Misogynistic woman beater Andre “Dr. Dre” Young has apologized for committing incidences of extreme violence toward women in his past. The 50-year-old hip-hop magnate acknowledged the allegations that he savagely beat a female TV host in the 1990s.
Dre told Rolling Stone magazine:
“I made some f*cking horrible mistakes in my life… I was young, f*cking 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 f*cked up. But I paid for those mistakes, and there’s no way in hell that I will ever make another mistake like that again.”
It’s noteworthy that Dre is apologizing now that F. Gary Gray‘s NWA biopic, Straight Outta Compton, is set to open in theaters this weekend.
In addition to savagely beating TV’s Pump It Up! host Dee Barnes in an infamous nightclub incident that made headlines everywhere, Dre is also accused of backhanding his baby mama, singer Michel’le, and his current wife, Nicole Threatt Young.
In January 1991, Dr. Dre spotted Dee Barnes in a nightclub and made a beeline for her. Witnesses say the enraged NWA co-founder picked up the petite host by her neck and slammed her head into a wall. As a crowd of mostly males gathered around, Dre continued to pummel and stomp the defenseless Barnes while his homies asked, “What’d she do, yo?”
Barnes did nothing to deserve such punishment. Like most cowards, Dr. Dre took out his rage on Barnes because he couldn’t (or wouldn’t) get at former NWA member Ice Cube for insulting his best friend and ghostwriter The D.O.C. during a segment of Pump It Up!
The video footage of Ice Cube’s diss apparently no longer exists.
In the episode of Pump It Up! that ran in December 1990, Dee was interviewing rapper Yo Yo on the set of Boyz N the Hood. Ice Cube, who was on the set, popped his head into the camera frame and said some disparaging things about his former group, NWA. But it was what he did next that outraged Dr. Dre, Eazy E and the rest of the group.
Ice Cube leaned in close to the camera, lowered his voice and spoke in a raspy whisper, as if he was losing his voice.
It was obvious to anyone watching the show that night that Cube was mocking Dr. Dre’s ghostwriter and talented rapper The D.O.C., whose voice box was crushed in a car accident.
Barnes, who was stunned by Ice Cube’s insensitivity, described the incident in the December 1992 issue of The Source:
Cube just said it joking and I was left standing there. The cameras were still rolling so I said, ‘Sister Dee, always in the middle of controversy right here on Pump It Up!’ You know? What am I gonna do? Then [Pump It Up! director Jeff Shore] said, ‘Cut! That’s great! I’m gonna put it on the N.W.A. show’…He said it right there and I said, ‘Naw, you crazy?’ I didn’t want those two groups fighting anymore. I didn’t want it to be because of Pump It Up!, like we instigated something.
Barnes’s fears were justified.
Like the bitches that they are, Dr. Dre and the group took out their anger on a woman.
Group members Ren and Eazy E, who died of AIDS, were quoted by journalist Alan Light, for a Rolling Stone article.
Ren says, “she deserved it – bitch deserved it.” Eazy agrees: “Yeah, bitch had it coming.”
Dre later settled with Barnes out of court for an undisclosed amount.
