Dee Barnes blasted the Recording Academy for celebrating Dr. Dre at this year’s Grammy Awards.
Dee Barnes has long claimed that the producer assaulted her in 1991 at a release party. Dre was handed the Global Impact Award on Sunday but she says they should not have given him the tribute.
“Everybody wants to separate the art from the artist, and sometimes that’s just not possible. Most people without a knowledge of [Dr. Dre’s] history are going to say, ‘Oh, he must deserve that. He must be such a great person for them to put an award in his name.’ But they named this award after an abuser,” she told Rolling Stone. “It wasn’t just a one or two-time thing; these are choices. The first time, it’s maybe a mistake. The second time, okay. The third time, it’s a choice. I’m not saying he is the same person now, though. I don’t know. I’m not around him anymore. I haven’t talked to him. But to name an award after someone with that type of history in the music industry, you might as well call it the ‘Ike Turner Award.'”
She continued: “He said it himself in the documentary The Defiant Ones: I’m a ‘blemish’ on who he is as a man. Well, what do you do with a blemish? There’s a whole industry created—skincare lines and vitamins and rituals—to get rid of blemishes,” she continued. “And, in a sense, there’s a whole network to keep me hidden.”
Were the Grammys wrong for paying homage to Dre?
