Perhaps the first hugely successful music industry executive to successfully jump midstream into an even more hugely successful career as an artist, Sean "Puffy" Combs, a.k.a. Puff Daddy, rose in 1997 to become the rap world's preeminent MC with the same precision and skill he brought to his Bad Boy Entertainment behind the scenes. Though shadowed by criticism that he built a musical house of cards supported only by well-chosen samples, Puff Daddy turned the tragedy of friend and colleague the Notorious B.I.G.'s death into a chart-topping single that captivated a nation.
Born in Harlem in 1971, Combs grew up not on those mean streets but in the New York suburb of Mt. Vernon while attending a Catholic, boys-only high school in the Bronx. While majoring in business administration at Howard University, he put his salesmanship to work, holding hip-hop dance parties every week and running a shuttle bus service for fellow students traveling back and forth from the airport for visits home (which means that if he hadn't kept pursuing the hip-hop angle, Puff Daddy might today known as the king of airport shuttling, Sean "Huffy" Combs).
Puff dropped out of college when he turned his internship at Uptown Records into a job as talent director, helping guide the careers of Mary J. Blige and Jodeci. With his own Bad Boy Entertainment, Combs swiftly became one of the industry's hottest producers, turning out hits for such artists as Mariah Carey,New Edition, Method Man, Babyface, TLC, Boyz II Men, SWV,Aretha Franklin, and his most frequent collaborator, Notorious B.I.G. (a.k.a. Biggie Smalls).
The murder of Smalls in early 1997 inspired Puffy's debut single as a lead rapper (he had made guest appearances on B.I.G.'s and others' albums), "I'll Be Missing You," which featured Puffy rapping over the basic track of the Police's "Every Breath You Take," with additional vocals by Faith Evans and 112. The tribute to the slain Smalls topped the Billboard singles chart for six weeks and catapulted Puffy's No Way Out album to platinum status. Though critics carped that the cut was little more than an overlong sample, even Puffy has gone on record as admitting that his skills lie less in rapping than in creating an overall sound. "I'm not an MC," he's said. "I'm a vibe-giver."
In a very short sprint, Puff Daddy has made it to the top of the hip-hop heap, but only time will tell if he can achieve staying power in a genre whose throne has never been held for very long by any producer or artist (Dr. Dre, are you still out there?). But for now, there is no more popular a hip-hop star than Sean "Puffy" Combs.
