Dee Barnes, Who Says She Was Assaulted by Dr. Dre, Slams 'Straight Outta Compton'
"What should have been addressed is that it occurred," Dee Barnes wrote.
— -- Some people have slammed the N.W.A biopic "Straight Outta Compton" for what they call its inaccuracies and omissions.
Dee Barnes is one of them.
The former hip-hop journalist detailed for Gawker the night during which she says group member Dr. Dre "mercilessly" attacked her on the floor of the women’s restroom at the Po Na Na Souk nightclub in Hollywood in 1991.
The Los Angeles Times reported at the time that Dre pleaded no contest to misdemeanor battery. "I just did it, you know. Ain't nothing you can do now by talking about it," the rapper told Rolling Stone at the time, according to the newspaper.
"Besides, it ain't no big thing. I just threw her through a door."
Dre also settled a civil suit brought by Barnes, and the hitmaker recently told Rolling Stone he'd made "horrible mistakes" in his life.
Still, Barnes isn't letting him off the hook.
"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," she wrote. "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."
Barnes also questioned why the film did not mention Dre's former girlfriend, singer Michel’le, who has accused Dre of abuse. In the Rolling Stone story published August 12, Dre, whose real name is Andre Young, said of the claims made by Barnes and Michel'le, "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," he told the magazine, adding at the time he was "young, f***ing stupid." "But I paid for those mistakes, and there's no way in hell that I will ever make another mistake like that again."
Barnes, who wrote that she still suffers from migraines as a result of the incident, added that it affected her career too. She claimed that she's been blacklisted from the music industry as a result of her relationship with Dre.
"People have accused me of holding onto the past; I’m not holding onto the past. I have a souvenir that I never wanted. The past holds onto me," she wrote, adding that she didn't get rich from a settlement in a civil suit she filed against Dre. "There’s a myth that I was paid so well by the settlement I received from Dre that I’d never have to work again. People think I was paid millions, when in reality, I didn’t even get a million, and it wasn’t until September of 1993."
A rep for Dr. Dre did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
