Dr. Dre Accused Of Airbrushing Violent Misogyny ‘Straight Outta Compton’
Dr. Dre is back with his first album in 16-years. The album is a companion soundtrack piece to the movie Straight Outta Compton, a biopic on hip-hop band N.W.A. According to NME, it looks like Straight Outta Compton is heading straight into the No. 1 spot. Dr. Dre started his career in N.W.A., a 1980s hip-hop group that also featured Ice Cube, Eazy-E, MC Ren, and DJ Yella. For those who are too young to remember, N.M.A., the acronym, stands for “Ni***z With Attitude.”
Dr. Dre says that the decision to release a new album was an impromptu one. NME report that in a live YouTube chat about the movie on Tuesday, August 11, Dr. Dre said he was inspired by working on the movie.
“You know what, I was on the set, I was leaving the set every day and I just felt so inspired. I decided one night on the way home I was going to roll up my sleeves and start working on this album.
I got to maybe a third song and I said, ‘You know what? This is starting to sound great. I should go on and complete this.’ “
According to the Belfast Telegraph, Dr. Dre said that the final cut of the movie gave him “goosebumps,” even though he helped to produce it.
Both the movie and the Dr. Dre sound track are receiving critical acclaim but the movie, due for nationwide release on Friday, is beginning to draw criticism for what has been omitted from the story. Quartz claims that Apple multi-billionaire Dr. Dre would like everyone to forget about N.W.A.’s blatant misogyny, and all the women he beat up. They claim that N.W.A.’s brutal relationship with women has been almost completely removed from the movie.
N.W.A. glorified misogyny, even going so far as singing about tying up, gang raping, and eventually killing a woman, all in graphic detail, on the 1991 hit “One Less B***h.” The Daily Beast described how Dr. Dre brutally assaulted television host Dee Barnes at a party in Hollywood. The assault landed Barnes in an emergency room after she was brutally assaulted by a drunken Dr. Dre.
“He picked her up by her hair and ‘began slamming her head and the right side of her body repeatedly against a brick wall near the stairway’ as his bodyguard held off the crowd with a gun.”
Dr. Dre kicked and punched her and tried to throw her down a set of stairs. Despite never denying that he carried out the assault and pleading “no contest” to a subsequent lawsuit, there is no mention of the incident in the movie. Dre’s ex-girlfriends, Michel’le and Tairrie B, have both gone on the record detailing ugly alleged physical abuse at his hands. Again, these incidents get no mention in the biopic.
Straight Outta Compton and Dr. Dre’s soundtrack may be receiving critical acclaim, but it seems that many people do not believe that Dr. Dre and N.W.A. should be allowed to airbrush their violence against women out of history.
[Photo by Kevin Winter / Getty Images]
