Dee Barnes Says ‘Straight Outta Compton’ ‘Ignores’ Dr. Dre’s Victims
Music journalist Dee Barnes is speaking out about an attack she says she suffered at the hands of Dr. Dre in the 1990s.
Barnes reflected on the incident for Gawker after watching Straight Outta Compton. She notes that the N.W.A biopic leaves out the brutality she and other women allegedly suffered at the hands of Dre.
The incident occurred in 1991 at a Hollywood record release party. Dre was angry about Barnes’ report on the Fox show Pump It Up!, which included a clip of Ice Cube (who had recently departed N.W.A) insulting his former bandmates. Dre allegedly tried to throw Barnes down a flight of stairs, choked her, and pinned her to the floor of the women’s bathroom with his knee on her chest. Dre pleaded no contest to assault and served two years probation, and Barnes eventually settled out of court with Dre in a civil lawsuit.
“That event isn’t depicted in Straight Outta Compton, but I don’t think it should have been, either. The truth is too ugly for a general audience. I didn’t want to see a depiction of me getting beat up, just like I didn’t want to see a depiction of Drebeating up Michel’le, his onetime girlfriend who recently summed up their relationship this way: ‘I was just a quiet girlfriend who got beat on and told to sit down and shut up,'” wrote Barnes. “But what should have been addressed is that it occurred.”
Barnes goes on to write that the film should have addressed the number of women Dre has been accused of assaulting, including Michel’le and Tairrie B, whom he allegedly assaulted at a Grammys party in 1990.
“In his lyrics, Dre made hyperbolic claims about all these heinous things he did to women,” wrote Barnes. “But then he went out and actually violated women.Straight Outta Compton would have you believe that he didn’t really do that. It doesn’t add up.”
Barnes notes Straight Outta Compton director F. Gary Gray was Barnes’ Pump It Up! cameraman, so he was behind-the-scenes for the segment that apparently led to Dre’s attack. Barnes has suffered chronic migraines since the attack and has effectively been blacklisted from music journalism — because people fear hurting their relationships with Dre.
Barnes goes on to write that she auditioned for a part in Gray’s 1996 drama Set if Off but that Gray said he wouldn’t hire her because he wanted to cast Dre in the movie.
“The biggest problem with Straight Outta Compton is that it ignores several of N.W.A.’s own harsh realities,” Barnes wrote.
Michel’le, early 90’s R&B singer and ex-fiancée of Dr. Dre, spoke about her relationship with the now-billionaire producer in a new interview with VladTV. Both have openly acknowledged that he was abusive towards her during their six years together (1990-1996), but the issue has risen to the forefront once again because that history (along with his known abusive relationships with other women) was omitted from new N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton.
In the new interview, Michel’le seems complacent about her omission from the film, telling Vlad the film is “Cube’s version of his life.”
When told that Dr. Dre also executive produced the film, she replied, “Why would [Dr.] Dre put me in it? If they start from where they start from,” she added, “I was just a quiet girlfriend who got beat up and told to sit down and shut up.”
Michel’le, who’s currently in the public eye as one of the stars TV One’s reality series R&B Divas: Los Angeles, detailed the abuse in a recent interview with The Breakfast Club. “When he gave me my very first black eye, we laid in the bed and cried,” she said on the morning show. “He was crying and I was crying because I was in shock, hurt and in pain. I don’t know why he was crying, but he said ‘I’m really sorry.’ That was the only time he ever said he was really sorry. And he said, ‘I’ll never hit you in that eye again, okay?'” She said in the interview that he kept that promise, but hit her in other places — “I have scars that are just amazing,” she told the show.
Dr. Dre confronted abuse allegations during the Straight Outta Compton press tour, telling Rolling Stone, “I made some fucking horrible mistakes in my life.
“I was young, fucking stupid,” he continued. “I would say all the allegations aren’t true — some of them are. Those are some of the things that I would like to take back. It was really fucked up. But I paid for those mistakes, and there’s no way in hell that I will ever make another mistake like that again.”
Watch the full interview below:
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
