Dr. Dre Addresses Michel'le Abuse & Dee Barnes Assault Allegations

The new biopic, produced by Dre, is getting flak for omitting this incident:
-----

Dr. Dre addresses his relationship with former fiancée Michel'le and his assault of Dee Barnes in Rolling Stone's August 27 cover story, which also features fellow N.W.A member Ice Cube.

Dr. Dre dated Michel'le in the 1990s and they have a child together. Since breaking up, Michel'le has claimed that the rapper-producer beat her and shot at her while they were dating.

In 1991, Dr. Dre assaulted Dee Barnes at a music industry event in Los Angeles. Barnes was the host of the video show Pump It Up! Dr. Dre and N.W.A were upset with Barnes because an episode of Pump It Up! featuring N.W.A also included an interview with Ice Cube, who had left the group. Barnes brought a lawsuit against Dre, which was settled out of court.

"I made some fucking horrible mistakes in my life," Dre says. "I was young, fucking stupid. 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."

Elsewhere in the interview, Ice Cube denounces criticism regarding claims that the group's music is misogynistic.

"If you're a bitch, you're probably not going to like us," he says. "If you're a ho, you probably don't like us. If you're not a ho or a bitch, don't be jumping to the defense of these despicable females. Just like I shouldn't be jumping to the defense of no punks or no cowards or no slimy son of a bitches that's men. I never understood why an upstanding lady would even think we're talking about her."

His relationship to women, at least in his music, remains...complicated.
Dre has never been one for progressive approaches to gender in his music. The track "Issues" ends with a prolonged, out-of-nowhere skit in which a woman is murdered violently, for no apparent reason, then carried into the woods and buried.

(So does Eminem's, while we're on the subject.)
"I even make the bitches I rape cum," Marshall Mathers brags on "Medicine Man."