Denise "Dee" Barnes (stage names Sista D and D Zire) is an American rapper and former Fox television personality who performed in the West Coast hip hop female duo Body & Soul and hosted a radio show on KDAY, prior to gaining wider fame as the host of Fox's hip hop show Pump It Up!, a weekly FOX TV rap music series on air from 1989-1992, according to IMDb.
[1] [2] Barnes grew up in New York City and became interested in hip-hop after hearing older children practicing in the park and attending concerts at the local roller rink, including a performance by Davy D.[3] She began working in radio as an intern for The DJ Red Alert show on 98.7 Kiss FM; after graduating from high school, Barnes moved to Los Angeles in the late 1980s and joined Greg Mack on 1580 KDAY.
[4] She formed the duo Body & Soul with her friend Rose Hutchinson (aka Rose Almight-T) in Los Angeles;[3] the group's 1989 debut single "Dance to the Drummer's Beat", released on Los Angeles-based record label Delicious Vinyl,[4] heavily sampled the Herman Kelly and Life song of the same name.
[5] The same year, Body & Soul released "We Can Do This", also produced by Def Jef, on the label showcase This Is Delicious – Eat to the Beat.
[9] Barnes recalled that Body & Soul struggled with the record label for image and creative control, as the label "wanted us to be more body than soul" while they felt "sex, relationships and maybe heartbreak [are] not [exclusively] what women are about";[3] they had an unreleased album which was being produced by the Jungle Brothers.
[3] After an episode aired in November 1990 which featured interviews with both N.W.A and Ice Cube, Dr. Dre physically beat Barnes at a party in January 1991 in front of hundreds; the show ended later in 1991.
And if they are African American, the community at large becomes suspicious of an underlying motive to tear down a successful black man.
Excusing pop culture icons from scrutiny over their history of violence against women because they are elevated to "hero" status is wrong on so many levels.
On February 14, 1991, Barnes co-hosted The Motherlode with Fab 5 Freddy; it was a concert at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, the first to feature an all-woman rap revue.
The show also featured an all-female line up including the artists Queen Latifah and MC Lyte.
Unsubstantiated allegations were made that Barnes had filed the civil lawsuit because Dre refused to promote Body & Soul,[18] and she had difficulty resuming both her music and journalism careers.
"[19] In 2017, she appeared in the second episode of the television miniseries The Defiant Ones, which documented the lives and producing careers of Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine.
Dee Barnes said in the episode that there was a bad energy in the interview with N.W.A and every answer seemed to involve a diss to Ice Cube.
In production, this was then combined with Barnes's subsequent interview with Ice Cube in which he dissed N.W.A and also cruelly mimicked The DOC's voice, shortly after a near-fatal accident.
[24] According to Barnes, he picked her up by her hair, unprovoked, and "began slamming her head and the right side of her body repeatedly against a brick wall near the stairway" as his bodyguard held off the crowd with a gun.
[29] In February 1991, Barnes pressed criminal charges against Dr. Dre, who pleaded no contest to misdemeanor battery in August 1991; he was fined US$2,513 (equivalent to $5,620 in 2023) and sentenced to 240 hours of community service by Judge Frederick Wapner, with two years probation.
[31] That June, Barnes filed a $22.75 million lawsuit[32]: 336 [33] against Dr. Dre and several members of N.W.A., as reported by the Los Angeles Times, accusing Dr. Dre of assault and battery and emotional distress; the others were accused of libel, slander, and emotional distress.
Jerry Heller, then manager of N.W.A, called the incident "disgraceful" in his book and said that he was "left to clean up the mess" afterward.
[40]: 264 [41][42] Chuck D called the assault "foul" in an interview with Greg Tate, published by The Village Voice in October 1991.
[44] Twenty-four years later, Dr. Dre made apologies in 2015 "to the women I've hurt", just before the release of the film Straight Outta Compton.
Rolling Stone published a cover article in which he said "I made some fucking horrible mistakes in my life.
"[45][46] In The New York Times, he added "Twenty-five years ago I was a young man drinking too much and in over my head with no real structure in my life.
[50] When asked about the "glaring omission" of the assault on Barnes, director Gray said "We had to focus on the story that was pertinent to our main characters.
"[51] Barnes criticized the film for depicting N.W.A and its members as "trying to stay hard, and look like good guys",[26] noting in a separate essay that "It's only after the drink is thrown that the Dre character retaliates with physical violence.
However, she added that "Dre stepped up and performed his social responsibility by finally taking accountability for his actions.
"[12] In The Defiant Ones (2017), Dre elaborated on the incident, admitting to excessive drinking at the time:[19][52] This was a very low point in my life.