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Something ‘dark and wonderful’ about Dr Dre
The director of The Defiant Ones, the documentary on rap icon Dr. Dre and his business partner Jimmy Iovine, has said that there was something “dark and wonderful” about the artist.
In an interview with The Telegraph, director Allen Hughes, who has known his documentary subjects for a long time, said, “No matter how close you are to Dre, he slips through your fingers. He’s gregarious and fun-loving but there’s this quiet power, something deep and dark and wonderful, too. “You can’t quite put your finger on it. No matter how close I get to him, he’s still elusive. I like that mystique. I spent more time with Dre than Jimmy. Jimmy’s the narrator and Dre’s the subject.”
In the era of #metoo, the subject of Dr. Dre’s assault of music journalist Dee Barnes in 1991 had to be tackled.
Hughes, describing himself as a feminist, said, “We agreed that Dre would speak about Dee Barnes before we started filming. I was raised by an ultra-activist feminist woman and I was watching what was happening with the culture changing — this was before Me Too, Time’s Up, Trump; I was feeling something in the culture — so I said, ‘Yo, this apology isn’t enough.’
“I gotta go get [Barnes], introduce her to the narrative before this s*** happens because she was vital and exuberant and celebrated the culture. You want people to connect to the characters, then it makes the incident that much more devastating.”