Well over two decades after Dee Barnes was assaulted by Dr. Dre, the musician/journalist sat down with the Huffington Post’s Kevin Powell to speak on the attack, women in Hip Hop, and more.
In regards to Dr. Dre’s attack, which reportedly took place at a Hollywood, California nightclub in 1991, Barnes referred to it as “a painful and traumatic experience.”
“Dre approached… [and] he just grabbed me,” Dee Barnes said, according to the Huffington Post. “I thought he was going to walk past me but he just grabbed me. I mean it’s no secret… he grabbed me by my hair and started slamming me up against the wall. It’s a painful and traumatic experience.”
As someone who had the opportunity to meet each member of N.W.A, Barnes was asked to offer her thoughts on each member. She referred to Eazy-E as “a good man,” called MC Ren “the quiet storm,” and credited Dr. Dre for being talented.
AD LOADING...
“We all vibed,” she said when asked how she linked with those in N.W.A. “I met one of them at a time, individually. And as they came together to form N.W.A.”
Prior to speaking on the Dr. Dre attack and meeting those in N.W.A, Barnes offered her thoughts on women in Hip Hop and shared her personal experiences with sexism and misogyny. She stated that women have always been present in Hip Hop, but are usually “pitted against each other.”
“Women have always been there,” Barnes said. “And I find it very interesting that for some reason they’re not seen, but they’ve been there since the beginning. If you go back to the Funky Four Plus One. You know what I mean? And as we moved into the late 80s and the early 90s, all of a sudden it was just one female in a crew of men. When female emcees have been around for a long time…I got a taste of it because—like I said, we were there, but we were always pitted against each other.”
The full interview with Dee Barnes can be viewed at HuffingtonPost.com.
AD LOADING...
