Awesome Dre > Eminem

I always wondered why Detroit’s Awesome Dre had a song going at Kool Moe Dee on his highly enjoyable 1989 album, You Can’t Hold Me Back. Now that I’ve heard his second single, it makes a little more sense. It appears that Dre took it upon himself to fire shots at both LL Cool J and Moe Dee on separate songs. This mystery was finally solved when Werner interviewed Dre in 2009:

‘The reason I came out and dissed them both at the same time was because…I come up on hip-hop, so I’m a Kool Moe Dee fan, a Treacherous Three fan…that was the shit. Then, when we saw Krush Groove, and LL came through the audition scene, we were like what? Who is this motherfucker? He was the baddest motherfucker in hip-hop, period! Young ass LL came out and crushed everybody. You know, it was his time.

So, I was looking at Kool Moe Dee like, “what the Hell this old motherfucker gonna do?” Which I guess is how people look at me until I come and rip ‘em a new asshole! They were giving Kool Moe Dee the same billing as LL, and I was offended! They were on the front page of magazines with boxing gloves on, and I’m like, what the fuck? So I wrote the Kool Moe Dee song first ‘cause I was kinda mad. So I was going off on his glasses, leather pants, and all that.

But in the spirit of hip-hop, I didn’t want people to think I was riding LL so hard that I was gonna help him diss Moe Dee or whatever. So I was like, I have to diss this man to balance everything out and make it equal. So fuck you, too, LL. I represent the D. So, I dissed the two biggest figures in hip-hop at the time. And it wasn’t personal or I wanted to kill these guys, like these motherfuckers doing now. It was just real, pure hip-hop and I was stepping up to set a standard.’

The cover of the single was remade for Awesome Dre’s first LP, but curiously he only included ‘I Don’t Like You (Kool Moe She)’ and left off the LL diss, ‘Lame Loser.’ Maybe it’s because the Moe Dee song is fuckin’ hilarious. Any track that accuses someone of dressing like a welder/Darth Vader is top ten in my book. Dre also claims that he was the first rapper to bring Scarface references into hip-hop, although I recall the Ghetto Boys doing it around the same time.

Thanks to A.D.’s YouTube channel, all four of his videos are available, including the clip for ‘You Can’t Hold Me Back’ complete with an enthusiastic intro interview from Detroit’s very own Cold Madina, where she can’t stop complimenting the crew for their energetic dancing in the video:

For the follow up, the Hardcore Committee cover a range of topics from the negative effects of TV on kids, radio censorship and why LL sucks:

The A.D.’s Revenge LP found Dre focused on more political issues:

While he later dabbled with some ragga style action:

Twenty two years later, Dre dropped a new video: