Dr. Dre’s Mother to Publish Memoirs

Dr. Dre’s mother, Verna Griffin, is set to publish her memoirs in a new book titled Long Road Outta Compton: Dr. Dre’s Mom on Family, Fame and Terrible Tragedy. Scheduled for release this June, the book will offer readers insight into Griffin’s personal struggles as a single mother in South Central Los Angeles. Griffin, who lost two of her five children in their infancy, and another to gang violence, often worried that she would also lose Dre to the streets. When the young producer teamed up with fellow N.W.A founder Eazy-E, she was less than thrilled with the often violent and explicit lyrical content that the group came to be known for pioneering. But she eventually came to accept the raunchy music for what it was. “I could remember my boys standing outside having a friendly conversation when, all of a sudden, I’d…see the police with all of them spread-eagle up against the police car,” she writes in an excerpt provided to Rush & Molloy of the New York Daily News. “This harassment was for no obvious reason except they saw black boys grouped together, and presumed to be up to no good. It was then I realized that the lyrics were just stories about things that were actually happening.” Long Road Outta Compton will be Griffin’s second published work. In 2005 she released Privileged to Live: A Mother’s Story of Survival.