Monster took the rap duo's vague audio aspirations

Monster took the rap duo's vague audio aspirations and pointed them in one very lucrative direction: high-end headphones. Bose was something your dad bought. Everything else was either crap or too obscure and complex for consumers to pick out. "Let's build headphones together," Noel decreed.

Love fest or no, this was never going to be a Steve and Woz moment of geek kinship. This was business from the start—and while Noel knows it now (Jimmy wanted to "own both ends," he says), Monster didn't show much acumen when it mattered. Monster wanted to jumpstart its headphone business. Badly. In the turmoil of the mid-00s, Dre and Jimmy needed to find something other than records to monetize. Badly. But the money arrangement was destined to be dominated by Iovine, a man who'd gone head to head with Steve Jobs, and ran a music empire—not some small deluxe cable firm. The Monsters knew that if they could haess Dre's "entertainment and sports" contacts they could launch their company into the mainstream. They were right, but they were also woefully underprepared for the path to success; in the process, they blew almost every business decision possible.