I'm not all dolled up. We tried to keep it as real as we could. We're telling you something that happened. It's a part of history. I hope this movie [ 'Surviving Compton'] gives you a little bit of me and of my music and my heart.

The beatings, the beatings were so normal to me. The abuse was just routine. I didn't wake up the next day and say, 'Dre, why did you hit me?' We never talked about it the next day. Never.

When I met Dre, N.W.A. didn't exist, nor did Michel'le. And I think we had a chemistry. When started working on my stuff, we created something that was phenomenal.

Then instead of introducing Dre as the guy from N.W.A., Jerry Heller would say Dre was my producer! Dre would come to my interviews with me - he'd come to all these places that would never have had the guy from N.W.A. Wasn't it genius?

Well, right now, my music is - it's just happy. I'm not in a relationship, but I know who I am now. I have wisdom. I have the power of knowing who I am. That's huge.

I can't think of any time we had a discussion [with Dre] about the aftermath of what happened the night before. We just had too much going on.

Rap was forbidden with the people who were interviewing us and the shows that I was getting [booked on], and I had kind of crossed over. So Jerry [Heller, who managed N.W.A.] would tell me, 'Do not say you're a rapper, always say you're R&B.'