'Surviving R. Kelly' executive producer 'Begged' Diddy to confess to alleged assaults on Cassie

dream hampton She's been holding hip-hop to account for the misogyny it perpetuates since she was a college student writing for major rap magazine The Source in the early 1990s. She's perhaps best known as the executive producer of the 2019 documentary series Surviving R. Kelly, which chronicled the former star's long history of child sexual abuse for which he was soon after prosecuted and imprisoned by the federal government.

Her latest documentary, It was all a dreampremiere on Tribeca Film festival on June 9, captures the rap star's motivations and her fans about their lives, politics and sexism between 1993 and 1995, when she was in her twenties. “There is a commitment to patriarchy in our community, and I wish I could say it's only among men. There are a lot of women who put the P in the patriarchy,” she says Rolling rock in a new interview about the film. “I always say we didn't learn that bitches ain't shit from the B-side of Snoop's 'Gin and Juice.' We learned that from the Book of Genesis.”

Early in It was all a dream is a happy Diddy, then known as Puffy, in the studio with Hampton's signee and close friend, the Notorious BIG This November, when Diddy, whose legal name is Sean Combs, was sued by his former artist and girlfriend, R&B singer Casandra; Cassie” Ventura, for various acts of sexual assault and violence, Hampton hadn't seen him in years, but called him to get him to admit what he strongly believed he had done.

“I reached out to him because I know I'm someone who will listen. And I said, “Puff, I'm not trying to make you Olivia Pope at all. [but] I think you're done and it's time to get out.” She hadn't seen him be abusive, but that didn't matter. “He was around [them both], but men don't beat their partners in front of you.” When she felt he wasn't clear enough in their conversation, she left him a voice note. “What you have to do, what we need… What we've really needed, ever since Mike Tyson raped Desiree Washington, is one of the moms who just says, 'I did this. And I'm going to spend the rest of my life, and that includes financial recovery, trying to fix it.”

Hampton said in their conversation, and in subsequent messages she pleaded with Combs to take responsibility. “I was like this is a Sisyphean struggle that women are involved in. The so-called Me Too movement, the rock is coming down. And all this Johnny Depp, Russell Simmons, deny, deny, deny? It's not even an option for you, Puff. No one is going to believe you. They already hate you. So you really have an opportunity here to step into a different paradigm.”

He notes that before the tape of him physically abusing Cassie was distributed, many observers did not take her accusations seriously. “The conversation wasn't even about Cassie. It was shame and homophobia.”

Although Combs settled with Ventura for an undisclosed amount a day after her lawsuit was filed, he only publicly admitted any wrongdoing when CNN obtained a video of Cassie's brutality. His lawyer had previously dismissed her claims as “offensive and outrageous”. In the months that followed, Combs was charged with six more separate sexual-assault lawsuits, his homes in Miami and Los Angeles were raided in an investigation led by the Department of Homeland Security and an extensive report featuring more than 50 interviews from Rolling rock, Several people argued that Combs was a serial predator. The article revealed a previously unreported allegation of violence against a woman at Howard University as a student in the late 1980s.

During the years following Notorious BIG's murder and the commercialization of hip-hop, Hampton, who once saw its revolutionary potential, did not fall in love with the male-dominated genre. “This is an old conundrum of the black feminist side,” she says. “Like, we want to push men, but we don't want to push them away. I don't have that anymore. They could be out. Fuck them. I'm not like, “I need you to know that I love you” or anything. But that was the approach. After decades of this, it is clear that this love is not returned.”