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She’s brilliant. This is one of those classic cases when the person asking the probing questions in a documentary is even more fascinating than the subjects being interviewed.
When East Coast/West Coast hip hop and rap culture was in its infancy, it had an archivist. That shaman-like figure was Dream Hampton, a music journalist at The Source magazine. As the director/writer of this illuminating doc, she takes viewers down memory lane and ironically becomes the film’s star. Considering that the main superstar artists in the spotlight are Biggie Smalls, Puffy, Dr. Dre, Salt-N-Pepa and Snoop Dogg—back in their prime—that’s a major feat.
In the 1990s, Hampton quizzed the music stars who went on to become legends. She shot the interviews, and her personal archives have been pieced together into a visual memoir that shows what happened when, who said it and how the hip hop revolution ignited. The historic footage on view is before the invention of vivid cellphone video. So, what you’ll see and have to discern are very dark, grainy, poorly lit images… But the essence of what she catches is raw and pure and Hampton’s commentary is candid and truthful: “Boys I grew up with had mafia fantasies.” It all somehow works together in the most grassroots and underground way.
Hampton captures the bravura of the day. Young men and women who thought the world was theirs’s to take. The only thing more interesting then hearing the towering six-foot-three Notorious B.I.G. explain and clarify his lyrics to the shorter Hampton is hearing the women from that age stake their claim in hip hop culture and hold men accountable for what they say. The most intimate and dramatic part of the film is when the director herself confronts a rapper about his misogynistic lyrics (paraphrase): “Most of the women you know are good women, not bitches and hoes!”
What’s on view is handily edited (David Feinberg with an assist by Nayla Davis and Hypatia Porter). What’s missing are the major songs by the artists, from Ice-T to Q-Tip. Might be music rights issues. The inclusion of more appropriate music would have brought the soundtrack up a level. The visuals are what they are because Nicole Jefferson Asher, Emir Lewis and Hampton are the cinematographers of yesterday and today. You also can’t knock the charisma of the leads. It’s eerie hearing and seeing frank conversations with the legendary Notorious B.I.G., who must be smiling from his grave. It’s even more weird gazing at the young, ambitious Puff Daddy who is now the shamed P. Diddy.
Leave it to the bright woman in the shadows, with the microphone and tough questions, to give one of the most spontaneous and revealing accountings of the start of hip hop. The vehicle she’s using is a low budget looking documentary that may find a home on BET, Netflix or MTV. It will appeal to music buffs, hip hop culture folk or anyone who doesn’t mind that the young Turks in the film are now middle-aged adults. That’s if they’re still alive.
A sage has spoken. She’s Dream Hampton. She’s letting her doc do the talking, and it’s revealing hip hop’s secrets and moments that might never have seen the light of day. Dream is in the house.
Score: (★★★)
Visit NNPA News Wire Film Critic Dwight Brown at BlackPressUSA.com.
