dream hampton on Capturing the Early Days of Hip-Hop

It Was All a Dream, dream hampton’s documentary about the dawn of the golden age of hip-hop, brings the filmmaker’s personal archive to life. In 1993, hampton—who stylizes her name fully in lowercase as an homage to bell hooks—was studying film at New York University and taking a documentary class when she returned with a camera to the magazine The Source, where she had previously worked as a music journalist. From staff meetings to studio visits to hangouts with friends, hampton captured free-flowing conversations and off-the-cuff remarks from hip-hop’s burgeoning stars, including Christopher Wallace, better known as the Notorious B.I.G., who told her, “Just film me, ma!”

hampton’s unfettered access is at the heart of the film, which recently premiered at the Tribeca Festival, offering viewers a firsthand account of what the genre looked like long before milestone anniversaries (like last year’s 50th) and social media. “We didn’t have camera phones, so people were less exposed. They were less used to posing,” hampton told Vanity Fair.

Featuring appearances by Ice-T, Mobb Deep, Guru, and Nikki D, It Was All a Dream gives audiences an intimate look at artists on the cusp of international stardom. “If you can ever get people into a space where they kind of forget that the camera’s on, where they’re really being themselves, then I think you’ve hit that sweet spot,” hampton said.

hampton recently spoke with Vanity Fair about the process behind turning her own footage, which she describes as “an era in amber,” into a documentary film.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Vanity Fair: The film begins with your narration—“Let me tell you something about hip-hop, myth, and lure. About kamikaze capitalists who just happened to be teenagers.” That’s so beautiful.

dream hampton: That is from a Jay-Z piece that I did for Vibe. The actual line was, “Let me tell you something about drug dealers,” and I changed that to “hip-hop.” It was Jay-Z’s second album, and I did a piece, probably one of the best things I’ve ever written, for Vibe magazine, called “The Life.”

I kept getting feedback from my first round that folks needed more of me in it—like, that wasn’t the vision that I had. I thought it would be largely vérité; I didn’t wanna walk and talk. I didn’t want to overexplain Black people for non-Black audiences, or even explain hip-hop for non-hip-hop audiences. We were trying to figure out a way to do a better [voice-over]. My editor, David Feinberg, who wasn’t familiar with me from back then or as a writer, went to dreamhampton.com and read my work, and it was him and my other producer, Sallomé [Hralima]—they were the ones who were like, “Let’s incorporate your writing.” That wasn’t even my idea. The writing existed, and it was amazing how it overlays.

What was the process behind gathering all of the footage and piecing a story together?

It was all in two boxes. Back in ’93, I was an NYU film student. So this entire time that I had a writing career, kind of, I would say that I spent way more time organizing, like as a grassroots organizer in the ’90s, than I did as a writer. I never wrote, like, that much, but I was always a filmmaker. This is kind of evidence of that.

I had this footage from this class that I did on documentary filmmaking, and it was all in a box. I decided back then—I abandoned the project, for all the reasons. I grew up and hip-hop didn’t, and that happened early on. Definitely by the time Biggie gets killed, 1997, I’m in my late 20s; I’m a mom; I don’t even listen to The Score [Fugees’ 1996 album]. That’s how much I’m not into hip-hop. It had all just been sitting in these two boxes. Of course I knew I had the Biggie footage; I’ve licensed some of that before. But I forgot that I shot Guru; I knew I had Snoop—I totally remembered that. But there were so many things I forgot I had.

The film focuses on what some might describe as the golden era of hip-hop. Was there a particular reason for that?

It’s just when I was shooting. I had that class in 1993.

The first film I did out of film school was scripted. I do a short starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and Ishmael Butler; it’s called I Am Ali. It went to Sundance. It was a scripted piece about mental health and someone thinking they’re Muhammad Ali. Like, even my career as a documentary filmmaker is a little bit accidental; it really comes from my activism. But back then I had a documentary class, and I thought that I would submit a piece about The Source magazine because I had worked there for 18 months when I was 19. I wasn’t there in ’93. I hadn’t worked there for years, but I thought I would do this piece, and they kept kicking me out of the room whenever stuff got good. And I was like, This isn’t how a documentary works. And Biggie, who lived around the corner from me and was my friend, was like, “Yo, just film me, ma!” And so I started filming Biggie.

I would say it is the dawn of the golden era, because it’s before Biggie releases his first album and a little bit after. And I think you can argue for another golden era. I’m old enough to say, well, the mid-’80s were kind of a golden era—Public Enemy, Rakim, [Kool] G Rap, Salt-N-Pepa, MC Lyte. To me that is my actual golden era. But this is the dawn of what’s about to be a global takeover. And none of us were ready for that—like, none of us were ready for how big hip-hop got, the commercialism, the kind of Motown-ification of it, like that it would be everywhere.

What do you hope viewers will take away after watching your film?

This is very much a vérité, which means that you’re supposed to just be along for this kind of ride, that it sometimes feels intimate and sometimes feels awkward. There are times where I’m embarrassed by 23-year-old or 24-year-old me, and there are times when I’m really proud of that girl for talking back. And sometimes I’m like, Are you fucking flirting right now? Why are you giggling? What’s wrong with you? And there are other times where I’m like, Oh my God, I’m so glad you stayed in that moment and asked a question, or even kept the camera rolling. And so I just included it all, you know, warts and all. It’s just meant to be a share. I don’t need you to take away anything from it. If you’re interested in filmmaking, what it means to make a documentary, what it means to do something besides talking heads, then this might be a film you want to look at. If you’re interested in any of these people, these artists—and not just these artists, but if you’re interested in what it looks like when an artist is on the precipice of a particular kind of fame and success, or even a particular fate, then this is what it looks like.

If I wanted to say anything with the film, it would be just this tiny note, which is that we were talking back to these men in real time—at least I was. The misogyny and sexism wasn’t something that, 30 years later, we were like, “Oh my God, that was so fucked up.” We were talking back, the women in the generation. And it’s not just the journalists—that’s what Roxanne Shante is doing as, like, a 13-year-old; she’s talking back to men. We can never talk about misogyny, not just in hip-hop but in our culture, as being unchecked. No, it wasn’t unchecked. We talk back in real time. You’ve seen the film, you know it’s not just about that. There are moments like that, but it’s not some thesis of myself.

There’s one voice-over where you say, “I learned to be a fan and a critic.” Can you please tell me how you were able to do that?

Criticism gets stripped down basically to the emotion that someone feels when they’re on the receiving end of criticism. True arts criticism isn’t even meant to perfect; it’s meant to interrogate, to deepen, to contextualize, to historicize. A true arts criticism should be an engagement at the highest level. No matter what it is—if you’re engaging reality TV, anyone can do a recap. I watch HGTV all the time, and it occurred to me that there is, like, this evangelical thread going through all of the programing on HGTV, or like 90% of it. Once in a while there’s a queer host or a queer couple, but for the most part it’s these Christian, possibly right-wing, who have at least four kids. So then that made me say, I’ve been passively watching this programming on HGTV because it’s, like, what I would like to do to make my brain rest. But even it needs to be engaged on a critical level. So that’s what criticism is to me. It’s about interrogation; it’s about contextualization; it’s about historicization; it’s about complicating a thing. So I think that criticism is deeply important. When it comes to art, I’m engaging in it because I love it. Even if I don’t love the particular artist.

What would you say to the version of yourself who is that young film student recording all the footage for It Was All a Dream today?

I would say something that Julie Dash said to me back then—not to be name-dropping, but, hello?

Hello! We love!

Arthur Jafa and I used to be really good friends, and I had already seen Daughters of the Dust. When the premiere happened, I went outside and Julie was out in the hallway, kind of pacing. I have that too; I don’t like to watch my films with an audience. But anyway, she was in the hallway, and I was like, “Julie, I’m dream. I’m AJ’s friend and yada yada,” and introduced myself and told her, “I feel like I’m fucking up.” I said, “I’m a film student, but I somehow fell into this career of writing,” and she said, “It’s so important to have something else because it’s so hard to set up films. It’s so important that you have something else that you can do also.” And I remember I was looking at [writing] as a distraction, and I was like, Oh my God, this magazine journalism that I’m doing, I haven’t even finished NYU. Like, I never finished at NYU.

And so I would just say, in this moment, it would be the same advice I would give anyone who was in the media culture. You have to also be doing something else, sadly. So like the multihyphenate that I was embodying back then, it felt like a lack of discipline, but it really was the future and the way forward.