Doctor Dre Lives Large in Los Angeles.

BUYER: Dr. Dre and Nicole Threatt
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $15,400,000
SIZE: 9,696 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Late last week Your Mama received an rapid fire cluster of covert communiques from an obviously well-informed fellow—let's call him Freddie Finefellow—who thoughtfully sought to let us know that his thorough research turned up evidence that wickedly rich* rapper/producer/audio headphone tycoon Dr. Dre—real name: Andre Romelle Young—dropped  a very A-list $15,400,000 on an I-have-arrived style mansion high above the Sunset Strip near the high-priced apex of the celebrity-chic Bird Streets neighborhood** of Los Angeles, CA.

Property records Your Mama peeped and poked around show the off-market deal went down very quietly way back in December 2011 and that the huge hilltop house was purchased through an opaquely named trust that we were easily able to connect to Mister Dr. Dre's real name as well as to several other properties he owns in the Los Angeles area.

The deluxe but architecturally ambiguous house—we'll call it a soft contemporary because we don't know how else to categorize it—wasn't officially on the open market at the time of Mister Dr. Dre's acquisition but older older listings from mid-2009, when the city view estate last sold for $12,800,000, shows the 9,696 square foot house was "newly built in 2001" and "recently cosmetically buffed." 

Listing information from 2009 also indicates the gated and privately situated residence is powerfully sited on a broad, private promontory at the tail end of a quiet cul-de-sac with extraordinary, eyeball shredding 280-degree views that—on a clear day—stretch beyond downtown, over the Baldwin Hills and across the Pacific to the outline of Santa Catalina Island. There are—or were in 2009, according to listing information form the time—six bedrooms and nine bathrooms.

The primary public entertaining spaces include—again, as per 2009 marketing materials—an impress-the-guests style foyer with floating curved staircase, a formal dining room that seats 10 or more and a decidedly grand, double-height formal living room with fireplace, high-gloss wood floors and a towering, two-story wall of windows and glass doors that connect to a shaded veranda that over looks the unusually flat backyard.

Listing photos from 2009 show a giant greenhouse window floods the sleek and shiny center-island eat-in kitchen with natural light and a spacious "garden room" outfitted with a booze hound friendly built-in wet bar.

A view like this—of the sprawling, semi-suburban metropolis of L.A.—might not be every person's preferred cup of property tea but that doesn't take away from the fact that a view like this, from the back veranda of a private mansion in the center of a gigantic city, is goddamn spectacular. You can hate Los Angeles—and heaven knows there are loads of people who loathe Los Angeles for a variety of both justifiable and precocious reasons—but it's just plain boneheaded not to be able to appreciate a view such as this property possesses.

The second floor master suite offers a soaring ceiling and a full wall of city view windows, a sitting area with fireplace, a small private terrace with big views and boutique-sized walk-in closet/dressing room. In 2009 the attached master bathroom was equipped with a shower stall lined on two exterior walls with hip high windows so a person can take in the city views whilst washing their coochie-coos.
 
Wide stone terraces and a deep covered veranda extend the living areas outside and step down to a flat grass pad plenty big enough for a good-sized Rover or two and a dark-bottom, T-shaped negative-edge swimming pool and spa.

In addition to his new, I-have-arrived-style digs above the Sunset Strip, Property records show Mister Dr. Dre owns a number of other properties including a 13,748 square foot mansion with 8 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms tightly wedged onto a wedge-shaped parcel in an affluent gated community in proto-suburban Woodland Hills, CA that he picked up in May 1999 for $2,375,000. For what it's worth, former teen idol, actor and reality show denizen Scott Baio owns a 5 bedroom and 4.5 bathroom mini-mansion on the same street he and his missus bought in November 2010 for $1,850,000.



In October 2010, property records suggest Mister Dre dropped $4,750,000 on a four-story, 8,843 square foot ocean front house on Malibu's swish and swanky Carbon Beach. The 6 bedroom and 7 bathroom house was—as it turns out, on the open market for most of 2011 and part of 2012 with little or no tongue wagging by the property gossip. As best as we can tell from old listings we squeezed out of the internets, the property was first listed with an $11,000,000 price tag that inexplicably increased to $12,500,000.

*In 2011, Forbes estimated Dr. Dre had a net worth of a quarter billion bucks and last month, they estimated, he'll haul in another $110 million in pretax earnings in 2012. Kaching!

**So called because all the streets are named after—you got it—birds.

listing photos (Sunset Strip): Hilton & Hyland
listing video (Malibu): Areté Estates