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When people with pasts as colorful as the members of N.W.A venture into autobiographical territory, they should be fully prepared for skeletons from their pasts to be exposed and in some instances, rehashed.

In an essay published on Gawker, former “Pump It Up” host Dee Barnes shared her reaction to the Straight Outta Compton biopic, recalled the incident when she was savagely beaten by Dr. Dre, and alleged that the assault led to her being blacklisted by the industry.

On the assault:

When I saw the footage of California Highway Patrol officer Daniel Andrew straddling and viciously punching Marlene Pinnock in broad daylight on the side of a busy freeway last year, I cringed. That must have been how it looked as Dr. Dre straddled me and beat me mercilessly on the floor of the women’s restroom at the Po Na NaSouk nightclub in 1991.

It was so caustic that when Dre was trying to choke me on the floor of the women’s room in Po Na Na Souk, a thought flashed through my head: “Oh my god. He’s trying to kill me.” He had me trapped in that bathroom; he held the door closed with his leg. It was surreal. “Is this happening?” I thought.

My life changed that night. I suffer from horrific migraines that started only after the attack. I love Dre’s song “Keep Their Heads Ringin”—it has a particularly deep meaning to me. When I get migraines, my head does ring and it hurts, exactly in the same spot every time where he smashed my head against the wall. People have accused me of holding onto the past; I’m not holding onto the past. I have a souvenir that I never wanted. The past holds onto me.

On Straight Outta Compton:

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

 

READ MORE: MadameNoire.com

Article Courtesy of Madame Noire

Picture Courtesy of Instagram and Madame Noire

Dee Barnes Shares Her Thoughts on “Straight Outta Compton” and Dr. Dre  was originally published on wzakcleveland.com