While a sophomore at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, she published her first editorial in The Source, taking on Dr. Dre for assaulting journalist Dee Barnes. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, VIBE, The Washington Post, NPR, Spin, and more than a dozen anthologies. In 2010 she collaborated with Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter on his New York Times bestselling book, Decoded.

Her films, described by Vanity Fair as having “the power to change culture,” include I Am Ali (Sundance, 2002), Treasure (Frameline, 2015), It Was All a Dream (Tribeca, 2024), Freshwater (NYT Op-Docs/PBS, 2023), We Hold These Truths (LA Opera, 2022), and Ladies First: A Story of Women in Hip-Hop (Netflix, 2023). She is the Emmy-nominated, Peabody Award-winning showrunner and executive producer of Surviving R. Kelly (Netflix, 2019).

hampton has received residencies and awards from the Rockefeller Center, New York University’s Center for Black Visual Culture, The Kresge, Mellon and Ford Foundations and has taught at Stanford University and lectured and lead workshops at Harvard, Princeton, Howard and Spelman. In 2019 TIME magazine named dream hampton one of the most influential people in the world.