A surprisingly sincere Jamie Kennedy, meanwhile, plays recently deceased NWA manager Jerry Heller, who somehow comes off better than anyone else.
The performances of Rhyon Nicole Brown (as Michel’le) and R Marcos Taylor (reprising his Straight Outta Compton role as Suge Knight) are particularly strong. Suge promises her a fresh start, both personally and professionally, and they too have a child together, but eventually his violent tendencies sabotage everything.
Despite her early success she never reaches her singing potential, partly because she’s stuck raising Dre’s child in his absence. She endures Dre and Suge’s abuse for the promise of money, fame and – most importantly – love. Michel’le’s character, as a young girl, is taught by the women in her life that men beating women is normal, and should be tolerated. Other details – that NWA were marijuana fans, or that Suge Knight intimidated Tupac Shakur and bossed him around – are entirely false.īut the soul of the story rings true. It depicts the squeaky-voiced South Central native Michel’le being plucked from obscurity from a job folding clothes at the mall to sing with Dr Dre’s first group, but neglects a funny detail I uncovered – that her initial stage name was Baby, and she walked around with a pacifier around her neck. To be sure, Surviving Compton glosses over many details. A Ruthless rapper named Tairrie B also maintains that Dre beat her.) (Dre pled no contest to beating Barnes, and received probation, while Johnson was granted a restraining order against him. The film largely echoes Michel’le’s accounts to me, though she never went to police with her allegations – unlike other women including television host Dee Barnes and Lisa Johnson, the mother of three of Dre’s children who alleged he beat her many times, including while she was pregnant. I extensively interviewed Michel’le and other survivors of Dre’s alleged abuse for my new book Original Gangstas: the Untold Story of Dr Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap, and investigated their claims. The question many viewers will have after their viewing: is the film accurate? Michel’le’s next love interest – Suge Knight, by now Dre’s arch rival – doesn’t come off much better. He’s otherwise portrayed as a cheating, boozing manipulator who neglects her once he becomes famous. But Surviving Compton nonetheless contains numerous chilling sequences of Dre beating her, and even one where he shoots at her. Prior to its release, Dr Dre’s lawyers threatened legal action against the film-makers if the movie contained scenes of him assaulting her, which he denies. Though the production values don’t rival those of last year’s hit (the producers were unable to secure access to NWA’s music, for example), it fills in large gaps in the story. Surviving Compton seeks to set the record straight. It also failed to portray NWA producer Dr Dre’s repeated violence against women – violence that Michel’le, Dre’s former long-term girlfriend and mother of his son Marcel, alleges as well. But Straight Outta Compton didn’t show how Michel’le’s radio-friendly ballads and uptempo dance tracks helped pave the way for Ruthless’ mainstream credibility. It covers much of the same ground as the NWA film – the volatile late 80s and 90s, when NWA’s hardcore hip-hop swept the nation.
The late 80s R&B star is the subject of a new biopic, Surviving Compton: Dre, Suge & Me, which debuted over the weekend on Lifetime. But the film almost entirely neglected a lynchpin member of the crew: Michel’le. Last year’s blockbuster biopic Straight Outta Compton chronicled the rise of gangsta rap pioneers NWA and their label, Ruthless records.