What was the lesson of Straight Outta Compton? Was it that... “black hoodlums” are the real problem, in America? If you said “yes,” you could write for the prestigious Wall Street Journal!
“Bitches ain’t shit.”
On January 27, 1991, at a record-release party for the rap duo Bytches With Problems in Hollywood, producer/rapper/then-N.W.A. member Dr. Dre brutally attacked Dee Barnes, the host of a well-known Fox show about hip-hop called Pump It Up! Dre was reportedly angry about a Pump It Up! segment hosted by Barnes that aired in November 1990. The report focused on N.W.A., and concluded with a clip of Ice Cube, who had recently left the group, insulting his former colleagues. Soon after the attack, Barnes described it in interviews: She said Dre attempted to throw her down a flight of stairs, slammed her head against a wall, kicked her, and stomped on her fingers. Dre later told Rolling Stone, “It ain’t no big thing – I just threw her through a door.” He pleaded no contest to assault charges. Barnes’s civil suit against Dre was settled out of court.
The Town Manager of Provincetown is looking into an incident involving its police chief, who became very upset when the bar he was drinking in began to play N.W.A.'s protest anthem "Fuck tha Police."
Last week, the GOOP-itrix herself, Gwyneth Paltrow, appeared on the Graham Norton Show (which is like The Tonight Show if Jay Leno was Irish, gay, and actually funny). She rapped. Yes, she did the first few lines of the NWA classic "Straight out of Compton."
She has to if she wants to write a gangsta rap script correctly. Also today: A sexy new Phantom, a twee indie movie gets turned into a twee regional musical, 3D sports!, and Baywatch alumni news.
