Sean Combs (Hip-Hop Stars)

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oys B e sti Bea mbs o C Sean Elliott y J Miss ool m C e L n L Emi tifah a L n Z Jay- Quee MC D – n Ru kur a h cS ons Tupa m m i ell S s s u R

sean combs dale evva Gelfand

Sean Combs Copyright ©2007 by Infobase Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Chelsea House An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York, NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gelfand, Dale Evva, 1944Sean Combs / Dale Gelfand. p. cm. — (Hip-hop stars) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7910-9494-5 (hardcover) ISBN-10: 0-7910-9494-4 (hardcover) 1. Diddy, 1969—Juvenile literature.  2.  Rap musicians—United States—Biography— Juvenile literature.  I.  Title.  II.  Series. ML3930.P84G45 2007 782.421649092—dc22 [B]

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Contents Hip-Hop: A Brief History by Chuck D

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1

Bad Boy For Life

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2

Beginnings

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3

From Scholar to Entrepreneur

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4

Promotion and Self-Promotion

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5

Hitting the Big Time

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6

Birth and Death

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7

The Next Phase

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8

New Millennium, New Challenges

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Discography

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Chronology

93

Glossary

96

Bibliography

98

Further Reading

99

Index

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introduction By Chuck D

Hip-Hop: A Brief History L

ike the air we breathe, hip-hop seems to be everywhere. The lifestyle that many thought would be a passing fad has, three decades later, grown to become a permanent part of world culture. Hip-hop artists have become some of today’s heroes, replacing the comic book worship of decades past and joining athletes and movie stars as the people kids dream of being. Names like 50 Cent, P. Diddy, Russell Simmons, Jay-Z, Foxy Brown, Snoop Dogg, and Flavor Flav now ring as familiar as Elvis, Babe Ruth, Marilyn Monroe, and Charlie Chaplin. While the general public knows many of the names, videos, and songs branded by the big companies that make them popular, it’s also important to know the holy trinity, the founding fathers of hip-hop: Kool DJ Herc, Grandmaster Flash, 

Introduction and Afrika Bambaataa. All are deejays who played and presented the records that rappers and dancers delighted themselves upon. Bambaataa single-handedly stopped the gang wars in the 1970s with the themes of peace, unity, love, and having fun. Hip-hop is simply a term for a form of artistic creativity that was spawned in New York City—more precisely the Bronx—in the early to mid-1970s. Amidst the urban decay in the areas where black and Hispanic people dwelled, economic, educational, and environmental resources were depleted. Jobs and businesses were all but moved away. Living conditions were of a lower standard than the rest of the city and country. Last but not least, art and sports programs in the schools were the first to be cut for the sake of lowering budgets; thus, music classes, teaching the subject’s history and techniques, were all but lost. From these ashes, like a phoenix, rose an art form. Through the love of technology and records found in family collections or even those tossed out on the street, the deejay emerged. Different from the ones heard on the radio, these folk were innovating a style that was popular on the island of Jamaica. Two turntables kept the music continuous, with the occasional voice on top of the records. This was the very humble beginning of rap music. Rap music is actually two distinct words: rap and music. “Rap” is the vocal application that is used on top of the music. On a vocal spectrum, it is between talking and singing and is one of the few alternatives for vocalizing to emerge in the last 50 years. It’s important to know that inventors and artists are side by side in the importance of music’s development. Let’s remember that inventor Thomas A. Edison created the first recording, with “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in 1878, most likely in New Jersey, the same state where the first rap recording— Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight”—was made more than 100 years later, in 1979.





sean combs It’s hard to separate the importance of history, science, language arts, and education when discussing music. Because of the social silencing of black people in the United States from slavery in the 1600s to civil rights in the 1960s, much sentiment, dialogue, and soul is wrapped within their cultural expression of music. In eighteenth-century New Orleans, slaves gathered on Sundays in Congo Square to socialize and play music. Within this captivity many dialects, customs, and styles combined with instrumentation, vocals, and rhythm to form a musical signal or code of preservation. These are the foundations of jazz and the blues. Likewise, it’s impossible to separate hip-hop and rap music from the creativity of the past. Look within the expression and words of black music and you’ll get a reflection of history itself. The four creative elements of hip-hop—emceeing (the art of vocalization); deejaying (the musician-like manipulation of records); break dancing (the body expression of the music); and graffiti (the drawn graphic expression of the culture)—have been intertwined in the community before and since slavery. However, just because these expressions were introduced by the black–Hispanic underclass, doesn’t mean that others cannot create or appreciate hip-hop. Hip-hop is a cultural language used best to unite the human family all around the world. To peep the global explosion, one need not search far. Starting just north of the U.S. border, Canadian hip-hop has featured indigenous rappers who are infusing different language and dialect flows into their work, from Alaskan Eskimo to French flowing cats from Montreal and the rest of the Quebec’s provincial region. Few know that France for many years has been the second largest hip-hop nation, measured not just by high sales numbers, but also by a very political philosophy. Hip-hop has been alive and present since the mid-1980s in Japan and other Asian countries. Australia has been a hotbed in welcoming world rap acts, and it has also created its own vibrant hiphop scene, with the reminder of its government’s takeover of

Introduction indigenous people reflected in every rapper’s flow and rhyme. As a rhythm of the people, the continents of Africa and South America (especially Ghana, Senegal, and South Africa, Brazil, Surinam, and Argentina) have long mixed traditional homage into the new beats and rhyme of this millennium. Hip-hop has been used to help Brazilian kids learn English when school systems failed to bridge the difficult language gap of Portuguese and patois to American English. It has entertained and enlightened youth, and has engaged political discussion in society, continuing the tradition of the African griots (storytellers) and folk singers. For the past 25 years, hip-hop has been bought, sold, followed, loved, hated, praised, and blamed. History has shown that other cultural music forms in the United States have been just as misunderstood and held under public scrutiny. The history of the people who originated the art form can be found in the music itself. The timeline of recorded rap music spans more than a quarter century, and that is history in itself. Presidents, kings, queens, fame, famine, infamy, from the great wall of China to the Berlin wall, food, drugs, cars, hate, and love have been rhymed and scratched. This gives plenty reason for social study. And I don’t know what can be more fun than learning the history of something so relevant to young minds and souls, as music.



1

Bad Boy For Life A

lmost as famous for being famous as he is for actual achievements, Sean “Puffy,” “Puff Daddy,” “P. Diddy,” “Diddy” Combs is an American success story, even if that success has been sometimes overshadowed by controversial and over-the-top behavior. Rapper, business mogul, and, lately, actor, Combs has been called a modern Renaissance man and praised for his talent by his fans. (His critics, on the other hand, question whether being mediocre at many things would qualify for a Renaissance man title.) Regardless of whether you love or hate his music, envy his lifestyle or are turned off by it, Sean Combs has had a considerable impact on American culture since 1990, broadening the popularity of hip-hop

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sean combs c­ ulture. With his finger on the pulse of society, he has an inherent knowledge of what makes something desirable, or how to make something desirable. He makes no apologies for his success; he told Slate that he is “one of the greatest entrepreneurs and entertainers the world has ever encountered” and likens himself to Frank Sinatra—as well as to Jesus Christ. He has also said “I think of everything I do as history in the making.” Perhaps that kind of confidence—or maybe it’s arrogance—is necessary to rise above hardship and tragedy. Combs seems to have learned the hard way that if you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will. Combs believes in himself so much that he even goes so far as to wear a T-shirt that proclaims “I Am the American Dream.” Few would argue. Yet, paradoxically, he can be humble about his enormous success. He told Jet that “at the end of the day . . . when you get judged by God, it’s not going to be about how many hit records [you had] or how many stadiums you sold out.”

Seeker of the Spotlight Sean Combs has been performing in public since the age of two, when his mother used him as a model for a fashion show that she put on in the day-care center where she worked. That event seemed to spark a desire in him to be at the center of attention. According to Ronin Ro in Bad Boy: The Influence of Sean “Puffy” Combs on the Music Industry, Combs once remarked, “As soon as that spotlight hit me, I just embraced it.” He has sought out the spotlight ever since. Combs has certainly kept his eye on the prize since childhood and never once faltered. He has been relentless in his pursuits—of fame, success, money, and respect. It may seem sometimes as if Sean Combs has changed his name and style almost as frequently as most people change their socks. Yet, his basic persona has remained the same: the bad boy. Combs has created the image of a “bad boy for life”—a bad boy first from

Bad Boy For Life

Sean Combs is a hip-hop mogul who has succeeded in many avenues of the entertainment industry: music, fashion, and acting. As the CEO of Bad Boy Entertainment and creator of the Sean John fashion line, Sean Combs has greatly contributed to popularizing hip-hop culture.

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sean combs the streets and later a bad boy operating from multimilliondollar penthouse duplexes and houses. It is an image that has served him well and brought him enormous wealth. Aggressive, determined, single-minded, stubborn, driven— all of these words describe Sean Combs to a T. He might well have taken the same path that his father—and many of his neighborhood peers—took to achieve wealth and status: dealing drugs. But, while Combs embraced the hip-hop music and fashion of the ghetto, he otherwise steered clear

THOSE NICKNAMES sean John combs is better known by his rap nicknames than by his real name. his original hip-hop moniker, puffy, came courtesy of a childhood friend. “it’s a silly reason,” combs once told Jet magazine. “Whenever i got mad as a kid, i used to always huff and puff. i had a temper. that’s why my friend started calling me puffy.” (he has said on other occasions that the name came from his habit of puffing out his chest when playing football so he would appear larger.) “puffy” soon became “puff daddy,” which had its origins in the “daddy’s house” parties that he threw in college. in 2001, the rap mogul switched it from “puff daddy” to “p. diddy,” saying he was seeking a “fresh start” after being acquitted on gun charges. then in the summer of 2005, he told the world he would now be known as just “diddy.” at the time the entertainer admitted that his previous name change might not have been the best. “i felt like the P was getting between me and my fans, and now we’re closer,” he said. however, that change, too, is unlikely to be the last.

Bad Boy For Life of its negative influences. Instead, he followed his mother’s example of working hard to achieve success. Early on, as Ro says, she advised him, “Go to school and pay close attention to your teachers if you want to be a millionaire.” Clearly Sean Combs was a good son and listened to his mother. This is his story . . . so far.

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Beginnings T

o understand Sean Combs, it is necessary to understand the environment that shaped him. Harlem, the neighborhood where he spent his formative years, has a rich history. Located on the upper end of Manhattan, Harlem began as the Dutch settlement of Nieuw (or New) Haarlem in the early 1600s. Slaves were soon used to transform an Indian trail through the meadows into a serviceable road. The British took control of New Netherland, and 100 years later, Harlem was the site of fierce fighting during the Revolutionary War. By the late 1800s, Harlem was a highly fashionable neighborhood, with many beautiful brownstone buildings. In 1893, Harlem Monthly Magazine noted “it is evident to the most superficial observer that the centre of fashion, wealth, culture, 16

Beginnings

Sean Combs grew up in Harlem, a New York City neighborhood with a rich African-American history. In the 1920s and early 1930s, the neighborhood was home to the “The Harlem Renaissance,” a cultural movement characterized by a surge in artistic production by African Americans. When Combs was growing up in the 1970s, Harlem was characterized by both a rich cultural history and a mixture of poverty and crime. Pictured above, buildings in Harlem circa 1968.

and intelligence must . . . be found in . . . Harlem.” But when the real estate market collapsed in 1904, the white homeowners left, and blacks from the South began moving in, many recruited to work in factories. This influx of blacks to Harlem, fostered by the great migration of southern blacks northward from the turn of the twentieth century to World War I, eventually sparked what would become known as the Harlem Renaissance. Essentially

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sean combs spanning the years from the war’s end until roughly the Great Depression, the Harlem Renaissance encapsulated the flowering of black culture—especially literature and music—and promoted the idea of Harlem as the locus of African American cultural life. The majority of New York City’s black population lived in Harlem. With the economic downturn brought on by the Depression, landlords—­slumlords, really, both black and white—purchased many of the brownstones and turned them into tenements. Alongside the tenements, high-rise housing projects were built. The Harlem that was the cultural and political center for black Americans soon deteriorated. Although by the late 1960s it still had its landmarks like the Apollo Theater, and it still nurtured musical and literary talent, the Harlem of Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes was for the most part a squalid black ghetto known mostly for its poverty, crime rate, rampant drug use, and dead-end misery.

The combs family There were, however, pockets of middle-class life in the neighborhood, and it was here that Sean John Combs was born on November 4, 1969—some references say it was 1970—to Janice and Melvin Combs. In an interview Combs gave to Rolling Stone magazine in 1997, he said, “My mom was . . . always the fly girl of the neighborhood, and my pops was the fly guy of the neighborhood. That’s what attracted them. That’s how they got together.” A fashion enthusiast since childhood, Janice was a budding model. Melvin worked for the New York City Board of Education and drove a taxi. However, in his spare time Melvin was also a street hustler, dealing drugs and running an illegal gambling business— extracurricular activities at which he apparently excelled. Melvin’s method of earning additional money might have been unconventional, to say the least, but it was quite profitable, and it introduced young Sean to the concept of having

Beginnings

In 1972, just months after Sean’s second birthday, Melvin Combs was shot and killed. Janice Combs raised Sean and his sister, Keisha, on her own by working multiple part-time jobs. In the photograph above, Sean attends an event with his mother, Janice, in 2001.

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sean combs the finer things in life. Those included furs for both his parents and a Mercedes-Benz, which neighbors remembered as being the only one in Harlem and the most impressive car in the neighborhood. Sean Combs’s comfortable life came to a swift and dra­matic end. A few months after his second birthday, on January 26, 1972, his father was killed. Janice told her son that his father had died in a car accident. Sean believed that tale until he was 14 and decided to do some investigating. According to Ro, old newspapers confirmed his growing suspicion—fostered by stories he’d heard from neighbors—that his “pops was hustling or something.” In fact, Melvin Combs had been gunned down, shot in the head in Central Park by rivals for his drug and numbers operations. Her husband’s death forced Janice to move Sean and his baby sister, Keisha, in with her mother, Jessie, who lived nearby in Esplanade Gardens, a subsidized cooperative apartment development completed in 1967 (described by the New York Times in 1995 as “a pristine complex of six high-rise apartment buildings, a swimming pool and parking garage, a picture of middle-class serenity”). Determined not to go on welfare like so many other young single mothers—a path that usually ended up being a dead-end trap—Janice worked hard to earn a living, juggling several low-paying part-time jobs. During the day she was a school-bus driver and an assistant teacher at a day-care facility; at night, while her mother watched Sean and Keisha, she worked as an aide to kids with cerebral palsy. Though they had taken a definite step down the economic ladder, the Combs family would soon be climbing back up.

Hard Times/Good Times Janice worked hard to fill the void left by Melvin’s death, acting as both mother and father to her children. For the next 10 years, she and Jessie made certain that Sean didn’t succumb to the lure of the streets. A devout Catholic, Janice took her son,

Beginnings who became an altar boy, to church regularly. And, one summer she signed Sean up for the Fresh Air Fund, the purpose of which was to enable city kids—especially inner-city kids—the opportunity to spend a few weeks in the country and experience an entirely different way of life. For a couple of weeks every summer, Sean got away from the polluted air and steaming streets to experience firsthand how different life could be. Sean’s host family lived in Pennsylvania Dutch country. Living on a farm among the Amish was about as different an experience as he could get without actually being on a different planet! Combs later acknowledged Janice and Jessie’s efforts, saying, “My mom and grandmom pulled together and kept me off the streets.” But they couldn’t keep him off the streets entirely.

Hip-Hop Hops Starting in the South Bronx and spreading down to Harlem and out to Brooklyn and Queens, a cultural and musical revolution was taking place in the black communities of New York City. Around the mid-1970s, while disco music was still the sound of the day, black DJs began putting a literal new spin on records. “Hip-hop developed as part of an unconscious attempt to restore cross-cultural communication in a climate that marginalized the lives and opinions of young people of color,” says author Cookie Lommel in The History of Rap Music. While “graffiti-tagged trains became unwitting cultural ambassadors, showcasing hip-hop throughout New York City,” black and Latino kids citywide made their way to the Bronx to check out the new music being played in parks and underground clubs, then took what they heard home with them. As Andrew Cable tells it in A Family Affair: The Unauthorized Sean “Puffy” Combs Story, teenagers in the South Bronx and other poor neighborhoods couldn’t afford to go to the Manhattan discotheques, so “they improvised” with a couple of turntables, a bunch of records, a microphone, and a basic PA system. “House

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sean combs

Janice Combs and her mother, Jessie, tried hard to keep Sean off the streets when he was a young boy. They signed up him for the Fresh Air Fund, a program that allows inner-city kids to experience the country lifestyle. Sean spent time in Pennsylvania Dutch Country with an Amish family, learning about a completely different way of life. In the photograph above, Amish girls walk down a country lane.

and block parties sprang up throughout New York ghettos; power was often jacked by plugging into streetlights. A legion of neighborhood DJs and MCs were born.” A hallmark of these DJs was isolating breaks in the drumming in songs, called break-beat deejaying. Soon their turntables developed into instruments in and of themselves, “isolating riffs and beats” and “mixing and scratching.” Soon, too, the DJs began speaking—or rapping— along with the music.

beginnings

LIFE LESSONS living in harlem taught sean combs some valuable—and occasionally painful—lessons about standing up for himself. in A Family Affair: The Unauthorized Sean “Puffy” Combs Story, andrew cable relates the story of how combs “learned to be tough early on” when he went to buy a pack of cigarettes for his grandmother. “another kid approached him and demanded that sean turn over the money he was carrying. thinking he was tough enough to stand his ground, sean refused . . . and put up his dukes.” as cable tells it, the fight lasted only long enough for the bully to punch combs “in his handsome mug a few times” before taking the money and walking off. the encounter led to two important realizations for young combs: that he shouldn’t get into a fight if he didn’t believe he could win it. and—perhaps more important—he wasn’t someone who would back down and was “willing to take his licks.” another run-in left him beaten up, and his skateboard stolen from him. he ran home to his mother, crying about what had happened. instead of coddling her son, she insisted that he go find the bully and reclaim his skateboard—“even if it meant he had to use physical force”—before he could return home. While many parents would take a turn-the-other-cheek attitude, and many others might be shocked by such an ultimatum, Janice’s demand served to reinforce what she had already instilled in her son: being a survivor meant fighting for what was yours and what you believed in. but sean was both smart and resourceful. instead of fighting the bully himself, he got one of his friends—“an older, bigger boy”—to fight for him. he got back his skateboard and discovered at a young age that having tough allies watching your back can come in handy.

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sean combs At the same time that this new musical genre was being cultivated, other aspects of the hip-hop movement were forming and spreading through various Bronx neighborhoods. There were four main elements of the culture: graffiti, break dancing, deejaying, and rapping. Each form of hip-hop culture expressed a personal as well as a community style. The music, dancing, and graffiti—called tagging—were accompanied by hip-hop slang and fashions. The latter, according to Lommel, was related to both image and practicality—the image, emulating “a style of baggy clothing that had originated in the prison system” and practicality because “break-dancers . . . found the baggy pants necessary to perform their adventurous dance moves.”

The Start of Things to Come Sean Combs took to this new cultural benchmark like a duckling to water. He quickly became a fanatical devotee of hip-hop and sneaked out after his mother and grandmother were asleep to check out underground clubs and other after-hours venues. He stayed out half the night catching the performances of such legendary DJs as Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash, and groundbreaking rappers like LL Cool J and the group RunDMC. In Bad Boy: The Influence of Sean “Puffy” Combs on the Music Industry, Ronin Ro quotes Combs as bragging that from the age of 12, “I’d be out until three, four in the morning, seeing the music. I had to sneak out to do it, but I was doing it.” He was also making something of a reputation for himself as a break-dancer, and it was his impressive dance moves that got him into clubs “for free and without hassle.”

Out of the Ghetto Life changed dramatically for a second time for Sean Combs when, in 1982, his mother decided it was time to move with her kids into a house that she had long owned in Mount Vernon. A predominantly working-class suburb just north of the Bronx, Mount Vernon, unlike Harlem, was made up of single-family

Beginnings

Break dancers draw a crowd in New York City’s Washington Square Park in 1984. Growing up in New York, Sean Combs was exposed to hip-hop culture almost from the start.

houses with neat lawns and trees. Also unlike Harlem, it was an ethnically diverse neighborhood rather than a homogeneous one. Combs later explained why his mother held off moving until he was almost a teenager: “She didn’t want to raise me in the suburbs. She wanted me to get the strength from Harlem, the strength of growing up in the city.” To maintain the roof over her family’s head, Janice took on yet another job, as a salesclerk in a clothing store. Inspired by his mother’s indomitable work ethic, 12-year-old Sean, too, got a job. In fact he got two. Not satisfied with one paper route, he took on a second by using a friend’s name. In addition, he

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sean combs worked part-time at Playland, a nearby amusement park, even working double shifts to take home more pay. Janice was a firm believer in the importance of academics and discipline, and when her son was 14, she enrolled him in a private Catholic school for boys, Mount Saint Michael’s Academy, which had an excellent record for its graduates attending good colleges. Combs was a decent student and also managed to make the school’s football team—he has said that the nickname “Puffy” came from puffing out his chest so that he would appear bigger on the football field. And, remarkably, he was grateful to the authoritarian monks, who didn’t hesitate to beat their students for getting out of line. (“It was something that kept me definitely focused and gave me a certain discipline,” he later admitted to the UK’s Female First, adding, “but I would have rather had not so many butt whippings.”) Still, he had to put up with heckling from his fellow students for working virtually every moment of his spare time. He ignored the taunts, determined to succeed in life, “to be,” according to Essence, “somebody who makes history . . . and make a change.” Above all, he wanted to be rich—very rich.

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From Scholar to Entrepreneur D

espite having moved to Mount Vernon, Sean maintained close ties with his old neighborhood, even attending a daily after-school program there. This kept him in close proximity to the music that he loved listening and dancing to. It was at this time that he found out the truth about his father’s death. It was around this time, too, that he began hanging out at nightclubs, including a famous one called the Rooftop, where he got to meet both music producers and performers. According to Ronin Ro in Bad Boy, “Sean would sneak out of his suburban home, travel to the clubs, and wait outside.” His dance moves were so electrifying that soon club owners made sure that he was invited in when he

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sean combs

Doug E. Fresh (above) was one of the most popular rappers and beatboxers in the 1980s. When Sean Combs was in his teens, he was extremely involved in the local hip-hop world and appeared in one of Doug E. Fresh’s music videos.

showed up so that he could inspire his fellow club hoppers with his dancing. Throughout his high-school years, Sean Combs got more and more involved in the world of hip-hop. He saw it as his future, his road to success. The teenager dreamed of making an album. “Everybody has a dream when they’re watching

From Scholar to Entrepreneur Run-DMC or LL Cool J,” he once revealed, according to Ro. “They think, ‘I wish I was that.’ I was always somebody who closed my eyes and dreamed, then opened my eyes and saw what I had to do.” And what he had to do was keep dancing. Most important to his future success, his continual work on his dance moves paid off—as did his networking on the dance floor. He auditioned for, and was hired as, a performer in a number of hip-hop videos, where he was able to showboat his dancing talent. While still in high school, he appeared in videos for Doug E. Fresh, Babyface, and the British pop trio the Fine Young Cannibals, among others. The budding entrepreneur was also intrigued by the business side of the music industry. His interest was spurred when, in 1986, he got to see a promotional video for Uptown Is Kickin’ It, a hip-hop compilation album titled for the track performed by the Uptown Crew and produced by Andre Harrell, formerly one half of the rap duo Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde. In one scene, Harrell—who had worked as a vice president for Russell Simmons’s Rush Management, and then founded his own Uptown Records—strides into an impressive conference room and signs a stack of contracts. It was a display of his “ghetto fabulous” style, as Harrell called it, a marketing strategy as well as a personal philosophy. The concept resonated with Sean, who later admitted that he was “attracted to the whole control factor involved.”

A New Chapter On graduating high school, Combs was accepted into Howard University, the historically black institution in Washington, D.C., whose illustrious alumni include author Toni Morrison, Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, actors Ossie Davis and Phylicia Rashad, and director/choreographer Debbie Allen. Combs was excited about attending the celebrated school and pursuing a business curriculum, but once he entered, in the

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sean combs fall of 1988, his entrepreneurial endeavors quickly seemed to overshadow his academic ones. He was soon quite literally the life of the party.

Hip-Hop Flava Despite Combs’s initial excitement at being part of such an august institution, he had a hard time maintaining even a C average. This wasn’t due to a lack of intelligence, but rather a lack of diligence: His scholarship collided with his entrepreneurship. As author Andrew Cable puts it in A Family Affair, Combs “had a difficult time sitting still for lectures or hunching over books . . . studying for grueling exams” and instead “diverted his tremendous surplus of drive and hyperactivity into a new slew of activities that raised his social prominence and honed his business savvy.” And, his social prominence was high from the moment he stepped onto the Howard campus, having already gained some renown among his fellow students from his videos. One of Combs’s strengths as an entrepreneur was filling a void that no one even realized existed. He sold T-shirts and term papers, even soda. He had no trouble exploiting a situation, either. When some protesting students took control of an administrative building, and the incident was written up in magazines and newspapers, Combs created poster-sized collages out of the clippings and sold them back to the protesters. He even started a shuttle service to the airport for fellow students. In the case of the Howard University social scene, what was missing was the hip-hop vibe. Combs took care of that with the enthusiasm of a true zealot. He had been at Howard just a few months when he began hosting huge parties, held in basements or gyms. With his usual determination and neverwilling-to-take-no-for-an-answer attitude, Combs was able to convince well-known hip-hop performers who were playing

From Scholar to Entrepreneur gigs in Washington to put in appearances at his parties. The parties, held virtually every week, made Combs money as well as a campus legend. It also connected him with artists and business people prominent in the music field. Combs was relentless. He pursued every rap group that came to town, seeking them out at their hotels and inviting them to his parties. (He got so good at throwing parties, in fact, that university officials even hired him to plan a couple of homecoming events.) One artist he invited was a friend from his old Mount Vernon neighborhood, Heavy D. Born Dwight Arrington Myers, the 250-plus-pound rapper performed with two of his friends as Heavy D & the Boyz and had recently had a major success—the first for himself and for Andre Harrell—with his album Living Large. Recorded for Harrell’s Uptown Records, Heavy D’s was a crossover sound dubbed “new jack swing.” With overwhelming success at virtually everything he tried his hand at, except his academic work, Combs wondered whether pursuing a college degree was the right path for him after all. He began to think that his studies were getting in the way of his future in the music world.

Heading Uptown Combs decided to strike while the iron was hot. Thanks to his parties, he was now known to a number of music industry bigwigs, so he took the train up to New York to discuss job opportunities with them. He later told a VH1 interviewer how much he had always admired the producers working behind the scenes. As he rode the Amtrak coach up from Washington, he set his sights on becoming the next Russell Simmons, Berry Gordy, or Quincy Jones. But, though he knocked loudly on several doors, including Def Jam Records, no one in the music business wanted to hire the enterprising college student.

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sean combs

Sean Combs met rapper Heavy D when they were both growing up in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of New York City. When Combs was attending Howard University in Washington, D.C., he invited his old friend to one of his infamous parties. At that time, Heavy D & the Boyz were enjoying the success of their first album Living Large, produced by Andre Harrell’s Uptown Records.

From scholar to entrepreneur Changing tactics, he decided that the way to get his foot in the door would be by working as an intern. That meant putting in long hours as a gofer for little or no pay but getting a chance for an entry-level job come graduation. Combs got in touch with Heavy D yet again—the rapper was now a de facto A & R (artists and repertoire) staff member at Uptown Records—and pressed him to put in a good word for him with Andre Harrell. Heavy D arranged a meeting between the two,

KINDRED SPIRITS andre harrell recognized a kindred spirit in his ambitious, competitive young a & r man and treated him almost like a younger brother (they have a nine-year age difference). When harrell purchased a mansion with all the trappings in the suburbs of new Jersey, he offered combs a room of his own—in what some called a “palace”—on top of a generous salary. living with harrell also gave combs access to the industry movers and shakers, who came to the many parties at the mansion. perhaps equally important, it gave him a taste of the good life, where cristal champagne flowed like water, spurring him to achieve great success. it was a mutually beneficial relationship. in a New York magazine article, Def Jam founder and chairman russell simmons told writer nancy Jo sales, “andre cultivated puffy. and puff was a genius.” citing his “platinum ears” as the key to his success, combs quickly demonstrated just how much of a genius he was, with such soon-to-be stars like mary J. blige, lil’ Kim, and notorious b.i.g.

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Andre Harrell founded Uptown Records in the 1980s, and signed up-and-coming artists such as Heavy D, Jodeci, and Mary J. Blige. Harrell gave Sean Combs his first big break when he hired him as an intern at Uptown Records. Since he was still a student at Howard University, Combs commuted each week, from Washington, D.C. to New York City for his internship.

From Scholar to Entrepreneur and Harrell—impressed by the well-dressed and articulate young man—took him on as his intern. It was clear to the 29year-old impresario that Sean Combs would fit nicely into his “ghetto fabulous” vision and philosophy.

Good-bye to Washington Combs’s internship meant commuting four hours each way twice a week—sixteen hours of travel every week, just for an internship. But he didn’t mind. The internship was his ticket to bigger things. He took notes obsessively and learned everything he could from anyone willing to talk with him. His mentor was impressed, calling him “the hardest-working intern ever.” In fact, the two days each week soon stretched to up to 80 hours— this plus his college course load. It was an impossible schedule for Combs, but he didn’t have to maintain it for long. By 1990, Combs had proven his abilities sufficiently that Harrell had him doing A & R work for new artists. He got his feet wet with an R & B group from North Carolina that Heavy D had discovered, called Jodeci. Uptown’s head of A & R didn’t think much of the group, but Combs had the opposite reaction and set out to make Jodeci into the next big thing. He played a major role in defining their style and sound, tailoring a rougher, hip-hop-based image for the group. He then worked a fashion makeover—with the help of his girlfriend, 17-year-old Misa Hylton, who quickly made a name for herself as a hiphop fashion ­stylist—­changing their look from flash and glitz to urban street and club wear. The changes were successful: Jodeci broke out of the overcrowded R & B pack. They were on their way—as was their young guru, Sean “Puffy” Combs. He even got a producing credit on their debut album, Forever My Lady, which, more than just a feather in his cap, gave him royalties on what would go on to become a double-platinum seller. It was the first indication of the financial empire that lay ahead for Combs.

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sean combs It wasn’t long before Combs decided to drop out of Howard University—which didn’t please his mother, Janice, one bit. He was able to convince her, though, that working at Uptown was not just his big chance but also the opportunity to get started on what he saw as his true calling that much sooner. Sean Combs’s college days were officially over. His days as an impresario were just beginning.

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Promotion and SelfPromotion T

he unqualified success of Jodeci prompted Andre Harrell to promote Sean Combs to vice president of A & R. Combs reveled in his new position. Not one to employ a play-it-cool approach, he began to hustle to get his Uptown artists’ names in the limelight and on industry bigwigs’ tongues. He was determined to prove himself to Harrell and justify his mentor’s faith in him. “I’ve never let anyone down who was willing to take a chance on me,” he told one interviewer. His marketing savvy was extraordinary. To an amazing degree, he had his finger on the pulse of what buyers wanted. Richard Oliver in Hip-Hop, Inc. notes, “More than anyone else at the time, [Combs] found a way to combine street style and culture, club energy, middle-class values, and a feeling of 37

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sean combs upward mobility.” It wasn’t long before Combs was the leading light at Uptown. But a dark cloud would soon catch up with him, overshadowing his successes.

Catastrophe Despite the many hours he worked for Uptown Records, Sean Combs kept his hand in the party business. Starting in March 1991, he began staging enormous (and enormously successful) weekly hip-hop parties, featuring well-known rappers at a venue on the far west side of midtown Manhattan. Over a thousand people—street kids, college students, and celebrities alike—showed up every Wednesday (the parties were later moved to Thursday) at the gigantic club that Combs dubbed “Daddy’s House,” a tie-in to his new moniker: Puff Daddy. And, while at that point, violence—or at least the threat of it—seemed to be almost de rigueur at rap concerts and parties, Daddy’s House, writes Andrew Cable, “put a fresh, less­threatening spin on the public image of hip-hop.” Although the club was a fantastic success, it didn’t last long; juggling the twin the responsibilities of keeping the club running smoothly and his Uptown job proved too much for Combs to handle. Still, by the time Daddy’s House was put to rest, he was already looking for his next big event. With the AIDS epidemic now 10 years old and threatening many communities and with basketball superstar Magic Johnson having recently revealed his HIV status, Combs decided to stage a charity celebrity basketball game to raise AIDS awareness. Scheduled for December 28, 1991, the fund-raiser would be headlined by Heavy D, plus 20 other rap artists playing basketball, and would be held at City College of New York’s gymnasium. Unfortunately, the event ended in tragedy. In his entrepreneurial zeal, Combs wildly overhyped and oversold the event. Due to the enormous publicity that he had generated, lines began forming hours before showtime.

Promotion and Self-Promotion

In 1991, Combs promoted a charity basketball game and concert, headlined by Heavy D, in order to raise money for AIDS Awareness. The fund-raiser was heavily promoted and the event was oversold. The night of the game, a crowd swelled, and a stampede ensued killing nine people and injuring others. Above, Combs is seen leaving a courtroom where he was accused of overselling the event and failing to provide adequate security.

Eventually, the head count was about twice the gym’s capacity, and everyone was determined to get inside. By 7 p.m., a tidal wave of tired, angry fans began shouting, “One, two, three,

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sean combs push!” They stampeded toward the doors. The hired security detail, equally determined that only ticket holders would gain entry, had locked three of the four metal doors to the gym as a means of crowd control, so everyone had to snake through one open door. The crowd was completely out of control and began shoving its way in, ripping a door off its hinges, trampling those people who were already in the vestibule, and crushing others against the metal interior doors. Despite screams and pleas to open the doors, the doors remained shut. Ultimately nine people died, crushed to death in the gymnasium vestibule; at least 34 others were injured. Combs’s charity basketball game had turned into a nightmare. Denounced in the press and the court of public opinion, Combs was said to be devastated by the tragedy and racked with guilt. He also feared a major lawsuit. The courts eventually ruled that Combs and Heavy D shared responsibility with CCNY for the incident, blaming poor organization and failure to provide a sufficient security force. Even the charitable nature of the event was called into question when it was revealed that the proceeds had not been earmarked for any specific charity. Questions about what he did to help or hinder assistance at the gymnasium dogged Combs for years. He later said that his faith in God had saved him, and he invoked the biblical tale of Lazarus, whom Jesus had resurrected from the dead.

Moving On Determined to put the tragedy behind him, Combs put increased focus on his work. One of the Uptown artists whom Combs turned his attention to was Mary J. Blige. Just 18 years old in 1989 when she was signed by Andre Harrell to Uptown, she was at that point the company’s only female artist. But, despite Harrell’s initial enthusiasm, he had left her languishing and focused his attention on Uptown’s more established acts. When Combs became her producer in 1992, Blige was barely on the music-scene radar, having done nothing more than performing backup vocals on some of her label mates’ records and videos.

promotion and self-promotion

MARY J. BLIGE sean combs recognizes talent when he sees it. although mary J. blige had already been discovered and signed to Uptown records when he began working there, it was combs who saw that blige could be a certified star instead of a glorified backup singer. taking her on as a special project, combs showcased her rich sound to help her achieve her full potential. as a result, the talented grammy winner is often called the “Queen of hip-hop soul.” born January 11, 1971, in the bronx, blige endured a tough childhood, raised by a single mother in housing projects with four brothers and sisters and surviving sexual molestation and drug abuse. blige hit the big time with her 1992 Uptown album, What’s the 411?, which yielded the popular billboard single “real Love” and sold more than three million copies. with combs as her manager, she followed up with the triple-platinum My Life in 1994. their working relationship dissolved, and blige went on to collaborate with other luminaries in the hip-hop and popular music worlds. at the same time, she contended with abusive relationships, alcoholism, and depression. the love of her boyfriend (now husband) and the tragic death of her friend, recording star aaliyah, helped her regain her focus. she and combs reunited for a track on her album More Drama and her 2006 Love & Life album. this collaboration was not as commercially or critically successful as previous endeavors. blige triumphed in 2006 with her top-selling album The Breakthrough, which has earned her numerous awards. she has created her own label, founded a line of cosmetics, and broken into acting, appearing in movies, on television, and off-broadway.

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Mary J. Blige was one of the new artists signed to Uptown Records. Combs worked directly with Mary J. Blige, and produced her debut album, What’s the 411? The album was a smash success, and it featured the hit songs “You Remind Me” and “Real Love.”

Promotion and Self-Promotion But, Combs was excited by her original sound, a fusion of R & B and hip-hop. Moreover, he felt that Blige personified Harrell’s “ghetto fabulous” motto and pushed her debut album, What’s the 411?. With his vision and her talent, the critically acclaimed album was a multiplatinum smash hit. It eventually climbed to number six on the Billboard pop chart. Once again Sean “Puffy” Combs had proved that he had the magic touch. Once again he had given his audience what they wanted, without them even knowing that they wanted it. Mary J. Blige had been anointed the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul, and Puff Daddy was her knight in shining armor. He was the musical architect of the moment.

New Beginnings The success of Blige’s album prompted Combs to revisit a dream that he’d had for some time: starting his own record label. Despite all of his accomplishments—and the accompanying trappings, such as a fancy BMW and plenty of bling—he was antsy to be his own boss and not have to continue answering to his mentor. Aware of his protégé’s impatience to be in charge, Andre Harrell appointed him vice president of A & R and artist development. With the promotion came an assurance from Harrell that Uptown would also launch Combs’s own management, production, and recording company: Bad Boy Entertainment. Aside from rewarding Combs for his enormous successes with Jodeci and Mary J. Blige, the label deal reflected Harrell’s belief that Bad Boy—via Combs—would reflect “the struggles and rebelliousness of being an inner-city teenager,” as he told Billboard magazine. Sean Combs would later say that Biggie Smalls “came into my life right on time. When I met him, I had this dream of a company, and all he wanted to do was to be a rapper.” Biggie, born Christopher Wallace in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, was a 350-pound drug dealer with an arrest record— an aspiring rapper with a rap sheet.

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The Notorious B.I.G., also known as Biggie Smalls, grew up in a rough part of Brooklyn and worked as drug dealer. An aspiring rapper, his lyrics reflected his life in the ghetto. Combs liked Biggie’s rough sound and image, and signed him to Uptown Records to the dismay of Andre Harrell.

Combs was given a demo from this unknown rapper from Brooklyn. Biggie’s sound and image were much rougher than those promoted by Uptown, but Combs immediately decided this was something special. Seeking out the young high school dropout, the young impresario signed Biggie immediately to a contract with Uptown for a modest advance. Biggie had exactly the sound that Combs had been looking for: hard-core rap combined with the smoothness of R & B. It was a sound that Combs was seeking to define what he saw as East Coast rap.

Promotion and Self-Promotion But, Biggie’s raps didn’t please Andre Harrell, who thought his lyrics were too hard core. Harrell wasn’t alone in his displeasure with the direction in which Combs was taking the music: MCA Records, now Uptown’s parent company, didn’t approve either. And so, while publicly everything appeared smooth between the two men, the reality was more complicated. Combs “felt constrained by the established Uptown formula” writes Andrew Cable, while Harrell felt that his protégé was ignoring the company’s philosophy. The Uptown CEO was also becoming more and more exasperated by Combs’s lackadaisical attitude toward expenditures, like booking studio time and not showing up, and his reportedly tyrannical behavior when he did put in studio time. It also didn’t help that Combs was acting dismissively toward his erstwhile guru, telling Harrell publicly that he wouldn’t be anything without him. Increasingly, the mentor and the protégé were becoming adversaries rather than advocates. By July 1993, relations between the two men had gotten strained to the breaking point. Tired of the near-constant clashes, Harrell decided that Uptown wasn’t big enough for both of them. Calling Combs into his office, he fired him. He then released Biggie Smalls from his contract. Combs later told writer Dream Hampton of the Source magazine that Harrell “walked into my office and said there can only be one lion in the jungle.” Combs would later admit that he probably had overstepped his boundaries and been arrogant to the point of obnoxious when matters were coming to a head at Uptown—not to mention that he hadn’t appreciated what it takes to run a company in a corporate atmosphere, which has little tolerance for rebelliousness. At the time, though, the dismissal stunned Combs. How could his friend and mentor do such a thing to him? But, it would turn out that Harrell had done Combs a favor: The shove out the door would be just the push that he needed to realize his lifelong dream of becoming a superstar and amassing the millions that would come with such fame.

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5

Hitting the Big Time W

hen Sean Combs was fired, he lost not only his job but also his home, as he was evicted from his plush living arrangement. There would be no more Cristal champagne parties and mingling with industry movers and shakers at Andre Harrell’s house. Leaving Uptown meant that, for the time being, he had to move back into his mother’s Mount Vernon home. After a period of feeling disoriented and frightened at being on his own, Combs pulled himself together and got started on his future. Janice Combs’s house became the home of Bad Boy as well as her “bad boy.” Combs soon hired several of his former college friends from Howard to help him run his nascent company, putting in 15-hour work days that started at 8 a.m. sharp. 46

Hitting the Big Time Combs got a much-needed infusion of cash for Bad Boy by managing his old friend Heavy D. He also signed on a rising rapper named Craig Mack, whose hit single, “Flava in Ya Ear,” was the fledgling label’s first release. But, the pressure was on Combs to deliver a hit for Biggie Smalls (who was now going by the stage name Notorious B.I.G. since another artist was already using the name Biggie Smalls; his friends all still called him Biggie, though). He told Combs that if he didn’t see some real money—and soon—from his music, he’d go back to drug dealing, which had made him considerably more cash than he was making from rapping. Combs laid down the law to Biggie and warned him that if he got into any trouble, if he so much as ran a red light, Combs would wash his hands of the rapper. Biggie countered that if nothing happened by the end of the summer, he’d go back to North Carolina where he had lived for a time and where he’d been arrested for selling drugs, and back to dealing.

Establishing Bad Boy Word was out among record executives—most of whom supported the talented young entrepreneur—that Sean Combs was looking for a distribution deal. L. A. Reid was a renowned producer and the founder (along with his business partner, producer, and R & B singer Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds) of LaFace Records. LaFace was distributed by industry powerhouse Arista Records, and Reid arranged for Combs and Arista head Clive Davis to meet. Davis, a legend in the music business for decades, later said that he found the young entrepreneur “unusual in his marketing perspective, creative visions, sense of himself, and the music he wanted to do.” He approached his negotiations with Combs from a music standpoint rather than just a monetary one, asking him what kind of music he wanted to make instead of how much money he wanted. Combs demonstrated his vision by playing Davis some tracks by Craig Mack and Biggie, which

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L.A Reid is the cofounder LaFace Records, which was distributed by Arista Records. Reid is responsible for scheduling the meeting between Combs and Arista head Clive Davis. Davis agreed to finance Combs’s own label, Bad Boy Records. Above, L.A. Reid is photographed at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards party.

Hitting the Big Time convinced the music executive that he had found the right man to propel Arista into the profitable hip-hop market. He agreed to bankroll the energetic go-getter. Combs was sold. Of course, the $15 million that Arista offered for distribution rights didn’t hurt; nor did Combs’s annual starting salary of $700,000. Contracts were drawn up, with Janice Combs listed as Bad Boy Entertainment’s official owner. Arista even provided plush new offices and a personal assistant for the new company and its owner. (In 1996, Arista reinforced its relationship with Bad Boy with the purchase a 50-percent stake in the company.) Two months after being fired from Uptown, Sean “Puffy” Combs was riding high. Now he just had to get Biggie back on board—and fast.

Fortune Smiles It took some doing before Combs finally located Biggie, though he hadn’t done so quite soon enough. The rapper had gone back to drug dealing in North Carolina, just as he had threatened. Promising a contract and a check upon his return, Combs convinced Biggie to come back to New York. (It just so happened, relates Ronin Ro in Bad Boy, that the rapper “boarded the train for New York just as North Carolina police raided the apartment and arrested his new roommates,” one of whom had been wanted for seven years.) Combs could be the person for whom the term “micromanager” was coined. He shaped every facet of Biggie’s career, as well as his other artists’. Recounts Richard Oliver in Hip-Hop, Inc., “For everyone on his label, Combs was the executive producer, stylist, publicist, and strategist rolled into one . . . supervising every aspect of every song to make sure it was as good, and as commercial, as it could possibly be.” He even chose the clothes worn in the videos. Combs took his organizational cues from legend Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records and creator of the Motown sound. Combs once told VH1, “I’m definitely the biggest fan of Berry Gordy and his artist development and

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sean combs his attention to detail. I think that if [he] had to sew one of the Supremes’ outfits, he would have.” His hands-on approach extended to lyrics, and it was the rare song that wasn’t incessantly tweaked by Combs. The results paid off handsomely, and Bad Boy hit pay dirt in 1994 with the release of Notorious B.I.G.’s debut album, Ready to Die, even though—given Combs’s determination to reach every possible demographic with his various artists—arguments between producer and artist were commonplace. Biggie, in particular, often battled with Combs, demanding a more hard-core sound than the radio friendly music his mentor was aiming for. Combs usually won because no one knew his audience better, and though Biggie wanted to stay true to his neighborhood roots, he wanted to get rich even more. On the other hand, Combs conceded to his other major artist, Craig Mack, when Mack wanted to include “When God Comes” on his debut album. The song was a direct attack on gangsta rappers like Biggie for, as Ronin Ro puts it, “promoting mayhem to increase sales.” Mack won the argument, and the song went on his album, which became a huge success.

Magic Touch Other artists soon joined the Bad Boy stable, including 112 and a rising singer-songwriter named Faith Evans. Combs had great faith in Evans, who, like Combs, had dropped out of college— in her case Fordham University in the Bronx, where she had received an academic scholarship—to pursue a music career. Even before signing with Bad Boy, her star was on the rise, but Combs was captivated by the emotions that she poured into her songs, and he was resolute in promoting her. Besides finding stardom at Bad Boy, Evans also found her personal future. Soon after signing with Bad Boy in the summer of 1994, she met the Notorious B.I.G. at a company party. The attraction was mutual and instantaneous. Within two weeks of meeting, Biggie and Faith Evans were married.

Hitting the Big Time

Faith Evans was just one of the many artists signed to Combs’s upand-coming label, Bad Boy Records. Soon after her signing, Faith Evans met her label-mate, The Notorious B.I.G. The two instantly hit it off, and two weeks later, Faith and Biggie were married.

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sean combs While they were honeymooning, Bad Boy released the first single from Notorious B.I.G.’s debut album, Ready to Die. The single almost immediately went gold. The album, released two months later, in October, was primarily produced by others, though Combs took executive producer credit, giving him a slice of the pie. It was a tactic that he employed on numerous albums that Bad Boy released. He also gained a reputation for adding his own ad-libs to his artists’ tracks, not to mention dancing in their videos. Beyond managing and producing Bad Boy artists, Combs had opened his own recording studio, called Daddy’s House, and was producing tracks for other singers, as well. He eventually worked with such high-profile artists as TLC, Lil’

GIVING BACK the success of his company gave combs the chance to live up to a vow he had made to himself to give back to the community. In 1995, he established Daddy’s house social programs, an organization that provides educational programs and initiatives for underprivileged urban youth. some of the innovative programs started by Daddy’s house include: • Daddy’s House Weekend Boys and Girls Club, which offers inner-city kids weekend tutoring throughout the school year in math, geography, “manhood training,” and “womanhood training”; • Daddy’s House Summer Camp, which funds cultural and educational trips for 200 underprivileged kids each summer; • a summer Wall Street program; • and a summer computer-literacy camp given in upstate New York.

Hitting the Big Time Kim, Mariah Carey, Boyz II Men, Usher, LL Cool J, Aretha Franklin, and Mary J. Blige. Though numerous critics derided Combs’s production efforts, which frequently sampled old R&B songs, as being too predictable and lacking any bite, no one could argue with his commercial success. Artists could almost always count on a Combs-produced song heading to the top of the charts. He was a whirlwind, going from a video shoot to a hip restaurant, then off to Philadelphia for a party, then back to his recording studio to lay down a few tracks before heading uptown for yet another video shoot. He told the New York Times, “I’ll sleep for, like, an hour. . . . Our motto is, sleep is forbidden—when most are sleeping, we are working.”

East Coast vs. West Coast Around the same time that Biggie was starting to make it big on the hip-hop scene, a friend and fellow rapper was also making waves. Like Biggie, Tupac Shakur had been born in Brooklyn, though his family had moved around a lot, eventually settling just north of San Francisco. Tupac had recorded two wellreceived albums on the Interscope label (home to Death Row records), and he and Biggie were in lockstep for fame. Their friendship had begun on the set of Poetic Justice, which Shakur had starred in, and grew to the point where Tupac had the stillunknown Biggie open for him on tour. The friendship had soured after Shakur accused Biggie of stealing his ideas. Soon, a vicious rivalry began, culminating on the night of November 30, 1994, just before Biggie’s debut album was released. Shakur—who was in New York for sentencing on a sexual assault charge—was heading into a Times Square recording studio to lay down a vocal track. Upstairs in another studio at the same time were Biggie, Sean Combs, Andre Harrell, and several others. Shakur and some friends had just entered the lobby when they were ambushed by three men with guns. After robbing Shakur and one of his friends, the

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Around the time of Biggie’s success, West-coast rapper Tupac Shakur was also making a name for himself in the hip-hop world. The two rappers became friends when Tupac was filming Poetic Justice with Janet Jackson (above). Soon thereafter, Tupac and Biggie had a falling out and started the most intense rivalry in hip-hop history.

Hitting the Big Time gunmen shot the rapper five times before fleeing. His friends carried the bleeding rapper up to the studio where Biggie was supposed to be. Tupac later alleged to Vibe magazine that Combs, Biggie, and Harrell did nothing to help him. He further accused Combs and Biggie of setting him up to be shot. The allegations shocked the two men. Combs later described the night to Rolling Stone: “I immediately went to him, sat him down, calmed him, had people call the ambulance.” And Biggie—who had called his mother that very night to exclaim, “Somebody shot my man!”—visited Shakur in the hospital the following day after the rapper got out of surgery. Neither gesture had apparently mattered to Tupac, who remained steadfast in his accusations. Soon after the shooting, Tupac was sent to jail for the assault charge. While incarcerated, according to Andrew Cable in The Unauthorized Sean “Puffy” Combs Story, “Puffy wrote to Shakur in prison, hoping to clear the air of any suspicions or hard feelings . . . and get to the bottom of what had been published in Vibe. Biggie and Puffy wanted Tupac to know they had nothing but love in their hearts for him. And Shakur supposedly [told] Puffy not to worry, that they were cool. . . . They thought they had nothing to worry about between Bad Boy and Death Row.” But, they hadn’t counted on the influence of Marion “Suge” Knight, the CEO of Los Angeles–based Death Row Records. Knight, who promoted ultraviolent gangsta rap and whose stable of artists included Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, helped Tupac gain his release from jail in exchange for recording three albums for his label. And, Knight made no effort to hide his loathing of Combs and his Bad Boy music. He fanned the flames of the feud by ridiculing Combs’s watered-down and overly mainstreamed approach to hip-hop. Sean Combs was more surprised than anyone by the criticism he received from Knight. Although not friends, as Biggie and Tupac had been before the rancor started flowing between them, Combs and Knight had certainly been friendly—and

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sean combs friendly rivals. In fact, Combs was quick to say that he admired and respected his West Coast counterpart and had modeled Bad Boy Entertainment on Knight’s Death Row Records. Calling the so-called feud a complete misunderstanding, he told USA Today, “I don’t think you can be in a feud with somebody if there’s not two people arguing.” Why Knight suddenly had such rancor toward Combs was unclear, but the East Coast versus West Coast feud had been formed. The results would be tragic.

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Birth and Death F

or Sean Combs, even the release of Notorious B.I.G.’s smash debut album in September 1994 took a backseat to the other major event in his life that year. On December 4, his first child was born, a son named Justin Dior. The child’s mother was Misa Hylton, Combs’s longtime girlfriend (and his stylist at Uptown), although they had split up by the time Justin was born. In fact, Combs had already become involved with another woman. Kim Porter, whom he had met a couple of years before at Uptown Records, where she worked as a receptionist, would prove to be his most enduring relationship, though he steadily maintained that he wasn’t marriage material. While his relationship with Hylton was over, they stayed close and shared the raising of their son, who was—and remains—a huge source of pride for Combs. 57

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sean combs Apparently his relationship with Hylton’s mother wasn’t nearly as smooth. The New York Times reported that soon after Justin’s birth, Combs got into a “shoving match” with the older woman, and the police were called to investigate. Another incident occurred a short time later. He was accused by a man in Washington, D.C., of flashing a gun and threatening him. Although both cases were thrown out of court, the two events marked the start of Combs finding himself in the glare of the media spotlight for allegedly belligerent—and occasionally criminal—behavior. The irony, of course, is that Combs was striving to produce a kindler, gentler rap music to counter rival label Death Row Records. It seemed his behavior did not match his image.

Armed Conflict In August 1995, Suge Knight declared open warfare on Sean Combs when he shocked the crowd attending the second annual Source Awards in New York by saying, “If you don’t want the owner of your label on your album or in your video or on your tour, come to Death Row.” Knight had thrown down the gauntlet. The reference was an obvious slap at Combs, who felt that his rapping cameos on his artists’ records and dancing in their videos was for the good of the Bad Boy brand. Combs was flabbergasted. He later told Vibe, “I couldn’t believe what he said.” Such a public belittling particularly stung because he had previously admired and respected Knight. Before long, so the rumors went, each label had aligned with a rival street gang: Bad Boy with the Crips and Death Row with the Bloods. And, before long, angry words were replaced with deadly weapons. Matters boiled over a month later when the two men— separately—attended a birthday party in Atlanta, Georgia, for renowned R & B producer Jermaine Dupri. Combs later told Vibe that he’d had so little expectation of trouble that he took

Birth and Death

Death Row Records CEO Marion “Suge” Knight was a major instigator of the East Coast / West Coast rivalry. During the 1995 Source Awards, Knight caused great controversy when he publicly attacked Combs. The rivalry continued until two of the most popular hip-hop rappers of that time were shot and killed.

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sean combs his young son with him to Atlanta. “At that time, there wasn’t really [any] drama.” After the party, he was settling into his limousine when he spotted Knight leaving the club. Suddenly people started screaming. Combs said that he got out of the limo and had no sooner asked Knight if he was all right when shots rang out. The two men turned around to discover Knight’s good friend Jake Robles had been mortally wounded. Knight accused Combs of having something to do with the shooting, which Combs vehemently denied. Witnesses later claimed that the two men had been arguing inside the club—which Combs also denied—and that one member of Combs’s entourage had done the shooting. Nothing was ever proven. The rumors were stoked by Source and Vibe, which both printed stories linking Combs to the shooting. But, as he told Rolling Stone, “That’s insane. Why would I have anybody killed? I have too much to lose. I fear God too much.”

Deadly Rivalry The feud continued unabated, with artists from both labels taking increasingly vicious jabs at one another via their music. Notorious B.I.G. released “Who Shot Ya,” interpreted by many as mocking Tupac Shakur’s shooting, though Biggie claimed he wrote the song long before that event. In retaliation, Tupac released “Hit ‘Em Up,” in which he claimed to have had an affair with Biggie’s wife, Faith Evans, and also threatened both Biggie and Combs. The rivalry was hyped by the media, which escalated matters to the point that at the 10th Annual Soul Train Awards (held in Los Angeles that year), each faction’s entourage came close to rioting. Combs, now traveling with bodyguards— gossip said they were members of the Crips—managed to avoid any confrontation with his rival. For many—fans and musicians alike—part of the attraction of rap, and gangsta rap in particular, was the implication

Birth and Death

On September 7, 1996, Tupac Shakur was shot four times in a drive-by shooting and died six days later. After attending a Las Vegas boxing match, Shakur was attacked in a black BMW (above) driven by Suge Knight. Tupac’s killer remains unknown to this day.

of violence, even if much of the time it was just a pose. But the Bad Boy–Death Row rivalry was no pose, and the feud sped on toward what seemed to be an unavoidable deadly conclusion. On September 7, 1996, in Las Vegas, after attending a boxing match, Tupac was riding with Suge Knight in Knight’s BMW when he was shot four times. Despite multiple operations to save his life, Tupac died six days later. Once again rumors had Combs and Biggie responsible for arranging the shooting, if not actually carrying it out. Retaliation seemed inevitable, and it was.

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sean combs Six months later, on March 9, 1997, after leaving a party in Los Angeles thrown by Vibe, Combs, Biggie, and the rest of the Bad Boy entourage climbed into their vehicles. At an intersection, the light turned yellow. Combs’s car went through just before the light changed to red, but Biggie’s SUV stopped. As Biggie’s driver waited for the green light, a black Chevy Impala crept up alongside his SUV. The Impala’s driver, a black man wearing a blue suit and a bow tie, rolled down his window and fired his automatic pistol; four shots hit Biggie in the chest. The Impala sped away. Combs—whose car had been waiting for the others just across the intersection—raced to his friend and found him slumped in the passenger seat of the SUV. Biggie probably died instantly. The 24-year-old rapper was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 1:15 a.m. In what was likely not a coincidence, Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls, aka Notorious B.I.G., had been killed in an almost identical manner as Tupac Shakur.

“I’ll Be Missing You” While he was devastated by the murder of his friend, Combs—ever the master of self-promotion—managed to use the occasion as a means for boosting his record label. He released Biggie’s double CD, Life After Death, on March 25, and it debuted at number one on the Billboard Albums chart. At the same time that Combs was honoring Biggie, according to Ronin Ro, he put himself in center stage—where he always seemed to gravitate—by saying, “My music must provide the young not only with the reality of life, it must serve as an inspiration for us to create a better life.” Ro writes, “The mainstream media did not question whether he was using Biggie’s death to fuel sales. Instead, he was now the big story on MTV. . . . Biggie’s mother later said, ‘They had a beautiful relationship. But it was a business relationship. Puffy was not Christopher’s best friend.’ ”

Birth and Death

Biggie Smalls, a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G. was gunned down on March 9, 1997, in a drive-by shooting. After many accusations and thorough investigations, Biggie’s murderer is still unknown. In the photograph above, mourners gather at Biggie’s funeral procession in Brooklyn, New York.

Whether he was being artful or artless, Combs got a lot of press from the story of how he came to his idea of a way to honor Biggie. According to Combs, he was watching MTV one day when the video for “Every Breath You Take” by the rock group the Police came on, and he was immediately inspired to rework the song into a tribute to Biggie. Primarily written by Dame Grease, then further tweaked by Combs, the new lyrics were, according to Ro, “universal enough to appeal to a white

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sean combs audience and specific enough to reach bereaved fans.” Faith Evans, Biggie’s widow, and 112 sang the chorus, accompanying Combs’s soft-rock rap. Renamed “I’ll Be Missing You” (a variation on the original song’s hook line, “I’ll be watching you”), the song debuted at number one on six Billboard charts and stayed at the top for 11 weeks on the Pop 100 singles chart. As a testament to Biggie’s enormous popularity, the song also hit the top of the charts in 15 other countries. It ended up being the biggest-selling single of 1997. Combs had achieved his goal.

Puff Daddy Solos The astonishing success of “I’ll Be Missing You” convinced Combs that it was time to record a solo album and become an artist in his own right. Having produced highly successful music for others, he was confident that he could produce equally successful music for himself. He set to work on his debut album, working virtually around the clock. His magic touch didn’t fail him. The album was entitled No Way Out, by Puff Daddy & the Family—featuring the LOX, Mase, and Black Rob (who are all pictured on the cover with Combs) as well as Faith Evans, Foxy Brown, Busta Rhymes, Lil’ Kim, and 112. Released on July 22, 1997, the album was an unqualified commercial (if not critical) smash, selling more than 500,000 copies the first week. (It went on to sell quadruple platinum.) Combs even made the cover of Rolling Stone, which dubbed him the “King of Hip-Hop.” It was at this time that Combs adopted a new, more urbane image. His videos show him wearing handsome, often white, suits and tap dancing like old-time movie stars. He also restyled his other Bad Boy artists, putting them in shiny silver suits that reminded many of 1950s oldies groups. It was an obvious attempt to reach a wider crossover—that is, white—audience. Hard-core rap fans were put off by the changes, but the retooling accomplished exactly what Combs had been aiming for. He and other Bad Boy rappers were getting steady MTV

birth and Death airplay for their videos, and their albums were selling like proverbial hotcakes. Of course, the highly successful image change also opened him to criticism that he had sold out—one critic called his productions “African-American Muzak.” Others found his rhymes uninspired and bland and accused him of overusing samples. Combs, countering that he wanted “to give off only positive vibes” and entertain people, became a media darling who could seemingly do no wrong and who promoted the idea of his Bad Boy family—a family strengthened by their shared grief over the murder of Notorious B.I.G.

beYonD baD boY The idea of “family” could also describe Combs’s personal situation. On April 1, 1997, his girlfriend, Kim Porter, gave birth to a son they named Christian Casey Combs. Still, although this second son seemed to reinforce Combs’s family image, he steadfastly resisted marriage. But, the birth of another child

NEMESIS vindicating voletta wallace, who has long maintained that the Los angeles police Department withheld crucial evidence in her son’s murder, a district court judge in Los angeles in January 2006 ruled that the LapD had indeed deliberately concealed reams of evidence, attesting that rogue police officers—in affiliation with suge Knight—participated in biggie’s murder. Furthermore, the evidence seemed to implicate Knight in tupac shakur’s murder, as well. (according to witnesses, tupac was planning to leave Death row records, a move that greatly displeased Knight.)

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In 1997, Kim Porter, Combs’s longtime girlfriend, gave birth to his second child, Christian Casey. He had a son, Justin, with his previous girlfriend and fashion stylist, Misa Hylton. Above, Combs poses with his family at the 2006 BET Awards.

Birth and Death prompted him to look beyond his musical kingdom for other entrepreneurial opportunities. His recent string of number-one hits had given him the reputation for having a Midas touch that would turn every record into gold, and singers like Mariah Carey were clamoring for his attention. (He was getting as much as $150,000 per track from artists on other labels.) But he was restless to explore new territory. Diving into the restaurant scene, he opened Justin’s, a Caribbean–soul food restaurant named for his firstborn son, in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. Like everything else Combs had a go at, the restaurant was an immediate success. (So much so that he opened a branch in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1999.) He capped 1997 with a tour that pulled out all the stops and featured some of the biggest hip-hop headliners of the day, including Foxy Brown, Lil’ Kim, 112, the LOX, and Jay-Z. When the tour played Madison Square Garden on December 4, Christopher Wallace’s mother, Voletta, was sitting in front. Combs called her on stage and gave her a $2 million check—Biggie’s share of the profits from the tribute album. The crowd roared their approval. Sean Combs was hip-hop’s biggest star ever. The young man who dreamed about becoming a millionaire had earned millions many times over that year. Where could he go from there?

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The Next Phase T

he year 1997 had been a roller-coaster ride for Sean Combs, going from wonderful highs (the birth of his son) to terrible lows (the death of his friend), and it looked like 1998 was going to be equally unpredictable. The year started out on a high note, with seven Grammy nominations. On February 25, at the 40th annual Grammy Awards, Combs won two of the coveted awards, one for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Rap Group for Biggie’s tribute song, “I’ll Be Missing You,” and Best Rap Album for his own debut effort, No Way Out. The latter win was especially gratifying as it was a confirmation of his own performing abilities. Then Bad Boy lost one of its high-profile groups. Not long after the release of their debut album, Money, Power & Respect, 68

The Next Phase the LOX wanted out of their contract to make music that was more hard-core than Bad Boy’s crossover approach. They felt that their image was suffering at Combs’s hands. Ignoring the criticism of both his artists and the music critics, who kept taking potshots at his continual use of pop samples and remixes, Combs continued pursuing the marriage of rap and rock, partly to satisfy the larger crossover audience, who were making him extremely wealthy from his musical collaborations with rockers like Jimmy Page, Rob Zombie, and Dave Grohl— and partly because he genuinely loved both musical genres. But the market was changing, and Combs wasn’t keeping up with that change. The loss of the LOX from the Bad Boy family was made up for by a newcomer named Jamaal “Shyne” Barrow. Like Biggie, he was from Brooklyn. Also like Biggie, his was a more hardcore hip-hop. And, though Combs had had amazing success with the innovative Bad Boy sound, he also knew that as Bad Boy Entertainment went more and more mainstream, it alienated its hard-core rap fans since a large segment of the hip-hop audience preferred the harder-edged music. Plus Shyne even rapped and sounded like Biggie, which gave Combs high hopes for the young rapper. After a fierce bidding war between his and several other labels, Combs signed Shyne to a contract for “at least $1 million,” according to Newsweek. The deal was unprecedented in the industry. Just as Andre Harrell had mentored Sean Combs, Combs now mentored Shyne. He didn’t just groom Shyne for rap stardom, he also took him under his wing as his protégé and sidekick. Shyne spent hours hanging out at Daddy’s House, Combs’s recording studio. As the “apprentice rapper” told the Village Voice, “I was there all the time because one day I hoped to be [as successful as] Michael Jackson. I was gonna study everything Combs did, just try to be around him as much as possible to absorb some of that energy and see what it was that got him to the level he is at right now.” Combs bought the

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In 1998, Jamaal “Shyne” Barrow (above) signed with Bad Boy Records. After rappers the LOX left Bad Boy Records, Shyne became Combs’ new protégé and sidekick. The two became extremely close until the fateful night of December 27, 1999.

The Next Phase younger man expensive jewelry that resembled his own and a high-priced car, and they spent head-spinning nights out on the town. The two were inseparable—for the time being.

Bigger and Better Branching out in an entirely new direction that year, Combs started his own clothing company. Long a clotheshorse himself, Combs drew on his ghetto fabulous style and reimagined himself as a fashion designer. Not surprisingly, he named the company for himself and called it Sean John. Combs was inspired by the clothing company successes of two hip-hop legends. Russell Simmons of Def Jam Records had started the hugely successful Phat Farm clothing line, which evolved from traditional baggy hip-hop gear that reflected an urban lifestyle into, according to the company, “a mixture of the hip-hop culture of the streets and the preppy culture of the Ivy League.” And, Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter, Damon Dash, and Kareem “Biggs” Burke, founders of Roc-A-Fella Records, created Rocawear, clothing that started out as “the brand of choice for street savvy consumers” and quickly evolved into an international line snapped up by young, hip customers of all stripes. Like Phat Farm and Rocawear, Sean John clothes were initially casual wear geared toward urban youth, but the line quickly morphed into designer clothing for men. As fashion designer Vivienne Tam observed, Combs evolved “from music magnate to fashion force” whose clothes translated “the sensibilities of contemporary urban life and music into fashion.” Soon the company offered two distinct brands: the moderately priced Bad Boy active-wear line and Sean John, a highfashion, upscale collection. To the surprise of many—except, no doubt, himself—Combs’s designs won international acclaim from even the most skeptical fashionistas and were regularly featured on the glossy pages of style magazines. Remarkably, right out of the gate in his first year in business, Combs was nominated for the prestigious Council of Fashion Designers of

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Known for his ghetto fabulous style, Sean Combs decided to launch his own clothing line. In 2001, he started the Sean John fashion line, which focused on upscale menswear. Comb’s line received critical acclaim and was nominated for the prestigious Council of Fashion Designers of America Perry Ellis Award for Menswear. In the photograph above, Combs greets the audience at his 2001 collection.

America (CFDA) Perry Ellis Award for Menswear. In no time at all, his new company had gone from start-up to startlingly high profile. And “high profile” seemed to define Combs’s life more than ever. Although his model girlfriend Kim Porter was still in the picture, he began a highly publicized romance with actress/ singer Jennifer Lopez, the former Fly Girl, now a major movie star. (They met when he produced her album On the 6.) He

The Next Phase blatantly embraced an upper-class lifestyle, spending summers in Long Island’s East Hampton—a stylish enclave of extreme wealth—where socialites and show biz people mixed it up at lavish theme parties thrown at his multimillion-dollar home. The events were then splashed all over the gossip columns and headlined the tabloids. This elaborate lifestyle created an even bigger wedge between Combs and his hard-core fans. As Ronin Ro put it, “In hip-hop circles, Puffy Combs lost all credibility. Hip-hop fans came to see him as a poser who had a chauffeur in a Bentley drive him to socialite charity events and a fraud who wore white suits with Biggie-like derbies and moved away from black people, into a 14-million-dollar Manhattan mansion and a palatial East Hampton home.” Combs wanted to have it both ways: “trying to promote a hard-core image” while “trying to ingratiate himself to rich white people.” But, an incident at a crowded nightclub almost put an end to the good life that Sean Combs had so carefully cultivated. At the very least, it ended up costing Combs his relationship with Lopez.

Trial and Tribulations On December 27, 1999, in the VIP section of the Manhattan hotspot Club New York, Sean Combs was having a postChristmas party with Jennifer Lopez, Shyne, and childhood friend and bodyguard Anthony “Wolf ” Jones. After running up a $4,000 tab for Cristal champagne, Combs and his entourage headed out of the club. Trouble started when Combs accidentally shoved another patron, Matthew “Scar” Allen, causing the man to drop his drink. According to the police, the two men then squared off and traded insults. Bouncers tried to break them up. Then someone—it was alleged that it was Combs—fired a gun. Three more shots were fired, this time reportedly by Shyne. (He later said that he had fired into the ceiling, hoping to break up the argument without incident.) When the firing stopped, three people had been shot, fortunately none too

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Combs’s relationship with actress Jennifer Lopez brought him even more publicity. The two met when Combs worked on Lopez’s debut album, On the 6. In the photograph above, Jennifer Lopez arrives with Combs at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards.

the next phase severely. Several people, Allen among them, claim that they saw Combs with a gun in his hand. Shyne then fled the club, as did Combs, Lopez, and Jones. Police arrested Shyne on the spot. A short while later, they caught up with Combs and his pals, who had fled in his chauffeur-driven Lincoln Navigator. The driver had bypassed a police blockade and run numerous red lights in the attempt to get away. The foursome was arrested when a loaded handgun was found under the passenger seat and no one claimed

BROUHAHA It often seems that wherever sean combs goes, trouble follows. sometimes, though, he apparently starts it. In april 1999, combs, along with two bodyguards, stormed into the office of Interscope records executive steve stoute’s office and bashed stoute with a champagne bottle, a chair, and a telephone. stoute’s offense: his client was rapper nas, whose video for “hate me now” featured images of combs being crucified. combs had willingly filmed the scene, but then he changed his mind, saying that the video showed disrespect to god, and demanded removal of the scene. stoute refused to agree to combs’s demands, and the video subsequently aired on mtv, which infuriated combs. For the beating, combs was charged with aggravated assault, which could have meant jail time. but the two men eventually settled out of court for a rumored $500,000, and combs publicly apologized to stoute, admitting that he had behaved inappropriately. stoute then requested that the charges be dropped, but instead the court reduced the charges to second-degree harassment and ordered combs to attend a one-day anger-management class as his punishment.

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sean combs ownership. The police also alleged that they recovered another handgun that had been tossed out the vehicle’s window. After being held overnight, Lopez was cleared of any unlawful activity and let go. Combs and Jones, however, were charged with weapons possession. Shyne was charged with attempted murder. They were all released after posting bail (Combs posted his own as well as his driver’s). Bribery was eventually added to Combs and Jones’s charges when Combs’s driver later claimed that the rapper and his bodyguard tried to get him to tell police that the gun was his in exchange for $50,000 and a platinum ring. Combs was now facing a possible 15 years in prison.

The Trial The media had a field day and came down even harder on Combs than they did after the City College tragedy. It took more than a year for the case to come to trial. Combs steadfastly proclaimed his innocence wherever and whenever possible, but he was worried all the same, fearing that his fame made him a target. Adding to his troubles, his record sales were declining. Worst of all, he had to explain to his children why he had been arrested and was now facing trial. Well-known defense attorneys Benjamin Brafman and Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. represented Combs and Jones when the trial began on January 29, 2001. Shyne had another lawyer defending him. (In an attempt to further distance himself from his once-loved protégé, Combs asked to be tried separately from Shyne, but the judge refused.) In Brafman’s opening statement to the jurors who would be deliberating Sean Combs’s fate, the attorney told them, “You can call him Sean, you can call him Mr. Combs, you can call him Puff Daddy, you can call him just plain Puffy. But the one thing you cannot do in this case is call him guilty. . . . This case is not about rap music. It’s about rap—a bum rap.”

The Next Phase

On March 15, 2001, Sean Combs was seen leaving the New York State Supreme Court, where he was on trial for bribery and weapons possession. Combs was arrested in 1999 after leaving a New York City club where shots were fired and people were injured.

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sean combs The prosecution presented witness after witness who all testified that Combs had fired a gun that night. The defense presented its own parade of witnesses who testified to the contrary. In a rebuttal argument, the prosecution presented evidence of witness tampering: Records from cell phones owned by Combs showed calls made to several witnesses, which seemed to indicate that he had convinced them to change their testimony in his favor. His lawyers argued that it was impossible to know what was actually said in these conversations. In the end, despite 60 witnesses testifying that Combs had fired a gun that night and had tried to bribe his driver into covering for him, Combs was acquitted of all charges, as was his codefendant, Anthony “Wolf ” Jones. Jamaal “Shyne” Barrow was not so lucky. He was found guilty of weapons possession, assault, and reckless endangerment and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The Aftermath Although Combs and Lopez maintained the appearance of togetherness during most of the trial, she had in fact broken up with him on Valentine’s Day 2001, finding the pressure of all the negative publicity too difficult to handle. Now, with the trial behind him and the wave of hysteria surrounding him receding, but with his reputation badly bruised, Combs decided he needed a change of image, and a new persona needed a new name. Gone would be Puffy and Puff Daddy. From now on, he would be known as P. Diddy. He told MTV: “No more Puff Daddy. . . . The first week in June we’re gonna have a name change ceremony. . . . I’m rockin’ with P. Diddy now; . . . my man Biggie gave me that name.” Furthermore, he announced that he was going to make his mark in yet another career: acting.

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New Millennium, New Challenges I

f an entrepreneur is by definition someone who undertakes and operates a new enterprise or venture, then Sean Combs from 2000 on met that definition more than ever. His restless spirit seemed to go into overdrive with the coming of the new millennium.

Sean Combs, Actor In 2001, Sean Combs scratched his acting itch at about the same time that he released his compilation album, The Saga Continues. The album got only so-so reviews, though it put Combs back in the rap game after an absence of a couple of years. His initial acting forays, on the other hand, fared better than the album. Billed as Sean Combs, he received surprisingly good reviews in his first film, the independent comedy Made. In his 79

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In 2004, Combs made his Broadway debut in the play A Raisin in the Sun. Above, Combs is photographed at curtain call, flanked by co-stars Audra McDonald (left) and Phylicia Rashad (right). Although Combs did not receive glowing reviews for his acting, he was credited for leaving his comfort zone to try something new.

second film, the Oscar-winning Monster’s Ball, his reviews were even more impressive. Combs made his Broadway stage debut in April 2004, starring in the classic Lorraine Hansbury play, A Raisin in the Sun, opposite famed actress Phylicia Rashad. Many were skeptical when he was signed for the role. Although he didn’t exactly generate rave reviews for his performance, most critics at least gave him props for having the courage to tackle both live theater and a major role, and some were more than just kind. In

New Millennium, New Challenges an October 2006 interview in Entertainment Weekly magazine, Combs admitted, “Live theater, if I would’ve got warned what it was, I don’t know if I would’ve done it. . . . You don’t want to be up there for two and a half hours saying the words when you can feel you’re being bad. But the more nights I felt like I sucked, the better I got because you don’t want that feeling.”

Sean Combs, Sole Proprietor In May 2002, Bad Boy Records released a compilation album titled We Invented the Remix, whose cover touted P. Diddy and Bad Boy Present . . . and featured remixes of hit singles by Bad Boy artists such as hip-hop superstars Missy Elliott and Snoop Dogg. The album went platinum, reaching the top of the Billboard 200 Albums Chart. Sean Combs had returned to the top of the charts. The album also marked the end of the joint venture between Bad Boy Entertainment and Arista Records. Several months before, Arista had decided to drop Bad Boy recordings for being too expensive and too controversial (the company had yet to recoup anywhere near the $50 million it had extended to Bad Boy as an advance on future earnings back in 1993). But the divorce didn’t hurt Combs at all, either personally (he said of the split, “Everybody grows up and has to move out of the house”) or financially; he walked away with his roster of artists intact—although some, like Faith Evans and 112, would soon leave the Bad Boy fold. More important, though, he still owned 100 percent of Bad Boy’s song catalog.

Sean Combs, TV Star Soon after the split from Arista, MTV came calling with an offer for Combs to take over its popular Making the Band reality show in its fourth season. The show would be called Making the Band 2 since it would be the second band to be created. MTV hoped to kick up the popularity and enhance the reputation of its show by putting Combs in charge of the formation of a hip-hop group.

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VOTE OR DIE CAMPAIGN sean combs launched his 2004 voter-registration campaign with a posh party in the hamptons that commemorated Independence Day. to make his point about the importance of voting, he borrowed an original copy of the 1776 Declaration of Independence from tv producer norman Lear. the document is one of only 25 known to exist and is worth $8 million.

The premise was familiar to followers of American Idol, with a twist: After nationwide auditions of thousands of aspiring musicians, the half-hour show would follow 20 semifinalists, who would compete to be in the creation of a mainstream hip-hop/R & B group signed to Bad Boy. The six chosen finalists would then be filmed, starting with the audition process, then going through the paces of becoming a coherent group. The finalists—who would be living together in a New York City town house—would be constantly scrutinized and evaluated by the hip-hop mogul, who would judge them on their songwriting, dancing, and performing skills and mold them into a supergroup. The series would be Combs’s first weekly TV venture, giving him access to his biggest audience yet while giving viewers a better understanding of the job of a producer. He quickly hopped aboard the project as both star and coproducer, knowing that the reality show would be yet another gold mine. Ironically, he admitted that the very idea of making a band usually doesn’t work out, since, as he told Newsweek magazine, “Genuine talent crosses your path when you least expect it. It’s hard to force the issue.”

new millennium, new challenges His first group, Da Band, had a hit album, Too Hot for TV, which debuted at number one on the Billboard R & B Album Chart and hit number two on the Billboard 200. But Combs decided to disband Da Band soon after the album’s release after a string of problems for some of the band members. Despite the fast flameout of his first group, Combs did it all over again with Making the Band 3. This time he created a fivemember all-girl group called Danity Kane. Their self-titled debut album was released in August 2006 and sold very well. As of this writing, the band is still intact, and Combs is about to start yet another season of the show, following the group as they pursue fame and fortune. Time will tell whether this latest creation by Sean Combs will have the staying power of some of his other projects.

PRESS PLAY when sean combs released Press Play in the fall of 2006—his first new album in five years—he admitted to Entertainment Weekly that he agreed with his earlier critics when they accused him of being “that guy who can’t have a hit without a sample. . . . I always understood why people said that. that’s where I was at, so I had to take that one on the chin.” For a man who in the past would be bragging about his talent, combs went so far as to confess, “I wasn’t as good as some of my counterparts.” comparing himself to a sports star who, though promising, has yet to fulfill his potential, he said, “I had a huge amount of success as a beginner . . . [but this album] is probably the first time I feel like I became an artist.”

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Sean Combs, Activist When Sean Combs decides to do something, he usually hits the ground running. In late August 2003 he did so literally when he decided that he would raise money for educational programs to improve schools in New York City’s poorer neighborhoods. He competed in—and completed—the 26-mile New York City Marathon that November, his first-ever race! With his usual focus and commitment (and competitive nature), he started training; while most marathon runners train for months, he had just eight weeks until the race. During his training, he sustained a knee injury, but he persisted. He ran the race, and, despite the knee injury flaring up plus suffering painful leg cramps, he completed the race in an impressive 4 hours, 14 minutes, 54 seconds, beating the overall average finish time by nearly 20 minutes. More important, Combs raised more than $2 million, twice what he had hoped for, which he split between educational needs and a foundation for kids with HIV and AIDS.

Political Organizer In 2004, Combs launched a campaign to get people— especially young people and minorities—to vote. He called it Citizen Change, a nonpartisan voter-registration organization whose slogan was “Vote or Die.” He told the Black Collegian in October 2004, “Young voters in this country are throwing away their power to have a say about education, healthcare, and any issue that affects them. These things affect your life, so . . . Vote or Die!” According to Combs, America’s cultural leaders—whether artists, musicians, or business moguls—should encourage the youngest of the voting age population to exercise the same devotion to voting as they do to buying goods. His aim was to get all 42 million young Americans out to vote in the general elections.

New Millennium, New Challenges

In 2003, Combs decided to raise money for educational programs and schools in New York City by running in the New York City marathon. Even though he had only eight weeks to train, Combs ran an impressive 4 hour, 14 minute, 54 second race. He raised more than $2 million.

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Prior to the 2004 presidential election, Sean Combs launched the “Vote or Die” campaign. The program was a nonpartisan registration organization, which aimed to get more young people to the polls. In the photograph above, Combs is seen wearing his signature logo at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts.

New Millennium, New Challenges

AIDS Activist In November 2002, Combs, along with Alicia Keys and Usher, went to Cape Town, South Africa, to perform at MTV’s Staying Alive concert, which would be broadcast worldwide for World AIDS Day (December 1). While there, Combs told the media that they ignored the severity of the AIDS crisis in Africa, where “millions and millions of people . . . are dying” because “it’s black people that are dying at this high rate.” He said that the world knew too little about the devastating AIDS pandemic in Africa, and he vowed to work to make the truth of the situation more widely known. Combs also said that musicians had a special responsibility to talk to young people about HIV/AIDS.

New Ventures Sean Combs has been the poster child for determination and resolve. Whatever he puts his mind to, he has achieved—in spades—despite the odds and obstacles. Who could have guessed that a kid from Harlem—whose hustler father was murdered over drug territory—would one day be a global commodity with more wealth and success than even he ever dreamed was possible? In the past few years he: • Sold half of Bad Boy Entertainment to Warner Records for $30 million • Was ranked in 2003 as the richest entertainer by Fortune magazine in its first annual “40 Under 40” list (his estimated worth is over $300 million) • Was named 2004 Menswear Designer of the Year by the CFDA (beating out such design giants as Ralph Lauren and Michael Kors) • Launched Sean John Wheels in a 50-50 venture with Weld Wheel Industries • Performed at the half-time show for Super Bowl XXXVIII • Signed a deal with cosmetics giant Estée Lauder to launch a line of fragrances

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sean combs

Today, Combs continues to work on his ever-expanding career and family. In 2006, Combs and Kim Porter became parents to twin girls named D’Lila Star and Jessie James. That same year he released his first album in five years, Press Play.

New Millennium, New Challenges • Purchased a $7 million, 21-room, 17,000-square-foot mansion in New Jersey and a $4 million condo in midtown Manhattan • Ventured into the Latin music market with the start of his new label, Bad Boy Latino • Signed a deal with MTV to produce several new series • Released the hip-hop R&B album Press Play, his first record as “Diddy” and the first in which he actually sings and doesn’t just rap. Sean Combs once said that he doesn’t need much sleep. Given the number of enterprises he juggles, he’s going to need every waking minute of the day to supervise his varied ventures. And, given another new project, he’ll probably sleep even fewer hours a night: On December 21, 2006, he and his longtime girlfriend, model Kim Porter (the mother of his son Christian) became parents to twin daughters, Jessie James and D’Lila Star. And, don’t be surprised if there is yet another name change. In September 2006, Combs lost the right to use “Diddy” in the United Kingdom after being sued by a London-based music producer who had been “trading” under the name since 1992. Given Combs’s competitive nature, it’s hard to imagine him sharing anything—especially his name. Still, the man currently known as Diddy seems to have undergone a bit of a transformation of late. In an October 2006 article in Entertainment Weekly, he said, “This is the year for me to let go and leave all the hype . . . that surrounds me behind. When I’m a recording artist, I can still have that swagger, but with the other things—the action, fashion—I need to not bring all that with me. It’s almost corny, or something to laugh at, if you don’t take the risk to make that change.”

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appendix

Discography Albums As Puff Daddy No Way Out (1997) Forever (1999) As P. Diddy P. Diddy and the Bad Boy Family: The Saga ­Continues . . . (2001) P. Diddy and Bad Boy Records Present . . . We Invented the Remix (2002) Bad Boy’s 10th Anniversary . . . The Hits (2004) As Diddy Press Play (2006)

Singles As Puff Daddy “Been Around the World” (1997) “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” (1997) “It’s All about the Benjamins” (1997)

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Appendix

“I’ll Be Missing You” (1997) “Victory” (1998) “Come With Me” (1998) “Lookin’ at Me” (1998) “All Night Long” (1999) “PE 2000” (1999) “Satisfy You” (1999) “Best Friend” (2000) As P. Diddy “Bad Boy for Life” (2001) “Diddy” (2001) “I Need A Girl: Part One” (2002) “I Need A Girl: Part Two” (2002) “Bump, Bump, Bump” (2002) “Let’s Get Ill” (2003) “Maximum” (2003) “Shake Ya Tailfeather” (2003) “Show Me Your Soul” (2004) As Diddy “Come to Me, Part 2” (2006) “Tell Me” (2006) “Thought You Said” (2006) “Last Night” (2006)

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Appendix

“The Future” (2006) “I’ll Jack You” (2006)

FILMOGRAPHY Made (2001) Monster’s Ball (2001) Death of a Dynasty (2003) Carlito’s Way: Rise to Power (2005) A Raisin in the Sun (2007)

PLAYS A Raisin in the Sun (2004)

chronology

1969 S ean John Combs is born in New York City on November 4.



1972 Combs’s father, Melvin, is murdered on January 26.



1982 T  he Combs family moves from the Bronx to the suburb of Mount Vernon, N.Y.



1988 I n the fall, Combs enters Howard University in Washington, D.C.; he eventually drops out to dedicate himself to music full-time.



1990 He starts A & R work for Uptown Records.



1991 C  ombs becomes vice president of A & R at Uptown; in March, he starts throwing weekly hip-hop parties in New York City, which become enormously successful; on December 28, nine people are crushed to death at a charity basketball game organized  by Combs.



1993 C  ombs is fired from Uptown; soon after, Arista Records agrees to bankroll Bad Boy Entertainment.



1994 N  otorious B.I.G.’s debut album, Ready to Die, is released in September; Justin Dior Combs is born  on December 4 to Sean Combs and girlfriend  Misa Hylton.



1995 Daddy’s House Social Programs are formed.



1996 T  upac Shakur is shot in Las Vegas on September 7;  he dies six days later.



1997 B  iggie Smalls (Notorious B.I.G.) is killed in a shooting in Los Angeles on March 9; Biggie’s posthumous record, Life After Death, is released on March 25; Combs’s album, No Way Out, is released in July. Christian Casey Combs, Combs’s son with Kim

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Chronology

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Porter, is born on April 1. Combs launches his fashion line, Sean John.

1999 C  ombs is accused of a shooting at a New York City nightclub on December 27 while accompanied by his bodyguard and his girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez; he is eventually acquitted of all charges.



2002 A  rista drops Bad Boy Entertainment; Combs stars in the MTV reality show Making the Band 2.



2003 C  ombs runs in the New York City Marathon in November.

Timeline 1969

1993

Sean John Combs is born in New York City on November 4.

Arista Records agrees to bankroll Bad Boy Entertainment.

1994

1969 1991

Combs becomes vice president of A & R at Uptown; on December 28, nine people are crushed to death at a charity basketball game organized by Combs.

1994

Justin Dior Combs is born.

Chronology



2004 H  e starts Citizen Change, a nonpartisan voter-registration organization.



2006 I n October, Press Play, Combs’s first album under the name “Diddy” is released; on December 21, twin girls, Jessie James and D’Lila Star, are born to Combs and longtime girlfriend, Kim Porter.

1999

Combs is accused of a shooting at a New York City nightclub.

1995

Daddy’s House Social Programs are formed.

1995 1997

Christian Casey Combs is born on April 1. Combs launches his fashion line, Sean John.

2006 2006

On December 21, twin girls, Jessie James and D’Lila Star, are born.

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glossary album  A collection of songs, regardless of format. artist and repertoire (A and R)  The department of a record company responsible for discovering and then grooming new talent (performers) for commercial success. A and R people are the link between the performers and the record company and often handle contract negotiations, find appropriate material and producers, and schedule recording sessions. bling-bling (often simply “bling”)  Expensive jewelry (usually diamond-encrusted platinum) and other ostentatious trappings; also excess spending and showiness. crossover   Blending two musical genres together, like hiphop and rock, to appeal to a wider audience; a recording designed to appeal to more than one segment of listeners; music not normally listened to by a given audience who ordinarily listens to another, more popular genre. demo  Usually a recording made by an unknown artist in the hopes of attracting a record deal. A demo is also used by a songwriter to pitch a song to a recording artist. EP  Extended play, a CD that has at least three songs, more than a single and fewer than an album. fly  Describes an attractive person (usually a woman) or enjoying one’s material possessions (i.e., “I’m fly”). gangsta rap  A subgenre of hip-hop music that uses hardcore, violent, often misogynistic lyrics to glorify lifestyles of gang members and criminals. ghetto fabulous  The elevation of urban style and attitude to hip fashion, with help from newly acquired wealth. Grammys  Annual awards handed out by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) for

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Glossary

excellence in recording; probably the most prestigious awards in the U.S. music industry. hard-core  A form of hip-hop music featuring gritty content and violent lyrics. hip-hop soul  A style of music that blends R & B singing and hip-hop beats and style. The genre falls between two other hip-hop/R & B blends, new jack swing and neo soul, and it was most popular during the mid-1990s. ice/iced-out  Wearing an excessive amount of diamond  jewelry, especially pieces overflowing with diamonds. impresario  A manager or producer new jack swing   A danceable hybrid of hip-hop and rhythm and blues, especially popular from the late 1980s to the  mid-1990s. Also called new jack R & B or swingbeat. phat  Something that’s first-rate, especially in reference to music or fashion. Renaissance man  A person who excels in many  different fields. samples/sampling  Taking a portion (a sample) of one record and using it as a component of a new record. shout-out  Acknowledging someone verbally or  through writing. subsidized  Partially funded by the government or  other entity. tenement  An apartment building, usually located in a city.

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bibliography Cable, Andrew. A Family Affair: The Unauthorized Sean “Puffy” Combs Story. New York: Ballantine Books, 1998. Christian, Margena A. Jet. (January 12, 1998.) Lommel, Cookie. The History of Rap Music. New York: Chelsea House, 2001. Oliver, Dr. Richard, and Tim Leffel. Hip-Hop, Inc.: Success Strategies of the Rap Moguls. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006. Plotz, David. “Why Is Puffy Deflating?” Slate. (February 22, 2002.) Ro, Ronin. Bad Boy: The Influence of Sean “Puffy” Combs on the Music Industry. New York: Pocket Books, 2001. Taylor, Susan. “P. Diddy: Style and Substance.” Essence. (November 1998.) Wolny, Philip. Sean Combs. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2006.

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further reading Books Torres, John. P-Diddy. Hockessin, Del.: Mitchel Lane Publishers, 2004.

Web Sites Diddy-Bad Boy Online www.gnextine.com/bbo/bbf/history.html PBS http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/lapd/ interviews/poole.html Recording Industry Association of America http://www.riaa.com/News/newsletter/press2001/061501.asp Rolling Stone http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/8898338/ the_unsolved_mystery_of_the_notorious_big Specter, Michael http://www.michaelspecter.com/ny/2002/2002_09_09_puff .html Village Voice http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0112,noel,23236,1.html

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photo credits Page

59: A  ssociated Press, AP/ Lauren Greenfield 61: © Time & Life Pictures/ Getty Images 63: Associated Press, AP/Mark Lennihan  Fred Prouser/Reuters/ 66: © CORBIS 70: A  ssociated Press, AP/ Stephen Chernin 72: © Reuters/CORBIS 74: Associated Press, AP/ Suzanne Plunkett 77: Associated Press, AP/ Stephen Chernin 80: Associated Press, AP/ Diane Bondareff 85: Associated Press, AP/ Richard Drew 86: A  ssociated Press, AP/ Ron Edmonds 88: Associated Press, AP/ Steffen Schmidt

13: A  ssociated Press, AP/ Jennifer Graylock 17: Associated Press, AP 19: Associated Press, AP/Mark Lennihan 22: Associated Press, AP/Amy Sancetta 25: Photofest 28: © diverseimages/Getty Images 32: Associated Press, AP/Chris Weeks 34: Associated Press, AP/ Jennifer Graylock 39: Associated Press, AP/Kathy Willens 42: Associated Press, AP/ Ron Frehm 44: Photofest 48: Associated Press, AP/ Jennifer Graylock 51: Photofest 54: © Columbia Pictures/ Photofest

COVER Getty Images

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index 50 cent, 6 112 group, 64, 67, 81

A Aaliyah, 41 Acting, 11, 78 Broadway, 80–81 films, 79–80 and television, 81–83 Africa, 9, 87 African-Americans communities, 21 cultural expression of music, 8,  18 social silencing of, 8 Allen, Debbie, 29 Allen, Matthew “Scar,” 73, 75 Arista Records, 47, 49, 81

B Babyface (Kenneth Edmonds), 29, 47 Bad Boy Entertainment, 43 artists, 47, 50, 52, 62, 64–65, 68–69,  81–82 compilation albums, 81 and the Crips gang, 58, 60 management of, 49–50, 52, 56, 61,  81, 87 official owner, 49 start-up, 46–47 videos, 52 Bambaataa, Afrika, 7 Barrow, Jamaal “Shyne” arrest, 73, 75–76, 78 Combs’s mentoring of, 69, 71 Billboard (magazine) charts, 41, 43, 62, 64, 81, 83 Black Rob, 64 Blige, Mary J., 33, 40–41, 43 Boys II Men, 53 Brafman, Benjamin, 76 Break dancing, 8, 24 Breakthrough (Blige), 41 Bronx, New York, 7, 21, 24 Brooklyn, New York, 21 rappers from, 43–44, 69 Burke, Kareem “Biggs,” 71 Business ventures, 11–12, 79 clothing company, 71–72, 87 college years, 30–31 early jobs, 25–26 house parties, 14, 30, 38 other, 87, 89 restaurants, 67 Busta Rhymes, 64

C Carey, Mariah, 53, 67 Charity works AIDS awareness, 38–40, 87 educational programs, 52, 84 Childhood first public performance, 12 and the Fresh Air Fund, 21 in Harlem, 16, 20, 23–25, 87 and hip-hop, 24 Citizen Change, 82, 84 Cochran, Johnnie, Jr., 76 Combs, Christian Casey (son), 65, 68,  89 Combs, D’Lila (daughter), 89 Combs, Janice (mother) and Bad Boy Entertainment, 49 faith, 20 influence on Sean, 15, 21, 23, 25–26,  36 jobs, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25–26 move to Mount Vernon, 24–25, 46 Combs, Jessie James (daughter), 89 Combs, Justin (son), 57–58 Combs, Keisha (sister), 20 Combs, Melvin (father) death, 20, 27, 87 drug dealing, 14, 18, 20 Controversy, 81 and criminal charges, 58, 73, 75–76,  78 gun charges, 14 over basketball charity incident, 39–40,  76

D Da Band Too Hot for TV, 83 “Daddy’s House” parties, 14, 38 Daddy’s House recording studio, 52, 69 Daddy’s House Social Programs, 52 Dame Grease, 63 Danity Kane, 83 Dash, Damon, 71 Davis, Clive, 47 Death Row Records artists, 53, 55 and the Bloods gang, 58 management, 55–56, 58, 61, 65 Deejays, 7–8 break-beat, 22, 24 scratching, 22 spinning, 21 Def Jam Records, 31, 33, 71 Dr. Dre, 55 Dupri, Jermaine, 58

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Index

E East Coast rap vs. West Coast rap feud deaths related to, 60–62 details, 53, 55–56, 58, 60–62 Elliot, Missy, 81 Evans, Faith, 50, 60, 64, 81

F Flavor Flav, 6 Forever My Lady (Jodeci), 35 Foxy Brown, 6, 64, 67 Franklin, Aretha, 53 Fresh, Doug E., 29

G “Gangsta” rappers, 50, 55, 60 Ghetto fabulous style, 29, 35, 43, 69 fashion, 14 Gordy, Berry, 31 influence on Combs, 49–50 Graffiti, 8, 21, 24 Grammy awards, 41, 68 Grandmaster Flash, 6–7, 24 Grohl, Dave, 69

H Hampton, Dream, 45 Harlem, New York childhood in, 16, 20, 23–25, 87 history of, 16–18 influx of blacks to, 17–18 music in, 18 Harlem Renaissance, 17–18 Harrell, Andre, 53–54 mansion, 33, 46 marketing strategies, 29, 43 mentor to Combs, 33, 35, 37, 45, 69 productions, 29 and Uptown Records, 29, 31, 33, 43,  45 Heavy D and Bad Boy Entertainment, 47 and basketball fundraiser incident, 38, 40 friendship with Combs, 31, 33, 47 Living Large, 31 and Upton Records, 31, 33, 35 Hip-Hop around the world, 8–9 artists, 6, 30, 53, 55, 81 creative elements of, 8, 21–22, 24 defined, 8 fans, 8–9, 11, 14, 39–40, 60, 69, 73 fashion, 35

founding fathers of, 6–7 history, 6–9, 21–22, 24 parties, 22, 33 influential groups, 11 videos, 29 Howard University, 29, 46 drop out from, 36 parties at, 30–31 Hughes, Langston, 18 Hylton, Misa, 35, 57–58

J Jay-Z (Shawn Carter), 6, 67, 71 Jodeci, 35, 37 Johnson, Magic, 38 Jones, Anthony “Wolf,” 73, 76, 78 Jones, Quincy, 31

K Keys, Alicia, 87 Knight, Marion “Suge” and the death of Tupac, 61, 65 feud with Combs, 55–56, 58, 60 Kool DJ Herc (Clive Campell), 6, 24

L LaFace Records, 47 Life After Death (Notorious B.I.G.), 62,  67 Lil’ Kim, 64, 67 Combs’s assistance to, 33, 52–53 Living Large (Heavy D), 31 LL Cool J, 24, 29, 53 Lopez, Jennifer On the 6, 72 relationship with Combs, 72–73, 75–76, 78 Love and Life (Blige), 41 LOX, 64, 67 Money, Power & Respect, 68–69

M Mack, Craig “Flava in Ya Ear,” 47 “When God Comes,” 50 Made (film), 79 Making the Band television show,  81–83 Mase, 64 Money, Power & Respect (Lox), 68–69 Monster’s Ball (film), 80 More Drama (Blige), 41 Motown Records, 49 Mount Saint Michael’s Academy football team, 26

Index

Mount Vernon, New York, 31 move to, 24, 46 teen years in, 24, 27 MTV, 78, 87 airplay, 62–65 reality shows, 81–83, 89 videos on, 75 Myers, Dwight Arrington. See Heavy D My Life (Blige), 41

N Nas, 75 New York City artistic creativity in, 7 ghettos, 22 hip-hop scene, 7, 21 marathon, 84 Nicknames of Sean Combs Diddy, 11, 14, 89 P. Diddy, 6, 11, 14, 78 Puff Daddy, 11, 14, 43, 76, 78 Puffy, 11, 14, 25, 76, 78 Notorious B.I.G. (Biggie Smalls), 78 Combs’s assistance to, 33, 43–45, 47, 49–50, 69 contract, 44–45, 49–50 death, 62, 65, 67–68 drug dealing, 43, 47, 49 hard-core rap, 44–45 Life After Death, 62, 67 Ready to Die, 50, 52, 57 rivalry with Tupac, 53, 55, 60 tribute to, 62–64, 68 “Who Shot Ya,” 60 No Way Out (Puff Daddy & the Family) Grammy awards for, 68 “I’ll be Missing You,” 64, 68

O On the 6 (Lopez), 72

P P. Diddy and Bad Boy Present . . . We Invented the Remix, 81 Poetic Justice (movie), 53 Police “Every Breath You Take,” 63–64 Porter, Kim, 57, 65, 72, 89 Press Play, 83, 89

R Raisin in the Sun, A (play), 80–81 Rap music, 7, 22, 69 emcees or MCs, 8, 22, 24

hard-core, 44–45, 50, 55, 60, 64, 69,  73 melding with rock, 69 Rashad, Phylicia, 29, 80 Ready to Die (Notorious B.I.G.) success of, 50, 52, 57 Reid, L.A., 47 Robles, Jake, 60 Roc-A-Fella Records, 71 Rolling Stone (magazine), 18, 55, 60, 64 Run-DMC, 24, 29

S Saga Continues, The, 79 Sales, Nancy Jo, 33 Sean John clothing, 69–70 Sean John Wheels, 87 Simmons, Russell, 6, 29, 31, 33, 71 Sinatra, Frank, 12 Snoop Dogg, 6, 55, 81 Soul Train Awards, 60 South America, 9 Stoute, Steve, 75 Sugarhill Gang, 44 “Rapper’s Delight,” 7

T TLC, 52 Too Hot for TV (Da Band), 83 Tupac Shakur death, 61–62, 65 “Hit ’Em Up,” 60 rivalry with Notorious B.I.G., 53, 55–56, 60 shooting, 53, 55, 60

U Upton Crew, 29 Uptown Is Kickin’ It, 29 Upton Records, 57 artists, 31, 37, 41, 44 fired from, 45–46, 49 internship with, 35–36 producers, 29, 31, 33, 37, 40, 43, 45 promotions at, 37–38, 43 Usher, 53, 87

W Wallace, Christopher. See Notorious B.I.G.  (Biggie Smalls) Wallace, Voletta, 62, 65, 67 Warner Records, 87 What’s the 411? (Blige), 43 “Real Love,” 41

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about the authorS Dale Evva Gelfand has been a writer and freelance editor for 25

years. She is the author of Charlemagne and Jimi Hendrix, and coauthor of Coretta Scott King, all for Chelsea House Publishers, plus Taking Time for Friends: A Common Language of the Heart for Storey Publishing. She has also written several books about nature and gardens, including Grow a Hummingbird Garden, A Little Book of Flowers, Building Bat Houses, and Creating Habitat for Backyard Birds. When not reading or writing, she can be found planting gardens, hiking through the woods, and photographing the natural world around her upstate New York home. Chuck D redefined rap music and hip-hop culture as leader and

cofounder of legendary rap group Public Enemy. His messages addressed weighty issues about race, rage, and inequality with a jolting combination of intelligence and eloquence. A musician, writer, radio host, TV guest, college lecturer, and activist, he is the creator of Rapstation.com, a multiformat home on the Web for the vast global hip-hop community.

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