In just a few years, Sean "Puffy" Combs
has transformed himself from a streetwise party promoter and record company
intern into one of the most commercially successful producer-entrepreneurs
in music history. Puffy, or "Puff Daddy," as he is alternately
known, was barely into his twenties when he first started exercising his
Midas touch by producing multi-platinum albums for such artists as Jodeci
and Mary J. Blige; in short order, he became vice president of Uptown Records,
and not much later, he founded his own label, Bad Boy Entertainment.
While at Uptown, Puffy established the careers
of rappers Craig Mack and Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. the Notorious B.I.G.
And in 1997 alone, he masterminded an astonishing three No. 1 records. But
as successful and influential as he's grown, Combs' life has been plagued
by its fair share of controversy: From his ongoing feud with his West Coast
counterpart, Death Row Records founder Suge Knight, to the slaying of his
friend Notorious B.I.G., to the contempt he has elicited from those within
the hip-hop underground, Puffy has frequently been the subject of debate.
What is less open to debate is that Puffy Combs is indeed the man
of the moment.
Yet controversy continues to dog Puffy's
prosperity. Many people openly question his role in B.I.G.'s death, finding
it unseemly that Puffy has grown even more popular in the wake of
his friend's slaying. The hip-hop underground hasn't thrown wide its arms
to Puffy, either. His reliance on obvious sampleshe incorporated
Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" on "Can't Nobody Hold Me Down," the Police
track on "I'll Be Missing You," and David Bowie's "Let's Dance" on his upcoming
single "Been Around the World"grates on the sensibilities of hip-hop
DJs and producers who pride themselves on their creativity.
But Puffy diagnoses this lack of popularity
differently: as he said in a recent interview, "When you're on top, everybody
wants to take shots at you."