dream hampton’s It Was All a Dream Is the Right Rap Documentary for Right Now
Footage from the trailer for dream hampton’s It Was All a Dream. Graphic by Chris Panicker.
Pitchfork writer Alphonse Pierre’s rap column covers songs, mixtapes, albums, Instagram freestyles, memes, weird tweets, fashion trends—and anything else that catches his attention.
Last week, we got the trailer for Piece by Piece, a quasi-documentary that tells the story of Pharrell Williams’ life in the form of a… Lego movie. That’s right. The Lego Group is following The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part with a cutesy, skin-crawling piece of hagiography. For one, it’s marketed as an “experience that captures the magic and brilliance of Pharrell Williams’ creative genius, one Lego brick at a time,” which just means Pharrell’s story is going to be sterilized and hollow. Maybe worse, Lego clearly is using hip-hop as a way to keep its brand cool. In the trailer, we see Lego depictions of Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes, and more, all figurines that I wouldn’t be surprised to see hit the shelves of toy stores by the movie’s fall release date. What else would be the point? Because we know for sure that Lego isn’t all of a sudden interested in preserving hip-hop stories. And, if they are, I’ll be patiently waiting to buy a ticket for Rio Da Yung LEG-OG in IMAX.
On the same day that I saw the Piece by Piece trailer, I watched dream hampton’s absorbing new documentary It Was All a Dream. It gave me whiplash. The Detroit-raised writer, critic, and filmmaker’s Black feminist perspective, and skepticism of rap’s point of view, has been shaking up hip-hop since ’91, when her outraged article “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” about Dr. Dre’s violent attack on television host Dee Barnes, was included in an issue of The Source. Her longtime outspokenness and willingness to confront the misogyny of the genre has often wrongfully positioned her in opposition to music for which she holds a complicated love. It Was All a Dream, which has screened twice as part of Tribeca Festival and shows one more time on Saturday, June 15, at Village East by Angelika, speaks to the contradictions, albeit more subtly than I ever expected from dream. Go through her impressive work, from her acidic review of Maxwell’s Embrya in the Village Voice (she later apologized but I still love it) to her fiery ode to Tupac to being the showrunner of Lifetime’s revealing Surviving R. Kelly, she’s rarely been subtle.
Comprised entirely of archival video footage dream captured from 1993 to 1995 and narrated using pieces she wrote throughout that decade, It Was All a Dream is an intimate look at an era of hip-hop when the East Coast–West Coast rivalry was in its early days, gangsta rap had thrown the essence of the genre into question, and the commercialization of rap was starting to run rampant. All told through the eyes of a twentysomething dream as she drifts from studio sessions to backseat car rides with a few of the defining rappers of the era: Dre and Snoop, Mobb Deep, Lil’ Kim, Method Man, Diddy, and Biggie. The juiciest footage is of Biggie, with whom she had a close relationship, so we get to see him joke around and chill, a side of him that’s lost with his larger-than-life mythology.
What makes It Was All a Dream particularly effective is dream hampton’s light directorial touch. She’s critical of the genre without revising the history, probing her own contradictions as both a fan and scribe. The few heavy-handed moments are mostly due to the narration. A short monologue she gives halfway through the movie about how “it’s not easy being a woman in the world of hardcore hip-hop,” for example, is unnecessary when the visuals portray the reality more powerfully.
In one memorable scene, dream shows up at a SoHo photoshoot for a few of the most hard-nosed women in rap—LeShaun, Nikki D, and Hurricane Gloria—and, on the fly, conducts a roundtable discussion about the uphill climb of trying to make it in a genre that sees them as little more than tickets to an easy payday. Notably, Rusell Simmons (who, in recent years, has been accused of rape by numerous women—allegations he denies) is lingering in the background, and the seconds the camera fixate on him say a lot. Then, in an earlier bit, dream and Method Man, riding the Staten Island Ferry, have a playful yet serious back and forth about the roles of men and women. Meth’s opinions are a bit archaic, but dream doesn’t depict him as a villain, just a man who has rarely had his worldview challenged.
She even brings her critical eye to Biggie, despite their friendship. In his two interactions with a camera shy Lil’ Kim, Big goes from affable to domineering, lecturing her and even threatening her with a chair at one point. From these short clips, it’s clear that Biggie felt some sort of ownership over not just Kim’s career, but also her whole personhood, that she was his project. These uncomfortable moments are allowed to breathe, allowing the audience to think about all of the women who have passed through the doors of hip-hop and faced similar, and possibly even worse, situations.
Still, as heavy as It Was All a Dream can get, it can be straight-up fun, too. The good times include Mobb Deep and Q-Tip preparing to lay down “Temperature’s Rising,” off The Infamous; a friendly (and awkward) call between Snoop and Diddy; Biggie’s casual pleasure at spotting “Player’s Anthem” near the top of the charts. A major undercurrent of the doc is the genre’s surging popularity, accelerated by the release of The Chronic in 1992. The trepidation of what success could mean for an entire culture is in the air, and it’s emphasized by scenes of Biggie being chased out of hotels by security despite having a major hit, and members of Cypress Hill glancing sideways at a profile of Vanilla Ice in The Source.
While I wish the points about the commodification of hip-hop were hammered a little harder, there is one standout scene that addresses the anxieties directly. In a conversation with Richard Fulton, the owner of Fifth Street Dick’s, a coffee and jazz house that once stood proudly in L.A., he predicts that the future of hip-hop will be a lot like bebop: stolen and sanitized. It’s a thought that diehard fans and critics of the genre constantly think about to this day, wondering if we’re already living in those times. It Was All a Dream doesn’t shy away from the contradictions inherent in rap—the push and pull of wanting to grow bigger while wishing to retain the neighborhood intimacy at its core; the wish to be radical while its treatment of women continues to be so regressive. It’s an unease that you either learn to put up with as a rap fan, or over time, all the hypocrisies and corporate greed could just damage your relationship with the genre for good. That inner conflict often goes unaddressed, but It Was All a Dream puts it at the forefront.
Does Anyone Still Find DJ Khaled Funny?
On Friday, I pulled up to Bad Boys: Ride or Die, mostly because T-Mobile was giving out $5 tickets. The fourth movie in the franchise was a lot like the third movie, rich with nostalgia and Fast & Furious–style explosiveness and oversentimentality. Also, like the last movie, there’s a DJ Khaled cameo. In the last one, the 2020 comeback Bad Boys for Life, the once -upon-a-time Miami posse cut mastermind showed up for a couple of minutes as a fake tough guy character named Manny the Butcher who whines and cries as Will Smith’s Mike beats some information out of him. I’ll admit: I laughed.
It turns out I wasn’t the only person to like the cameo because, in the new movie, Manny pops back in looking for revenge on Mike. Within seconds of appearing, though, Manny is run over by Mike’s car and killed (I think) with a Molotov cocktail. It was supposed to be funny, but I just sort of watched emotionlessly. To be fair, that’s pretty much my reaction to anything DJ Khaled–related these days. I hardly even associate him with music anymore, just another celebrity doing nonstop self-publicity. Actually, Khaled doesn’t even have the best rapper-movie crossover moment from last week. That goes to the rhyming-allergic Rob49, who gets name-dropped in Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, as a customer of Glen Powell’s pseudo hitman hopes to pin a job on the New Orleans rapper. A nonsense throwaway joke that I thought about for the entire runtime.
Mixtape of the Week: Dolo2K’s In the Name of Harman
For the past three weeks, if I’m on the move, then In the Name of Harman is probably blasting in my earbuds. The Los Angeles rapper and producer Dolo2K has this airy cool to his music that is perfect to zone out to, and the way I’ve spun this mixtape reminds me of the way I played the fuck out of New Jazz last year or Duwap Kaine’s Underdog back in the day. No matter if Dolo is channeling mid-2010s Keef, the heyday of plugg, or the pitched-up noise trendy in the underground right now, he sounds like he’s going through real-life shit. It’s pretty relatable without trying that hard to be. Sure, it’s all sort of cloudy and vague, but the more you listen, you feel like you know him, whether he’s got trust issues or Shohei Ohtani’s bat on his mind.
Gaptoothv4mp: “Charge You Up!”
Hailing from Ypsilanti, Michigan (known to me as the hometown of BabyTron), Gaptoothv4mp has a SoundCloud page that could brighten your worst day. Every line in her bubbly, warehouse-rave rap feels like it should be followed by a double pink heart emoji, even when she’s a little lovelorn, like on personal favorite “Fairytale Boy.” Her latest single “Charge You Up!” is just as good: a hyper, clubby dance song with sped-up vocals and lyrics that suggest she’s bored at home and dying to go explore the world. “Feel like I’m trapped in a cage, so I just go around it,” she hiccups. It would be melancholic if it didn’t sound like the audio equivalent of an Aliyah’s Interlude outfit.
J.P.: “Over Here”
This new J.P. album, Coming Out Party, is completely bizarre. There are songs that sound like Khalid if he made twerk music. Ditties that belong on pop-country radio, if they would give him a chance. Full-throated gospel vocals over Milwaukee lowend handclaps. I mean, c’mon, the project kicks off with J.P. getting a little freaky over a sample of Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman.” I think I dig it? Ask me tomorrow and my opinion might change. But I’m for sure into “Over Here,” where the college-athlete-turned-viral-rap-star churns out one of those soft and cozy party anthems he’s so good at. He sounds like he’s swooning while he gives out twerk commands, with twangy, fluffy melodies that would be sweet enough for Radio Disney if he weren’t so raunchy. I’m setting the over/under on dancefloor meet-cutes that will happen to “Over Here” this summer at somewhere in the triple digits.
Originally Appeared on Pitchfork
