podcast
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Every Monday on The Assignment, host Audie Cornish explores the animating forces of American politics. It’s not about the horserace, it’s about the larger cultural ideas driving the American electorate. Audie draws on the deep well of CNN reporters, editors, and contributors to examine topics like the nuances of building electoral coalitions, and the role the media plays in modern elections. Every Thursday, Audie pulls listeners out of their digital echo chambers to hear from the people whose lives intersect with the news cycle, as well as deep conversations with people driving the headlines. From astrology’s modern renaissance to the free speech wars on campus, no topic is off the table.
Documenting the Golden Age of Hip-Hop
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Jun 13, 2024
Filmmaker and journalist dream hampton’s new documentary, “It Was All a Dream,” chronicles the “the golden age of Hip-Hop" in the early 1990’s. She talks with Audie about the film, which is made up of footage she shot in the 90’s that’s been in storage for 30 years: hanging out with Biggie Smalls in the studio, Lil’ Kim in the neighborhood, and interviews with a before-he-was famous Snoop Dog. Through her writing at publications like The Source, Vibe, Essence, and The Village Voice, dream became a critical activist voice — committed to the music and to the artists that she was constantly demanding more of.
Learn more about “It Was All a Dream” and watch the trailer.
Episode Transcript
Audie Cornish
00:00:00
These days. dream hampton doesn't consider herself a listener of hip hop. She says she tapped out.
dream hampton
00:00:06
I did tap out again. But by tapping out, I mean I've never listened to Kanye West album. I've never listened to a Drake album. I've never listened to a Kendrick album. And so.
Audie Cornish
00:00:14
So I won't be asking you about the beef, apparently.
dream hampton
00:00:17
I'm like, one of them lives in Toronto and the other one lives in LA, and something's happening. Seriously.
Audie Cornish
00:00:23
That's okay. She's done her time.
"It Was All a Dream" trailer clip
00:00:26
*Audio of Biggie preforming "Juicy" to a crowd*
Audie Cornish
00:00:31
Now, this is footage of the late Christopher Wallace, better known as Biggie Smalls. And it's not footage from the audience. It's footage from the stage. Because dream hampton was there. She started out a photo editor at the Source magazine when she was a 19 year old film student at NYU. But over the next few years, she would document the rise of a generation of artists whose names came to represent the genre's golden age. In the early 1990s.
dream hampton
00:00:59
It's before they become personas and sometimes before they become caricatures, it's before the fatal standoff that will change hip hop forever between Tupac and Biggie. And it's while we're all trying to figure ourselves out.
Audie Cornish
00:01:12
'Dream became a filmmaker, making docs about trans victims of violence, about climate change, and her best known work, surviving R. Kelly. That documentary got prosecutors to reinvestigate the star and the public to believe his victims. For the last 30 years, she's had boxes of tapes in storage. Footage captured of herself hanging out with Biggie Smalls in the studio, lil Kim in the neighborhood, interviews with Snoop Dogg with Ice-T threatening rivals. She was always there asking questions.
dream hampton
00:01:53
The title of the film "It Was All a Dream" it's not about my name. It's about like the dreams that you have when you're young, about who you're going to be, what you're going to do.
Audie Cornish
00:02:03
Through her writing at The Source, Vibe, Essence, The Village Voice. She became a critical activist voice, committed to the music and to the artists that she was constantly demanding more of. She was wrestling with something then that some of us are wrestling with today. How do you separate the art from the artist, particularly the artists who let us down, who were found to be cruel or criminal? I'm Audie Cornish, and this is The Assignment.
Audie Cornish
00:02:36
dream hampton could have been a liminal figure in hip hop, more or less silently witnessing the breakthrough moment when West Coast hip hop dominated the pop charts and New York rappers rose to meet that challenge. Measure for measure. But she doesn't really do silent. One of her first articles in The Source was an editorial following the reporting that Dr. Dre had physically assaulted rapper and TV personality Dee Barnes. This was in 1991. Barnes filed a civil suit against Dre, which was settled out of court. Now, Doctor Dre eventually apologized for the incident in 2017 during an interview for an HBO documentary. But with dream, hampton wanted, even during her earliest days at The Source, what she still wants is for people to speak up and out and apologize in the moment.
dream hampton
00:03:27
I was the photo editor until Dr. Dre beat up De Barnes at a party in Los Angeles, and I was the only woman in the office. We all knew about it. We all learned about it, and they all thought, oh, this is messed up. And I was like, okay, well, what are we going to do?
Audie Cornish
00:03:41
What do you mean? Meaning you guys are all sitting around a conference room table, meaning it becomes post party gossip, kind of. How did it...? Again, you're saying you're the only woman there? Sort of. What was that actually like? You know, being so young and hearing people talk about it?
dream hampton
00:03:56
'It's pre-internet and so we were getting kind of stories that this party in Los Angeles had, this awful thing had happened. But then it was confirmed, I don't know what the time was, but it wasn't like a couple of hours like it is now or minutes. Right? Maybe it was a week later. Dee barnes was in Manhattan at Russell Simmons house, and some guys from the office had gone by. I didn't go by. They saw her there. They were like, yo, she really does have a black eye and all these bruises. I guess it happened.
Audie Cornish
00:04:27
And she's a TV personality at the time. Like, I mean, getting injured by a star, like, that's a wild thing.
dream hampton
00:04:35
In front of a ton of witnesses. Yeah. Who didn't intervene, who didn't try to stop it. And, you know, and so I just I was outraged and I was like, what are we going to do about it? And so John Shecter, to his credit editor in chief, said, I'll give you my editorial page. And so I wrote my first kind of, you know, piece.
Audie Cornish
00:04:55
How old were you?
dream hampton
00:04:56
I guess I'm 20 at the time.
Audie Cornish
00:04:58
So you're like full of NYU righteousness.
dream hampton
00:05:00
I have been reading bell hooks. I was asked, yes, baby feminists 101, like, probably just finished reading "Ain't I a Woman?" by bell hooks. I thought that it should be a call to some kind of like, as if what we needed to do was reset in our like, righteousness. That we all were on the same mission around like revolutionary, like freedom. And for me, revolutionary freedom doesn't happen within patriarchy. Like without getting rid of this idea that there's a hierarchy, a gender hierarchy.
Audie Cornish
00:05:31
Yeah. It's like you're bringing the 80s, or late 80s kind of public enemy. I don't know that era of hip hop vibe into the 90s right at the moment when it's changing of the guard, a very profound shift.
dream hampton
00:05:44
Absolutely.
Audie Cornish
00:05:46
What was the reaction at the office?
dream hampton
00:05:48
They published it. I mean, first of all, it was not that sophisticated. Everything I just said, wasn't it? It was just shrill. And like, you're a bitch Dr. Dre.
Audie Cornish
00:05:55
That's that's I mean, like, we're guys at the office, like, they really nailed it! Or?
dream hampton
00:05:59
I mean, maybe there was a thought that this was going to reflect on the whole magazine when it's on the editorial page, it's kind of from the pages of the Wall Street Journal, from the pages of the source. And there may have been blowback, I can't remember.
Audie Cornish
00:06:10
But it's interesting that you're calling it shrill because we're now at the point kind of post MeToo movement where people that age are routinely feeling like they can call out, as they say, inappropriate behavior or behavior that people just kind of ignore, like, and they do it in that tone.
dream hampton
00:06:30
So there are times there are all kinds of situations that are just flooding to my mind that have nothing to do with celebrity. When I think about celebrity, whether it's, you know, I can think of a places I failed to. Pearl Cleage from Detroit wrote an amazing book, "Mad at Miles" after Quincy Troupe published Miles Davis's autobiography, which included graphic, vivid, unrepentant stories of him abusing people like Cicely Tyson, like his wife Betty Davis, of him just being abusive with impunity, right, and proclaimed call for boycott. It was a but a small book. It was a kind of a manifesto. It was called mad at Miles, and she wanted us to stop listening to Miles Davis, not unlike, you know, mute R. Kelly. Right?
Audie Cornish
00:07:12
Right. Lots of people have talked about whether or not as a question, whether or not they should be listening to R. Kelly anymore.
dream hampton
00:07:18
And I failed to, boycott Miles Davis. I tried, you know, and I failed. So I can think of all, you know, if there's some litmus test. I think that we're all struggling.
Audie Cornish
00:07:27
When I...What is it like for you to be watching the footage of you learning to do the work you do now, like learning the work of inquiry?
dream hampton
00:07:39
Yeah, I, you know, and also to be in community, you know, to be doing the work of inquiry while in community, you know, which, of course, Zora Neale Hurston did, which of course, has been done before. Right? So that there's not this I'm the journalist and you're the subject, and I'm going to ask you a series of questions, and hopefully you have some answers that comport to like the, the, the word count or the timeframe that I have to do this, right?
Audie Cornish
00:08:07
Which is what I'm doing right now. So I appreciate you outlining that for the audience.
dream hampton
00:08:10
Which is fine, right? Like it...
Audie Cornish
00:08:14
But it's a different thing because I was watching these images of you, relatively, like you're as young as these guys, right, who are doing the music and you are hanging out with them.
dream hampton
00:08:26
Right? They're my neighbors and sometimes my friends. I mean, not all of them were my friends. I was meeting Snoop for the first time. He was so shy he couldn't even, like, meet the...he couldn't meet me in the eye, let alone the camera. If I wasn't his first interview on camera, I was his second. Like he had done a feature or two. The best ones on The Chronic on Doctor Trey's album The Chronic, which kind of changed everything in hip hop, and he was getting ready to do Doggy style. There was no guarantee, just like there wasn't for biggie when he began his career, that they were going to be these mega superstars. I had people in my documentary who didn't blow up, so there was no guarantee that either of them were going to be as big as they were.
Audie Cornish
00:09:05
With Snoop there are these images of him, as you said, you're asking him questions and he is quite shy like you. You think of him when you look at that as Calvin, right? Like not the snoop who's like ironically smoking with Martha Stewart or whatever it is now. When you would bring your camera with you on these trips, I don't think people understand how different it was then.
dream hampton
00:09:31
Yes.
Audie Cornish
00:09:31
Like where you didn't have a smartphone camera in your pocket all the time, and you didn't just film every single thing that crossed your path. Like, walking around with a camera and taking all these home videos. There was always like someone in the group who did that. Was that you?
dream hampton
00:09:44
Was there always someone in the group?
Audie Cornish
00:09:45
You know what I mean? There's always just like one person who had a camera and, you'd be like...
dream hampton
00:09:50
Walking around with a 12 pound video camera was different that you checked out at NYU.
Audie Cornish
00:09:54
So then why? So you at the time thought, I'm making this documentary, I'm going to nail my class. And what? Who did you choose? Like, help me understand the collecting of the footage.
dream hampton
00:10:04
It it evolved. I mean, by the time we. It's so funny, that camera that we shot Snoop with was a camera that had been looted during the riots and used to shoot.
Audie Cornish
00:10:17
The L.A. Riots?
dream hampton
00:10:18
The L.A. riots.
Audie Cornish
00:10:19
Got it.
dream hampton
00:10:20
Right. I borrowed it from my friend who made a documentary about the about the rebellion. And. And because it had been looted and used to film during the rebellion, it had scratches in the lens. So when I look at the footage of Snoop, and I see this effect we put on that footage, it's because we were trying to correct for the scratches on this lens.
Audie Cornish
00:10:41
Yeah. So don't try and Instagram filter that, folks. You're not going to get you're not going to get the dream filter.
dream hampton
00:10:47
So that's where that camera came from. At some point I bought a hi8. I was I mean it was so funny getting... Looking at the formats of this for anyone who knows about formats had a three quarter inch, I had beta, I had hi8, I have like little, you know, micro cassette recordings too.
Audie Cornish
00:11:01
So you're filming everything you can whenever you can.
dream hampton
00:11:04
I am. Yeah. I thought it was important. I just thought, that something was happening and that maybe we should document it. And I had no idea what that was going to be. And to come back 30 years and, like, look at that footage and see that it's this window into this pre golden era. The dawn of the golden era of hip hop is before these people become brands, before they become personas, and sometimes before they become caricatures. It's before the fatal standoff that will change hip hop forever between Tupac and Biggie. And it's while we're all trying to figure ourselves out, we're trying to figure out who we want to be, what our dreams are. The title of the film isn't about the Juicy biggie song, which begins with It Was All a dream. It's not about my name. It's about like the dreams that you have when you're young, about who you're going to be, what you're going to do.
Audie Cornish
00:11:56
One interview that does that really well. I don't know if you can describe it here is you spent some time with Method Man and you guys are just like in a car sitting, hanging out. The image point of view is like the camera is aimed at him. We can hear your voice. Can you describe what's happening there?
dream hampton
00:12:11
Yeah, I'm shooting him. We were going to do. I'm just remembering. So, Method Man, I had done a review and maybe this is too long of an answer, but I done a review in the Source magazine of leaders of The New School, and I compared Busta and Method Man's voice and talked about them being similar. And for some reason that set Method Man off. And he was telling people when he saw me, he was going to smack me.
Audie Cornish
00:12:34
Right. Which just for a little context, were people at the time, Busta Rhymes was considered sort of like the court jester of hip hop. He had this, like, very loud rhythmic style and, his backgrounds Jamaican. I think I've interviewed him before and is was funny.
dream hampton
00:12:51
Yeah.
Audie Cornish
00:12:52
And Method Man's vibe was not necessarily fun guy.
dream hampton
00:12:54
I was talking about the quality their voices.
Audie Cornish
00:12:58
He's trying to be hard.
dream hampton
00:13:00
It's like saying that Erika Badu and billie Holiday have a similar timbre. You know what I mean?
Audie Cornish
00:13:04
Yes, but he didn't take it that way.
dream hampton
00:13:05
'He didn't take it that way. I wrote about this for Essence, about being threatened, because at the time they, you know, someone from Wu-Tang actually did attack a journalist Cheo Coker. Anyway, so I had come to the... we met at the Staten Island Ferry, and I was going to interview them. I had my camera person there. I said, yo, before we do this interview, we should talk about the fact that you said, you want to smack me, like, let's, you know, let's talk in your car.
Audie Cornish
00:13:25
And what was it that you hoped would happen in that interaction?
dream hampton
00:13:29
I wanted to know why he was going around telling he would smack... he was going to smack me in. Like, here I am like, what's up?
Audie Cornish
00:13:35
And he answers?
dream hampton
00:13:37
He was like, oh no, you don't understand. It was a lot happening in the so, you know, it was a conversation. Like a lot of this stuff I'm not going to say is posturing, but so much of...when I ever have to talk to young people at, I'm terrible at talking about talking to young people. And I think about our community, which for me is black working class culture. I think about like, what's the one piece of advice I can give you? Besides, when you're old enough, choose an airline and stick with it. The other piiece of the other piece of advice that I can give you is to like, not like take everything as disrespect, right? I mean, literally, we have lost lives from this idea that we are being disrespected. I remember seeing Prince in an interview say, you can't disrespect me. So much of the violence that happens in the hood, in our culture that's happening right now, with these younger rappers making videos about their opps and showing up at the opps funeral and, you know, all of these wild things that are happening right now. It's all about like this culture of disrespect. And I get why...
Audie Cornish
00:14:34
Disrespect, but also what you're pointing out and what was evident in that moment posturing.
dream hampton
00:14:38
Posturing. Yeah, yeah.
Audie Cornish
00:14:40
Especially again, we're heading into the 90s and the visual image of what a hip hop star is supposed to be is turning, let me see one of the headlines that was my favorite from the L.A. times, "How rap music got its bad rap". And it's a picture of Snoop in court for his murder trial.
dream hampton
00:15:01
Right.
00:15:01
But it's the idea that this isn't posturing that the people you're seeing are rapping lyrically, and everything they're doing is real stories from their lives.
dream hampton
00:15:14
And I would say that...
Audie Cornish
00:15:15
That's an important part of marketing them.
dream hampton
00:15:17
'But and by the way, is not untrue. Like someone from Wu-Tang did punch a journalist, a fellow journalist in the face. Dee Burns, a fellow journalist, had been attacked. I don't know what made me have the gumption to be like before we do, to first of all ask him to do an interview. Like I had a documentary. So I guess I had that journalist thing where I'm going to give the story.
Audie Cornish
00:15:36
I mean, this is your villain origin story.
dream hampton
00:15:38
Isn't that weird?
Audie Cornish
00:15:39
The whole rest of your career is you poking the bear.
dream hampton
00:15:41
What is that?
Audie Cornish
00:15:43
I'm asking you?
dream hampton
00:15:44
I don't know! I don't know. I'm from Detroit.
Audie Cornish
00:15:47
Stop blaming Detroit. No, no, no, the people of Detroit have other, other things going on. The will not be blamed.
dream hampton
00:15:52
From the east side of Detroit. No I don't...
Audie Cornish
00:16:04
I'm here with journalist and filmmaker dream hampton. More in a moment.
Audie Cornish
00:16:12
This is The assignment. I'm Audie Cornish, talking today with journalist and filmmaker dream hampton. So I'm watching these images of you in this documentary, having the dialog, confronting people, being in conversation. But I don't actually even see the, necessarily other female artists in the same position. Right? Like there was something about the space that you occupied that allowed you to keep pushing in this way. And it's sometimes. Hip hop has has grown up right? When people talk about it being in middle age, turning 50.
dream hampton
00:16:49
Do you think that it has? And that's why I tapped out. I feel like I've grown up but hip hop, hasn't.
Audie Cornish
00:16:55
Well, they became what you said they would.
dream hampton
00:16:56
They became middle aged. I don't know that that means that they grew up.
dream hampton
00:17:01
You know? So, I mean, you know, and that's a choice. It's a choice to grow up is a choice, a mature. It's a choice to, like, learn from your mistakes. It's a choice to make new decisions, you know? And again, this isn't about rappers. This is all of us. Like facing being on this planet and trying to, like, live the best life we can. Which means making different decisions when things aren't working, not just for ourselves, but the people that we love or the people that we're just encountering. You know?
Audie Cornish
00:17:33
Like you keep saying you tapped out.
dream hampton
00:17:35
I did tap out and but by tapping out, I mean, I've never listen to Kanye West album. I've never listened to a Drake album, I've never listened to a Kendrick album. And so I.
Audie Cornish
00:17:43
So I won't be asking you about the beef. Apparently.
dream hampton
00:17:44
Exactly. I'm like, one of them lives in Toronto and the other one lives in LA, and something's happened. Seriously.
Audie Cornish
00:17:52
That's you are being the worst hip hop head from the 90s.
dream hampton
00:17:57
Cause I'm from the 90s!
Audie Cornish
00:17:58
Like back in the day when Rakim did this. This is how jazz people talk!
dream hampton
00:18:02
You know? And yeah. And until Vijay Iyer, I don't know that there was a reason to, like, engage. You know, you have your moments. Okay. Roy Hargrove okay. Jason Moran, but I, you know, I know that it peaked in terms of what I love around jazz. While I love the plugged in period with Miles.
Audie Cornish
00:18:19
Okay,. Do not get me in trouble with the jazz community now, okay? Because they also have podcasts. I don't need this. I don't need the dream hampton smoke right now
dream hampton
00:18:30
I'm not, you know, and so in that sense, there are young journalist, there are young women who are in this space doing this work. I'm not the only one.
Audie Cornish
00:18:36
No, no, you're not the only one. But at that time in these videos...
dream hampton
00:18:40
Even then, I wasn't the only one. I was just the one with the camera. Like Kierna Mayo was doing this. Joan Morgan was... Joan Morgan went out to Indiana and reported live from the Mike Tyson trial. You know, she wrote an incredibly epic piece for The Village Voice about, Ice Cube so that we were all, you know, playing a particular role. I can be maybe the loudest sometimes.
Audie Cornish
00:19:02
You? What?
dream hampton
00:19:06
But tapping out...
Audie Cornish
00:19:07
Listen, as a fellow loud person, I'm here for it. I'm here for it.
dream hampton
00:19:11
But you're not always loud, right? And so.
Audie Cornish
00:19:13
I am actually. I mean, it's a problem.
dream hampton
00:19:16
'Tapping out also means, like, self-care. You know, after surviving R. Kelly, I did...you know this I did a quiet little ten minute piece for the New York Times called Fresh Water. That was literally about the Great Lakes, you know.
Audie Cornish
00:19:28
And Climate change.
dream hampton
00:19:28
And climate change. Right?
Audie Cornish
00:19:29
But you're still living with the effects of working on the R. Kelly documentary.
dream hampton
00:19:33
I am and but the effects, you know, and I want to be positive I'm certainly the half glass is half empty girl. So and I know that pessimism is not revolutionary, but we're in a sissisyphean moment. Like the blowback, to me too, is outsize for many wins that we had. And after we call you out, what then? You don't leave the community. You're still there. You know you're still here. I actually every, and I and this is fancy, but I go to the south of France often when I go to Antibe, I go to the Picasso Museum. I know he not only rearrange these women on portrait in portrait, but he did it in their lives. He dismantled people's lives. He was abusive. And I still go to see his work. So I it's what I was saying about having failed to, boycott Miles Davis. I fell in love and I really like to have sex to Miles Davis records. You know?
Audie Cornish
00:20:23
This went to such an unexpected place, but let's stay there.
dream hampton
00:20:28
Okay.
Audie Cornish
00:20:30
Because it's getting at something quite serious. A question that's been asked a bunch of times, which is how do we reconcile the art with the artist?
dream hampton
00:20:39
It is. It's an age old question, and I am not that like I am not some champion of like, cut them all off. I have not been able to do that.
Audie Cornish
00:20:47
So how do you reckon with it? Do you see that as a do you see it as some kind of failing that you aren't able to disconnect from the artists or have you just figured out how to embrace all of that messiness?
dream hampton
00:21:01
We are all deeply human. You know, there's a part in my, documentary where biggie is having a conversation with Lil Kim. I don't have the audio on it because I was kind of standing at a distance, and he's kind of yelling at her. This is where at the club in Philly. They're about to go on stage and you know, he's mentoring her, but he's basically saying something about lipstick and you need to be camera ready. Don't you think that there could be photographers when you're going in and out of the venue? Like you can't just come into the venue and get ready? It's a conversation and she's ignoring him.
Audie Cornish
00:21:31
And she's physically small.
dream hampton
00:21:32
She's physically small.
Audie Cornish
00:21:35
Lil Kim is not a fun moniker at that time, she looks young, she feels young, and he is physically commanding.
dream hampton
00:21:40
And he's like, you know, he's leaned over a thing. She's sitting in a chair and he picks up the chair. Next time he slams it on the ground, like to get her attention because she's literally just ignoring him, like, I hear you, but I'm not listening to what she's saying. Like. And he like slams that and I'm like, wow. Like watching this. Of course I didn't think about that for 30 years. I'd forgotten it happened. But when I watch the tape roll tape, right? Roll it back. I see this interaction. That is a potential foreshadowing of the abuse that Kim claims she suffered with biggie. You know that he also got physically abusive with her, right? Did I know that part of biggie this is about, you know, this question of wholeness and compartmentalization? Can I listen to Miles? You know, in my most intimate moments when I want to relax, I listen to Miles all kinds of ways, right? And and still hold this autobiography that he wrote with Quincy Troupe where he was flagrant about the abuse.
Audie Cornish
00:22:32
So you're holding the camera literally on your friend...
dream hampton
00:22:35
And and my friend. I could do it with my family. I just happened to be with my friend. Right. And and he he picks his chair up and you know Lil Kim winces but later, you know, when after he passes and I don't know what what make him talk about that. And then of course Faith would too. and again I didn't witness it, but I believe them because I know that men can compartmentalize. I know that I'm the friend, and I'm a particular loudmouthed kind of friend who's confrontational. So maybe I don't get to see this behavior. Same as with Puff I never saw...I spent a little bit of time with Puff and Cassie. I haven't seen, you know, spent time with Puff in more than a decade. I spent a little bit of time with the two of them. I never saw him be abusive to her. Right? I didn't need to see the video to, and I put off watching the video because I knew it was going to make me angry. I knew it was going to make me sick, but I didn't need to see the video to believe Cassie.
Audie Cornish
00:23:24
When I first reached out to you about the documentary, I said, I think we might have to talk about this. That was before CNN released this video of this hotel surveillance footage, of him attacking Cassie, specifically an event that she had mentioned in her initial filing of her lawsuit. So since then, did you try and reach out to him? I know you're not friends with all of these people who you knew, but what's. Yeah, what has happened?
dream hampton
00:23:55
I've talked about it recently. I'm so loathe to talk about this because I actually want...what I would like is for one of these men, and it could have been Puff. Maybe is still can be. To claim in in the fullness like the harm that they've cause to take responsibility for that, and then to commit to actually not only in transforming themselves publicly, they could transform the culture. Instead of these denials and just deny, deny, deny. Right? Particularly when is that going to work for you? Not when there's like video evidence. You know, there was video evidence of R. Kelly who, by the way, we just couldn't get into trial, all of you know. So it's like and there were still denials, even with the video evidence with R. Kelly. You know, Puff tried to do something different. But, you know, according to community, he did it too late and it was too little. Right? And it's true there has to be a real commitment to owning in full not just what you got caught doing, but to own it. And that would be a true like that. That would be a culture changer.
Audie Cornish
00:25:07
But this is someone that you knew at some point. So and you said that you had spent time with him and Cassie. Was there anything about his personality in the past that you are thinking about now? Because like you're looking at old footage.
dream hampton
00:25:25
I've seen puff fight men often, you know, that's happened. I remember walking into a club with him and so we were headed to the VIP section. Someone threw something at us and all of a sudden he was like, hopped over the rope fighting people. He's a fighter. So. Yeah. Does he have a temper? Sure. But no, I didn't, you know, I, I didn't know...
Audie Cornish
00:25:46
This is not to put you on the spot. Part of it is because you were talking about looking at the footage and seeing yourself, like,giggling at some point, or...
dream hampton
00:25:53
Yeah, I'm angry at him. I'm angry that, like, I am out here doing what's basically a love letter to hip hop, you know, a love letter to that era of which he was a part of. And in this moment, because of what he's done, I have to now, these are the questions, right? So A. I'm angry at him for that. Deeply angry at him about that. B. Once someone gets called out... Again, they don't go anywhere like, you know, unless we're like, I just watched Shogun. Unless we're, like, hoping for, like, mass seppuku, you know what I'm saying? Like, what do we want?
Audie Cornish
00:26:27
But you're not known for the call out. You're known for the call in. And in this case, you actually did try and reach out to him. So this is...you did this with Too Short. You've done this with other artists where you really do just try and sit down with them, just like you did all those years ago. How did you try to reach out to him?
dream hampton
00:26:44
You know, I don't want to talk about it because it's an ongoing project and I don't want to...
Audie Cornish
00:26:48
Meaning you still want to try?
dream hampton
00:26:49
I don't know, you know, I don't know what can be was possible. I know he's not going anywhere. He's, you know, gone from the public in some ways. If we let him be, I don't know. I know that there like there's stories that are going to keep coming out. But at the same time, like, what can he do differently. And I don't know that he's the one to do it, but one of them has to. One of them is going to have one to...
Audie Cornish
00:27:13
These accused men.
dream hampton
00:27:15
Yeah. It's just not going to we're going to remain stuck in the same paradigm.
Audie Cornish
00:27:18
And why should they? Their takeaway is to say deny, deny. Their takeaway has been that if you raise enough doubts, there are plenty of people who will say, well, we don't really know if this woman...
dream hampton
00:27:30
That's that's, you know, we live in a litigious society. We live in a, a punishment based society. But I'm not a carceral feminist. Right. But I understand the impediments to like, a restorative and transformative justice model. If I get pulled over by the police and I say, oh, I'm sorry, officer, and he writes that down, I can't then go to court and fight that ticket, because that apology is an admission of guilt, right? That, therefore, is attached to some kind of punishment. And so that is just the justice system that we have right now. So people get into defense mode and then they try to game the system. I think about, you know, R. Kelly and his 2008 trial. It wasn't it was about keeping that victim close enough to him so that she wouldn't testify. It was about prolonging the trial long enough so that she would appear if she did get called to the stand and was compelled to testify, she would be 20. He literally... him and his attorney successfully delayed that trial by six years so that she was no longer 14 year old. The jury would be looking at a 20 year old. Right? And these are strategies. These are defense strategies that are caught up in the legal system that have nothing to do with real justice. They have nothing to do with the actual harm that you caused. And I'm talking about I guess I'm talking about soul work. And maybe that's not interesting.
Audie Cornish
00:28:53
It's not that it's not interesting. It's that not only have you seen this movie before, you've made this movie before, and I hear you trying to find a way to reconcile his story in real time.
dream hampton
00:29:09
You're talking about Puff's story? Well, his story isn't mine to reconcile, but I know that if it's going to be different, then it's going to be some off camera work first. You know?
Audie Cornish
00:29:21
There were so many golden age of hip hop essays and lists that came out, you know, in the last few years. What to you is its legacy at 50?
dream hampton
00:29:38
'You know. What I love. I always wanted when I was in a 20 year old in the 90s. I wished I had been around in the 70s and late 60s. I was like, that was the best music. There was a like possibility for a revolution, like, you know, all of my, like, black leftist politics are formed from that era. And some of those people were my mentors. Right? And so I think that we arrived at a time post-civil rights movement, post Black Power movement, where we are disruptors. We are like not concerned with what white people think about us. You know, my generation, we get rid of that politics of respectability. We let the N-word fly. We don't know what a belt is, you know? I mean, like...
Audie Cornish
00:30:32
Had to bring the belt into it.
dream hampton
00:30:32
So, like, it's this interesting period that could have been a moment to build on and we just didn't. Instead, we got subsumed. Consumed. We became what Tricia Rose in a debate that I was in with her, called the cultural arm of capitalism.
Audie Cornish
00:30:48
So the ideas that you had hoped for, that kind of, I don't know, disrupting and counter politics.
dream hampton
00:30:55
That was all the dream. It was all a dream. We just, you know middle aged people with mortgages.
Audie Cornish
00:31:17
Well, dream Hampton, thank you so much for spending time with me. I know this film is going to be exciting for people to see. I am still sort of like blown away, by all the footage, so I'm really glad. I'm glad it found its way out of your storage.
dream hampton
00:31:33
Me too. Thank you. And I can't wait for it to find its way into the world. And I'll update you when that happens.
Audie Cornish
00:31:39
dream hampton, her new documentary about the rise of the golden age of hip hop, is called "It Was All a Dream." It debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival and will be making the rounds on the festival circuit in the coming months. We're going to have a link to the trailer in our show notes.
Audie Cornish
00:32:02
The Assignment is a production of CNN audio. This episode was produced by Lori Galarreta. Our senior producer is Matt Martinez. Dan Dzula is our technical director, and Steve Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN audio. We also get support from Haley Thomas, Alex Mannaseri, Robert Mathers, John Dionora, Lenny Steinhardt, Jamus Anderus, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Katie Hinman. I'm Audie Cornish. Thank you for listening.