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Dr. Dre Apologizes for Attacking Journalist Dee Barnes: I Was ‘Out of My F–king Mind’

Dr. Dre attends the premiere of "The Defiant Ones" at Paramount Theatre on June 22, 2017 in Hollywood, California.
Dr. Dre attends the premiere of "The Defiant Ones" at Paramount Theatre on June 22, 2017 in Hollywood, California.Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic

Dr. Dre is once again apologizing for his highly publicized 1991 physical assault of television host Dee Barnes.

In part two of The Defiant Ones, HBO’s docuseries on Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, the rap mogul opened up about the incident. Barnes has said he attacked her following an interview she conducted in which she criticized his group, N.W.A. According to a Rolling Stone article written shortly after the altercation, Barnes said that “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.”

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Now, the rapper, whose real name is Andre Romelle Young, is looking back with regret. “Any man that puts his hands on a female is a f–king idiot,” Dre says in the new docuseries. “He’s out of his f–king mind, and I was out of my f–king mind at the time. I f–ked up, I paid for it, I’m sorry for it, I apologize for it.”

Dee Barnes arrives at the Hennessy and Honey Collective party at The Vanguard on October 29, 2008 in Los Angeles, California.
Dee Barnes arrives at the Hennessy and Honey Collective party at The Vanguard on October 29, 2008 in Los Angeles, California. Maury Phillips/WireImage

“I have this dark cloud that follows me,” he continues. “And it’s going to be attached to me forever. It’s a major blemish on who I am as a man.”

The incident was notably excluded from 2015 film Straight Outta Compton, which prompted his ex Michel’le to detail being abused by the rapper, referring to herself as “a quiet girlfriend who got beat on and told to sit down and shut up.”

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In 2015, Dre opened up about abuse allegations in an interview with Rolling Stone. “I made some f–king horrible mistakes in my life,” he said. “I was young, f–king stupid. I wouldn’t 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–ked up. But I paid for those mistakes, and there’s no way in hell that I will ever make another mistake like that again.”

Part two of The Defiant Ones airs on HBO Tuesday, July 11, at 7:50 p.m. ET. 

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