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Dee Barnes Shares Her Take on 'Straight Outta Compton'

08/19/2015
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(Radio.com) To a generation of fans, Dee Barnes is the woman who Eminem name dropped in "Guilty Conscience," his collaboration with Dr. Dre. In it, he said, "You gonna take advice from somebody who slapped Dee Barnes?"

Older fans may remember Dee Barnes, who was a host on hip-hop show called Pump It Up. In 1991, Dr. Dre brutally attacked Barnes over a segment she shot for Pump It Up with Dre's former N.W.A. mate Ice Cube. Cube dissed his former group in the clip, and Dre was not happy about it. And just as Straight Outta Compton has topped the box office, Barnes has written her account of the incident, and effect it has had on her life, for Gawker.

She points out that the person who filmed the Pump It Up clip which supposed caused the Dre to come after her, was F. Gary Gray, who would go on to direct Straight Outta Compton. Gray, she notes, has avoided discussing the misogyny of the members of N.W.A. "I think a huge reason that Gary doesn't want to address it is because then he'd have to explain his part in history. He's obviously uncomfortable for a reason," she writes.

She, as many others, pointed out that Dre's attack on her is not mentioned in Straight Outta Compton, which she watched before writing the article. Although Barnes writes, "'but I don't think it should have been, either. The truth is too ugly for a general audience'.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." She notes that most women in the story, including hip-hop group J.J. Fad, Dre's ex-girlfriend Michel'e, Death Row artists Jewell and Lady of Rage, and Ice Cube's associate Yo-Yo were absent from the film. Read more here.

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Copyright Radio.com/CBS Local - Excerpted here with permission.

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