'Surviving R. Kelly' producer begged Diddy to confess to Cassie's abuse

dream hampton criticizes hip-hop for the misogyny it has perpetuated since she was a student writing for seminal rap magazine The Source in the early 1990s. She is perhaps best known as the series' executive producer documentary 2019 Survivor of 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.

His latest documentary, It was only a dream, premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 9, captures her rap stars and fans on their lives, politics and sexism between 1993 and 1995, when she was in her early 20s. “There is a commitment to patriarchy in our community, and I wish I could say that it only affects men. There are a lot of women who put the P in patriarchy,” she says. rolling stone 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 it from the book of Genesis.

At first It was only a dream is a jovial Diddy, then known as Puffy, in the studio with his signee and close Hampton friend, the Notorious B.I.G. In 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 did not hadn't seen him in years, but she called him to convince him to admit what she firmly believed he had done.

“I reached out to him because I know I’m someone he will listen to. And I said, 'Puff, I'm not trying to hurt you Olivia Pope at all, (but) I think you're done and it's time to retire.' » She hadn't seen him be violent, but that didn't matter. “She was there (both of them), but men don’t beat their partners in front of you.” When she felt she hadn't been clear enough in their conversation, she left him a voicemail. “What you need to do, what we need… What we really need, ever since Mike Tyson raped Desiree Washington, is for one of you motherfuckers to just say, 'I did That.' And I'm going to spend the rest of my life, including financial restitution, trying to make things right.

Hampton says that in their conversation and in her subsequent messages, she pleaded for Combs to take responsibility. “I said to myself: this is a Sisyphean struggle in which women are involved. The so-called Me Too movement, the rock is falling. And all this Johnny Depp, Russell Simmons, deny, deny, deny? That's not even an option for you, Puff. Nobody will believe you. You are already hated. So here you have the opportunity to enter a different paradigm.

She notes that before the tape surfaced showing him physically abusing Cassie, many observers didn't take his accusations seriously either. “The conversation wasn't even about Cassie. It was shame and homophobia.

Although Combs settled with Ventura for an undisclosed sum of money a day after filing his suit, he did not publicly admit to any wrongdoing when a video of him brutalizing Cassie was obtained by CNN. Previously, his lawyer denied his allegations, calling them “offensive and scandalous.” Over the next few months, Combs was charged in six other separate sexual assault lawsuits, his homes in Miami and Los Angeles were searched as part of an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security and in a detailed report more than 50 interviews per rolling stone, Combs has been accused of being a serial predator by several people. The article revealed a previously unreported allegation of abuse by Combs against a woman at Howard University when she was a student in the late 1980s.

Over the years following the murder of Notorious B.I.G. and the commercialization of hip-hop, Hampton, who had once seen its revolutionary potential, fell in love with the male-dominated genre. “It’s an old black feminist conundrum,” she says. “We want to push men, but we don’t want to push them away. I don't have that anymore. They could be absent. Fuck them. I don't have like, “I need you to know I love you” or anything. But that used to be the approach. After decades of this, it is clear that this love is not returned.