So, I started doing the math, and I realised that I’ve been involved, successful, relevant in Hip-Hop for 40 of its 50 years.
This is by no means Dre’s first recognition from ASCAP. In June, 2010, Eminem presented Dr. Dre with the ASCAP Founders Award from Eminem. You can watch the footage from this historic moment below:
2023 ASCAP Rhythm & Soul Music Celebration | Honoring Dr. Dre & Hip-Hop’s 50th Birthday:
