Dee Barnes and Michel’le Speak Out About Dr. Dre’s Abusive Past, Exclusion From Straight Outta Compton

Photo via Dee Barnes’ Facebook page

With Dr. Dre‘s past back in the spotlight due to the release of the N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton and his new album Compton, a renewed conversation about Dre’s history of abuse against women has been taking place. Now, two women have spoken out directly about the film and Dre’s legacy.

The R&B singer Michel’le, who was engaged to Dre and has a son with him, has previously claimed that Dre was regularly physically abusive to her during their relationship. This week, she spoke with VladTV about her omission from Straight Outta Compton. When informed that Dre was one of the producers of the film, she replied, “Why would Dre put me in it? If they start from where they start from, I was just a quiet girlfriend who got beat up and told to sit down and shut up.” She also called Straight Outta Compton “Cube’s version of his life.”

Michel’le previously told VladTV that Dre once attempted to shoot her. (A skit at the end of Compton track “Loose Cannons” involves a woman being shot and her body being buried.)

Watch Michel’le’s new interview below.

Meanwhile, journalist Dee Barnes penned an essay for Gawker about Straight Outta Compton. She discusses the 1991 incident in which Dre “beat me mercilessly” at a record release party. 

She writes:

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 Dre beating up Michel’le, his one-time 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.”

But what should have been addressed is that it occurred. When I was sitting there in the theater, and the movie’s timeline skipped by my attack without a glance, I was like, “Uhhh, what happened?” Like many of the women that knew and worked with N.W.A., I found myself a casualty of Straight Outta Compton’s revisionist history.

She went on to discuss Dre’s history of physical abuse with women, and the movie’s attempt to portray N.W.A as countercultural heroes while eliding the nastier details. “They’re trying to stay hard, and look like good guys,” she said. 

Barnes added, “In his lyrics, Dre made hyperbolic claims about all these heinous things he did to women. 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.”

The source of Dre’s dispute with Barnes was a segment she hosted for Fox’s “Pump It Up!”, an interview with Ice Cube in which N.W.A were negatively portrayed. In her piece, Barnes points out that her cameraman for the interview was Straight Outta Compton director F. Gary Gray. “I think a huge reason that Gary doesn’t want to address it is because then he’d have to explain his part in history,” she writes. “He’s obviously uncomfortable for a reason.”

Later, Barnes says she hasn’t spoken with Dre in years, and that her most recent interaction with Cube was negative. (After suing Dre over the incident, she settled out-of-court for an undisclosed amount.) She also claims she was blacklisted from the entertainment industry. 

She concludes:

Straight Outta Compton transforms N.W.A. from the world’s most dangerous rap group to the world’s most diluted rap group. In rap, authenticity matters, and gangsta rap has always pushed boundaries beyond what’s comfortable with hardcore rhymes that are supposed to present accounts of the street’s harsh realities (though N.W.A. shared plenty of fantasies, as well). The biggest problem with Straight Outta Compton is that it ignores several of N.W.A.’s own harsh realities.

Recently, Dr. Dre discussed his history of violence. “I made some fucking horrible mistakes in my life,” he said. “I was young, fucking stupid. 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.”

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