Alicia Keys Presented With Dr. Dre Impact Award—But Not Everybody Was Celebrating

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Queen Latifah presented Alicia Keys with the Dr. Dre Impact Award at the 67th Grammy Awards on Sunday night (February 2)—but not everybody was celebrating. While Keys undoubtedly deserves the recognition, it’s the name of the award that was giving people pause.

As one person observed, “No one finds it weird that a female rapper who penned an anti-domestic violence anthem, Queen Latifah, is giving Alicia Keys an award named after a notorious domestic abuser?! The Grammys needs to rename the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award after someone respectable.”

“Who you calling a b####?” is right. Now, I’ll be the first to admit—I still bump Dr. Dre’s music; from The Chronic to songs like “Forgot About Dre” and “Still D.R.E.” But, as I get older, it gets harder to stomach the blatant misogyny and sexism running rampant in a lot of popular music.

One of my favorite albums, Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill, which I credit for introducing me to Hip-Hop in 1986, has a song called “Girls” that I skip. When I was a young kid, I didn’t understand just how offensive it was. These days, it’s like, “Pfft, do your own laundry, dick.”

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Back to the subject at hand. Dr. Dre has a history of disrespecting women that dates back to the 1980s, when he physically abused his former girlfriend Michel’le on a regular basis. In fact, during an interview with The Breakfast Club, Michel’le claimed Dr. Dre even shot a gun at her during an argument, missing her by inches.

She left the bullet in the door so he would see it and noted, “He never tried to shoot me anymore. Thank God. But the beatings were—it was a lot… His last wife, I just couldn’t do it anymore. It’s too much.” She eventually began to self medicate with prescription pills and alcohol. She ultimately left Dre after she discovered he was engaged to another woman.

Following the 2015 release of the film Straight Outta Compton, Dre issued a statement to The New York Times to address the omission of abuse from the film. In the op-ed, he apologized to the women he has hurt, but Michel’le didn’t buy it.

“He apologized to the public,” she said at the time. “I don’t think that was an apology to me, because if it was, he would’ve either called me without the public and said ‘Michel’le, I am so sorry for what I did to you 20-something years ago,’ that’s an apology.”

In 1991, Dr. Dre infamously assaulted former Pump It Up! host Dee Barnes during an industry party. The incident, which transpired after she aired an interview with Ice Cube discussing his fallout with N.W.A, led to legal action, but it also seemed to put a target on Barnes’s back. Following the assault, she struggled to find work in the industry. In a 2019 interview, she told me she was homeless and, as a result, I helped her with a GoFundMe. The story went viral, with Variety, Essence, XXL and Rolling Stone among the many publications picking it up.

“I had never asked for public help before, but I then remembered a long time ago while I was going through the assault trial in 1991, people were sending me checks for my legal fees,” she told me at the time. “I never cashed any of them—not one—but knowing I had that support kept me strong enough to continue to face each court date.”

In 2017, HBO released a series called The Defiant Ones about Dr. Dre and Interscope Records co-founder Jimmy Iovine in which Dre, once again, talked about the abuse he inflicted on various women throughout his life.

“Any man that puts his hands on a female is a f###### idiot,” he says in the doc. “It’s a major blemish on who I am as a man.” (Barnes’ $22 million lawsuit against Dre was settled out of court in the ’90s.)

Needless to say, maybe Keys—who is supposed to represent a “strong, independent woman who don’t need no man” [look up that meme if you haven’t seen it; it’s hilarious]—should have thought twice when accepting the honor. While it’s entirely possible Dr. Dre has changed his ways, his contentious 2021 divorce from his wife of 25 years, Nicole Young, suggested otherwise. But, of course, that’s a case of he said-she said.

We might never know the truth—but shout out Alicia Keys nonetheless. With 18 Grammys and dozens of other awards, she’s gonna have trouble finding space on her mantle.