Don’t Forget About Dre

Janay Rice was beaten in public by Ray Rice, and the top commentaries in social media in Los Angeles are: Why did she stay? and: The white cop got to beat Marlene Pinnock and keep his job—so why can’t Rice play ball?

The fields of sports and music have long and inglorious histories of beating women.

As a society we accept it for the greater good.

The greater good is:

Wall Street
The NFL
The University
Los Angeles
New York

University of Southern California (USC) has a new major and school. The name of it is the Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation.

For those in the ivory tower , it is easy to say, “Don’t watch the NFL.”

But to me that’s just playing. People like me don’t watch the NFL. Throwing that out is going to do nothing to impact my life at all. I have no risk. Not watching sports is a badge of honor in the circle I travel in.

But I have several friends in Los Angeles that work as well as get grants, fellowships and many other resources from USC.

Who is Andre Young? Andre Young is Dr. Dre, the founder of the rap group N.W.A., aka Niggas With Attitude.

In 1991, Dr. Dre severely beat and injured music journalist and broadcast TV show “Pump It Up” host Dee Barnes. 

According to Dre and other band members, Barnes had interviewed Ice Cube (a former member of N.W.A.) incorrectly earlier in the year.

Dee Barnes is a tiny woman, and while I am not implying that were she big she would have in any way deserved the beating–but I think it’s worth noting her diminutive size.

Dre, on the other hand, was 6’1” tall and approximately 225 lbs. at the time of the beating.

According to the August 8, 1991  article “Beating Up the Charts” in Rolling Stone by Alan Light:

“After Dee Barnes interviewed Ice Cube, Dr. Dre found her on the stairs at a record release party in Los Angeles. At that party Dre ‘picked her up’ and ‘began slamming her face and the right side of her body repeatedly against a wall near the stairway’ as his bodyguard held off the crowd.”

People were trying to help Barnes. Other men were trying to help HER, but because Dre felt since he was a big music star, it was OK for him to physically beat her.

After Dre tried and failed to throw her down those stairs he found her own, he began kicking her in the ribs. Dre then chased her into the women’s bathroom, “grabbed her from behind by the hair and proceeded to punch her in the back of the head.”

After the brutal attack, Dre and his bodyguard ran from the building.

He did not and still does not deny or apologize for the attack. His admission and pride of beating Barnes is documented in several reputable sources. In Light’s Rolling Stone article, members of N.W.A. insist that, as Ren says, “she deserved it – bitch deserved it.” Eazy agrees: “Yeah, bitch had it coming.” “Coming like a motherfucker,” said Ren.

In the 1994 book, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, by Tricia Rose (published by Wesleyan), members of N.W.A. defiantly defended Dre’s actions, saying “bitch deserved it” and “bitch had it coming.”

The incident was #37 on Spin Magazine’s “100 Sleaziest Moments in Rock.”

This incident is common knowledge to anyone who grew up in L.A. and is Generation X or older. This incident is common knowledge to everyone in the music business. This incident is common knowledge to everyone in Hollywood.

According to the Web site, Cracked.com, Dre’s act of brutality got him only got 240 hours of community service.

He went on to release The Chronic which sold 4.5 million copies, and to collaborate with Eminem. On a duet between them on “Guilty Conscious” in 1999, Eminem and Dre joked about Dre beating Dee Barnes.

In 2013 it was revealed on the show “R&B Divas of L.A.” by 90s R&B singer Michel’le who is the mother to a child of Dr. Dre’s that she was regular abused by him and he broke her nose.

Dr. Dre has a history and pattern of abusing Black women.

On May 15, 2013  USC President C.L Max Nikias announces that record producer Jimmy Iovine and rapper Dr. Dre (aka Andre Young) will be giving the school $70 million to create a new undergraduate program called the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation.

So when you have a PhD, a TV show and a book, it’s easy to mock the of the hypocrisy NAACP—which I do all the time—and it’s easy to be outraged at the NFL and say how they knew, but you have to know these men are mimicking what the men with real power in this country do. They are mimicking people who own the book publishing houses, our cultural institutions and our press.

These men do not have respect for black women, not just black men, but white men do not have respect for black women.

Do you think if Dr Dre beat the hell out of a white woman, those white men at USC would take his money and name a school after him?

The NFL doesn’t give damn about Black women.
USC doesn’t give a damn about Black women.
America doesn’t give a damn about Black women.

When you “forget” to also point at the ivory institutions, because you’re scared —because people know what USC, Wall Street and other rich white men do and support —but “forget,” because those men provide the cultural elite with money and status in forms of grants, books and TV shows, you forget that the abuse of women isn’t just about an individual guy. It is about a system that supports the abuse of women and rewards the abuse of women with plaques with your name on them if you make enough money.

I’m not going to forget about Dre, nor am I going to forget about the President of USC, Nikias nor the CEO of the NFL, Roger Goodell nor the institution of racism and sexism that allows a monsters like Andre Young aka Dr. Dre to clean up and become a member of the elite and shape young minds with his system supported misogyny.