Dr. Dre To Star In And Executive Produce Apple's First TV Show

Kevin Winter / Getty Images

Dr. Dre — the legendary rapper, producer, Beats founder and Apple exec — will add another pathbreaking line to his biography: executive producer and star of Apple's first ever original television show.

As the Hollywood Reporter first reported earlier today, the show, called "Vital Signs," is funded by Apple and will be six episodes, each of which focuses "on a different emotion and how Dre’s character deals with it." The show will be written and co-executive produced by Robert Munic, who fills the same role on the hit show Empire. BuzzFeed News independently confirmed the news.

After the relaunch of Apple Music last year, Vital Signs marks the second major project at Apple for Dre since he and partner Jimmy Iovine sold Beats Electronics to the tech giant for $3 billion in 2014.

Though Apple declined to comment on the news, a source familiar with Apple’s plans told BuzzFeed News that the move to original content was inevitable. The past few years have seen tech giants from Netflix to Amazon experiment – often successfully — with original programming, and now Apple, which rolled out a new Apple TV last year, looks poised to compete.