What Can Dr. Dre’s Body Language Tell Us About The Apple-Beats Deal? Spoiler Alert: Nothing.


Dr. Dre plays it close to the vest, typically not letting details leak on new projects, and Apple is even more secretive. So what’s a writer to do when tasked with coming up with a new angle on Apple acquiring Dre’s Beats Audio? Why, consult a body language expert, of course. Because who cares about credibility when there are page views to generate?

Apple’s $3 billion acquisition of Beats Audio shocked the consumer tech world and made Beats’ co-founders, Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, billionaires (or something close to that) overnight. Aside from some press spots done immediately after the deal was announced, though, both Dre and Apple have been pretty mum on the topic. The people want to know, though, and they deserve answers, so Fortune turned to Janine Driver, a “body language expert,” to analyze the two released pictures of Dr. Dre, Iovine, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Apple exec Eddy Cue all together. Surely, an expert in the field of body language analysis can give us some insight into how things will work between the rapper-turned-mogul-turned-billionaire and Apple, no?

No. Just no.

Among the cutting insights contained in Driver’s “expert analysis”:

  • Dr. Dre, unlike the others in one of the photos, is not exhibiting “crotch display,” which is not, as you might think, a sexting thing. Driver looks at a picture with four guys all in essentially the same pose, but she finds a way to say that the way that Dre is sitting with his legs open is different from the way Cue, Iovine, and Cook are sitting with their legs open. Because expert.
  • Eddy Cue and Dre are “mirroring each other,” because they like and respect each other, not because they are sitting in similar chairs.
  • Having Dr. Dre positioned in the middle of both photos is indicative of the power he will wield.
  • The fact that the Good Doctor has his right elbow popped out signifies that he has “massive power,” as he is in a “Hey, boys, look what I have to offer” position.

All this from two press-friendly photos. Dr. Dre looks about as happy in the photos as you would expect from a guy that’s sold his company for $3 billion, but Driver is less sure about Jimmy Iovine.

In our analysis, Dr. Dre looks like he is figuring out how much money he could make by having Detox as an Apple-exclusive release. Image via Apple.

“He is the one that maybe comes across as, ‘I hope we’re doing the right thing,'” Driver said of Dre’s business partner, who has hinted basically since Beats’ inception that a partnership with Apple would be ideal.

To sum up: Dre feels comfortable enough to show his crotch, Iovine is happy to be rich but worried that the fulfillment of his plan is a false victory, Eddy Cue is happy to let Dre take center stage, and Tim Cook is grabbing his chin because it’s what Steve Jobs would do.

Fortune magazine, ladies and gents.

But maybe there’s something to Driver’s analysis of Dre and the other Apple honchos’ body language. A closer look at one photo shows that both Cook and Dr. Dre are relaxing their watch arms. That’s obviously an indication that Apple’s plans to launch an iWatch later this year are proceeding apace. Meanwhile, in the second pic, Cook is covering up his watch, while Dre’s arm hangs freely, displaying his own watch. That is definitely a signal of strife between the Apple chief and Dr. Dre over just how open Apple should be about the iWatch.

What’s more, Dre’s partner Iovine is slightly hunched and has his hand in his pocket in the second pic. That means one of three things:

  • Iovine has to go to the bathroom, or
  • Iovine is secretly texting using a new tactile-typing feature on the iPhone 6, or
  • Dr. Dre’s long-awaited album, Detox, is confirmed as an iPhone 6 exclusive.

It’s a science, people.

Look, we’re not saying body language analysis is bunk… Oh, no, wait… We are. When it comes to divining the inner workings of Apple, picking apart two press photos of Dre, Cook, and crew is probably about as reliable as reading chicken entrails. Perhaps even less so, because Apple wouldn’t have control over which chicken innards were released to the press.

How will Dr. Dre and Iovine get along at Apple? Probably swimmingly, considering that the deal made Dre and his business partner into billionaires. Dre will likely be tasked with being Apple’s “barometer of cool,” and it will likely be a simple task for the Doctor to parlay the industry connections and savvy that made Beats into a household name into even more street cred for Apple. If you need a body language expert to look at Dr. Dre’s elbows to figure that out, you’ll just get what you paid for.

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