Film + TV

Dr. Dre's attack victim speaks out on Straight Outta Compton

by Jesse Locke

In the early 1990s, Dee Barnes found success as a member of Body & Soul and as host of Fox’s hip-hop interview show Pump it Up! Sadly, she may be best known as the woman who suffered a violent attack from Dr. Dre, but you won’t see anything about that in Straight Outta Compton.

In a harrowing article written for Gawker, Barnes tells her side of the story on the 1991 incident. Following a Pump it Up! segment with Ice Cube (who had recently left N.W.A.) including some choice words for his former bandmates, Dre confronted Barnes in a Hollywood nightclub. She says he tried to throw her down a flight of stairs, choked her, and “beat her mercilessly” on the floor of the women’s restroom.

“That event isn’t depicted in Straight Outta Compton, but I don’t think it should have been, either,” says Barnes. 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.”

Dre eventually pleaded no contest to assault and served two years probation, with him and Barnes settling out of court in a civil lawsuit. However, she says the incident has continued to affect her with the suffering of chronic migraines and a blacklisting from her professional contacts who are scared of impacting their relationships with ‘the first billionaire in hip-hop.’ Driving her point home, Barnes notes that Straight Outta Compton director F. Gary Gray was also behind the camera on the Pump It Up! segment that sparked the attack.

“People ask me, ‘How come you’re not on TV anymore?’ and ‘How come you’re not back on television?’ It’s not like I haven’t tried. I was blacklisted. Nobody wants to work with me. They don’t want to affect their relationship with Dre. I’ve been told directly and indirectly, “I can’t work with you.” I auditioned for the part that eventually went to Kimberly Elise in Set It Off. Gary was the director. This was long after Pump it Up!, and I nailed the audition. Gary came out and said, “I can’t give you the part.” I asked him why, and he said, “‘Cause I’m casting Dre as Black Sam.” My heart didn’t sink, I didn’t get emotional; I was just numb.”