Dee Barnes, the former TV personality who said she was assaulted by N.W.A. rapper Dr. Dre in 1991, addressed on Tuesday the “revisionist history” of the hip hop group’s newly released biopic, Straight Outta Compton.
In an essay for Gawker, Barnes rejects director F. Gary Gray’s argument that the film omitted Dre’s history of violence against women — “f— horrible mistakes,” Dre admitted in an interview with Rolling Stone — in order to avoid clouding the rap group’s narrative with “a lot of side stories.”
Barnes, who agreed to watch the biopic and write a reflection, drew a careful line between sensitivity and responsibility of depicting N.W.A.’s and Dre’s alleged misogyny:
Barnes also criticizes fellow N.W.A. member Ice Cube for categorizing women as “upstanding ladies” or “despicable females,” and Dre for not “owning up” about two other women whom he allegedly assaulted during the 1990s:
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