The new film Straight Outta Compton retells the rise and fall of late '80s-early '90s gangsta rappers N.W.A. But in retelling the tumultuous story of this hardcore rap group what is glaringly missing from the biopic is one of its members past violence against women.
In 1991, Dr. Dre, now one of the biggest names in hip-hop (and crappy headphones), attacked a woman at a Los Angeles nightclub. The woman, Dee Barnes, at the time was host of Fox's Pump It Up! -- a show which featured interviews and music with rappers. According to reports, Dre was miffed that the show aired a segment that featured ex-N.W.A. member Ice Cube slandering his former bandmates. In retaliation, Dre allegedly slammed Barnes's head against a brick wall and attempted to throw her down a flight of stairs.
Barnes recently spoke with Gawker after viewing the film:
I was reminded of what happened to me when I watched video of a police officer named Eric Casebolt grabbing a 15-year-old girl outside the Craig Ranch North Community Pool in Texas, slamming her body to the ground, and putting his knee in her back.
Three years later—in 1991—I would experience something similar, only this time I was on my back and the knee was in my chest. That knee did not belong to a police officer, but Andre Young, the producer/rapper who goes by Dr. Dre. When I saw the footage of California Highway Patrol officer Daniel Andrew straddling and viciously punching Marlene Pinnock in broad daylight on the side of a busy freeway last year, I cringed. That must have been how it looked as Dr. Dre straddled me and beat me mercilessly on the floor of the women’s restroom at the Po Na Na Souk nightclub in 1991.
"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.”
Barnes noted that the storyline conveniently skipped over this incident, she said, "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."
Dre, who is one of the executive producers of the film, is accused of leaving out several other incidents of violence against women as well. Barnes told Gawker:
Dre… should have owned up to the time he punched his labelmate Tairrie B twice at a Grammys party in 1990. He should have owned up to the black eyes and scars he gave to his collaborator Michel’le. And he should have owned up to what he did to me. That’s reality. That’s reality rap. 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.
Shortly after the attack against Barnes, Dre admitted to the incident:
People talk all this sh*t, but you know, somebody f***s with me, I’m gonna f*** with them. I just did it, you know. Ain’t nothing you can do now by talking about it. Besides, it ain’t no big thing – I just threw her through a door.
More recently, Dre spoke of his past "mistakes" to Rolling Stone:
I made some f***ing horrible mistakes in my life. I was young, f***ing 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 f***ed up. But I paid for those mistakes, and there's no way in hell that I will ever make another mistake like that again.
Straight Outta Compton's director F. Gary Gray told Ebony that the reason the film omits these incidents was so the movie could "focus on the story that was pertinent to our main characters."
"We had to make sure we served the narrative; the narrative was about N.W.A.," Gray added. "It wasn't about side stories."
N.W.A.'s song line up not only included "F*** Tha Police," a chant still shouted nationwide today, but many other titles that objectify women, such as "A B*tch Iz a B*tch," "Findum, F***um & Flee," "One Less B*tch," and "She Swallowed It" -- a little ditty which describes having sex with a 14-year-old preacher's daughter.
