In 2021 Grand Theft Auto Online added The Contract: new story content with the return of Grand Theft Auto 5’s Franklin coupled with new music from West Coast icon Dr. Dre. In a recent BET piece entitled The Oral History of How Dr. Dre Joined Grand Theft Auto: The Contract, actor/producer/screenwriter and longtime Dre affiliate DJ Pooh revealed that Dre originally turned down the opportunity.

“Initially, it was just 'no'," Pooh revealed. “But the answer was initially no because Dre’s not a gamer.”

“He just didn’t play any of the games. It’s not like he dislikes them or something, he just didn’t play them. He was like ‘I don’t make things for kids.’” Pooh insisted that Dre check out Grand Theft Auto, and he brought over his gaming console so that Dre could see what he was missing. “He was blown away,” Pooh recalls. “He didn’t know that you could do all this stuff. All the layers of gameplay that people are calling the metaverse, but it's deeper than that.”

Pooh, a fan of the GTA franchise compares Rockstar Games, who manufactures GTA, to the early days of the Def Jam Record label. "They remind me of Def Jam back in the day; early days when you would pick up a record at the record store and just buy it because it had 'Def Jam' on it. You knew it was going to be quality. You knew that was going to be dope. You knew it wasn't going to be wack. And I felt like that about Rockstar's quality.”

After calling the phone number on the back of a GTA box, Pooh found himself writing for GTA: San Andreas.

"Well, the process with Rockstar is actually very similar to the screenplay process because their games are very cinematic,” said Pooh of working the Rockstar. Pooh also served as host of the in-game radio station West Coast Classics, and the initial Dr. Dre connection was supposed to be the Cayo Perico Heist update, and that led to The Contract. Dr. Dre initially sat down with Rockstar executives, but it was Pooh who convinced him to say yes.