Two women have spoken out about the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton, saying the film fails to show the truth about Dr Dre’s abusive attitudes to, and relationships with, women during that period.
The R&B singer Michel’le, who was in a relationship with Dre from 1990 to 1996, noted her omission from the film in an interview with VladTV, saying: “Why would Dre put me in it? I was just a quiet girlfriend who got beat up and told to sit down and shut up.”
Meanwhile, the journalist Dee Barnes, who sued Dre following a January 1991 incident in which he kicked and punched her at a record-release party (he pleaded no contest to the assault charges, and settled out of court), has written for Gawker about the incident.
“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 … Like many of the women that knew and worked with NWA, I found myself a casualty of Straight Outta Compton’s revisionist history.”
She 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.”
In her article, Barnes also highlights the role of the film’s director, F Gary Gray. Gray, she writes, was the cameraman on her early 90s TV show Pump It Up, and she suggests he indirectly caused Dre’s attack on her (blamed on an interview she had done with Ice Cube that angered the NWA camp) by provoking Ice Cube before she spoke to him.
She said the incident with Dre ended her career because she was, in effect, blacklisted. “Instead of doing journalism, I’ve had a series of nine-to-five jobs over the years to make ends meet.”
Michel’le has spoken about her abuse by Dre in other interviews. Speaking to The Breakfast Club, she said: “When he gave me my very first black eye, we laid in the bed and cried. 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, OK?’” He did, she said, hit her in other places.
Dre recently spoke to Rolling Stone about the incidents with Barnes and Michel’le, and other accusations of an abusive past, saying: “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.”
