When Dr Dre broke a rap producer’s jaw: “I was out of control”
Dr Dre was one of the preeminent musical figures of the 1990s, known for his own albums and those of his protégés like Snoop Dogg and Eminem. But even as he was at the height of his musical career, his personal life was often turbulent and disturbing.
Dre has a history of violence, and it got him into a lot of trouble throughout the ’90s. He was the subject of several court cases, and he spent time in jail, too. Some of these incidents, which occurred while he was becoming one of the biggest hip-hop artists of all time, were really problematic.
In early 1991, Dre was accused of physically assaulting a female talk show host at a club by slamming her onto a wall. A lawsuit was filed against Dre, who pled no contest and settled out of court. But this did not mark the only time that he has been accused of violence against women, with several accusations of domestic abuse arising over the years, too.
Years later, Dre publicly addressed his history of abusive behaviour towards women. “I apologise to the women I’ve hurt,” he said in 2015. “I deeply regret what I did and know that it has forever impacted all of our lives.”
Dre’s violent streak was not always directed at women. In 1992, he struck a police officer in a brawl in New Orleans, and he is also said to have broken the jaw of a fellow music producer that very same year. This ultimately led him to spend a stint in jail.
Speaking to the LA Times in 1999 about this violent period in his life, Dre said, “I was out of control. I was wildin’ out, partying, women… I think the business and all the fame and fortune just sucked me in, and I had to step back and see I was ruining everything that I had worked so hard at building.”
Dre claimed that he learned to deal with his fame a little better after speaking with figures who had gone through it before him. “One thing I’ve learned, from experience and from talking to people like Quincy Jones who have been in the business a long time,” he said, “is that once you get successful, everyone wants to be your friend. But a lot of those people don’t have your best interests in mind.”
As he tells it, Dre eventually had to look around him to take note of who was a positive part of his life. “I finally had to sit down at one point a few years ago and try to picture myself ten years from now and imagine which people I wanted around me, which people were really a positive force in my life,” he said. “That list turned out to be very small. But the list of people around me at the time could have filled the Forum.”
Dre has spoken about his violent past a lot over the years, and he has expressed regret for it. But, all the same, it is an uncomfortable part of the man’s history, and it does make him a problematic figure one way or another.