Dr. Dre’s Ex Michel’le Says Hip-Hop Icon ‘Shot at Me’
As the N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton continues to rule at the box office, surpassing $100 million last weekend, details of one of the group member’s history of violence towards women has come to the forefront.
Singer and R&B Divas co-star Michel’le Toussaint, who has a 24-year-old son with N.W.A’s Dr. Dre, has gone on the record saying the Beats Electronics co-founder regularly assaulted her and even attempted to shoot her throughout their six-year relationship. And in a new exclusive interview this week with The Insider, she says, “He would hit me with a closed fist every time. It was never open fist. It was always closed fist.”
Michel’le has spoken publicly for years about Dre’s abuse, but she only recently revealed that her ex actually attempted to shoot her. “Once again, I said something and he just shot at me, and I ran into the bathroom and missed the bullet, and left the hole in the wall for about three months just to remind myself,” she recalls to The Insider.
Michel’le says the next morning, they did not discuss the encounter, and that it had happened before. Michel’le says she did not report the incident because she did not want to sell Dre out to the police. “I never did, because why would I lock up my people? You know, we didn’t do that. That’s like snitching in the hood.”
Michel’le stayed in the relationship because she thought he cared for her. “I thought that was his way of expressing himself,” she explains.
Discussions of Dr. Dre’s past violence against women resurfaced last week when the Compton rapper said he’d “made some f—ing horrible mistakes” in a Rolling Stone cover story promoting the Straight Outta Compton movie. Days later, music journalist Dee Barnes wrote an editorial piece for Gawker, recounting the time Dre beat her at a nightclub in 1991, an incident that resulted in an out-of-court settlement.
After Barnes’s account of her assault made the news, Dr. Dre released an apology via statement to the New York Times. He wrote: “I apologize to the women I’ve hurt. I deeply regret what I did and know that it has forever impacted all of our lives.”
Although Michel’le says she has already forgiven Dre, she still believes she deserves a “personal” apology. “If he said, ‘I’m sorry,’ I would probably go, ‘Oh my God,’ and just break down and cry,” she admits.
