Why Is This Man
On The Mic?
By Darryl James

"...If I recall correctly, I saw Hip Hop down at Bad Boy. We'll see if Puff knows what's up, cause he's the one gettin' him drunk and fucking his mind up."
From Jeru Tha Damaja’s "One Day"

  Sean "Puffy" Combs is taking us back. It's evident when I hear Mase’s single "Bad Boy," with the unashamed loop of Kool & The Gang’s "Hollywood Swingin’," or even in the loops from Diana Ross, The Police, UTFO and Grandmaster Flash in other Puffy-produced singles.

What is it that I hear?

  I hear how he's taking us back. Puffy is taking us back to the days when lyrics meant nothing and were purely designed to meet the beat. He's taking us back to the days when producers never worked hard, they simply looped a beat that was already a hit and tossed in a few innocuous lyrics. Talk to Total and they'll have you believe that he's taking us back to the days when artists were pimped profusely simply because they were hungry for a record deal and trusted the wrong person. Puffy is also taking us forward, but in some very ugly ways. He's taking us to a time when lyrical content is designed for boasting about the amount of money one has and the lyrics themselves take a back seat to the beat. Puff Daddy’s revisiting the days when Rappers boasted about themselves, but he's ramping it up to floss so hard that even non-player haters want to gank him for the loot that he claims is "hanging out of his anus."

  In constructing our year-end issue, Rap Sheet looked at the chart activity and the radio play given to the artists who released records in 1997. Overwhelmingly, Sean "Puffy" Combs, now that he is an artist of sorts, has made the most noise. The Source has celebrated him with a cover, as did Vibe, calling him "Cocoa Puff," showing him clad in a feather boa fit for a queen with wings on his back and asks, in the photo’s caption, "What if Sean was one of us?" A ridiculously clueless writer for Rolling Stone labels him "The New King of Hip Hop." (On that cover he looks like he wants to join the old-school Disco group Village People, crossing his dress-up act as a baseball player with a heavy fur coat open wide enough to reveal his Versace underpants.)

From the highest of mountain tops, it seems that everyone is singing the praises of Sean "Puffy" Combs.

  It's like the children’s fable The Emperor’s New Clothes, but in this case, I can see clearly that Emperor Combs doesn't have new threads, and his dirty drawers are in plain sight for all to see. I can't feel him as a Rapper, and I can't be sucked into his newly-purchased hype the way I see my colleagues do without shame.
I don’t have a personal beef with Puffy, I just can't believe that the street and I are the only cynics remaining in a cynical world. The same critics who chastised Hammer for dancing for chicken, and proclaimed Chuck D and Public Enemy’s revolution to be over are praising Puffy for his stolen beats, plucked chicken-styled dancing and proclaiming him as some new musical revolutionary.

It's scary.

But what is this phenomenon called Puff Daddy?

He is not the dopest Rapper. The words he employs are the simplest, and the delivery rarely carries enthusiasm or punch. At times, his words are so muddied, it sounds like he's carrying marbles in his mouth. His lyrics are innocuous at best, and at times, border on the inane. For the most part, Puff Daddy the Rapper is corny.

  There’s nothing fly about the delivery or the assembly of his rhymes, and he doesn't even have a decent "look," trying at times but always failing to fit into a hardcore motif because of his innate "deer in the headlights" look. Puffy frequently tries to fit into a suave motif, but also fails with his goofy, "Bucky Beaver" beady-eyed look.

But, still, every record he touches sells and sells big.

  Why? We could move through allegations of radio payoffs, but none of those claims can be proven. Outside of illegal activity, I believe the answer is simple: It's the beats. While the art form known as Rap evolved into creative sampling and producers assembling new music, reserving the sample for the hook, along comes a producer who seeks to change the world of Rap by bringing it back to it's early days and sinking it deeper than it has ever been. His technique is simple: Grab a hugely successful song and loop it's best part until it rocks to death. Then, dump it on radio stations where it plays four times per hour, forcing old heads into reminisce-bliss, while sucking young heads into retro-amazement.

  Puffy’s audience is largely adolescent, as the monitors of ticket sales for his tour indicate, and too many of those adolescents, I believe, are being lead to assume that these marvelously-woven tracks come from his mind. For that magical feat, anyone would forgive him for the goose eggs he lays on golden tracks. Outside of those beats, the public image that Puffy has constructed is inconsistent with his actions.

  For as much shit as he talks about being a Black businessman, many believe that he should leave the Black part out of the description, since he is apparently moving the way of Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpson and other rich Negroes who no longer believe that this nation's race card can be played in their game. Puffy told Vibe that "you can't look at things in Black and white as much anymore. Yes, we'll always have prejudice, but it's definitely getting better." Getting better for whom, Puffy? It's clear that the money "hanging from his anus" has affected the man's vision, leaving him unable to see the assaults on Affirmative Action, or the attacks on the Welfare system using Blacks as the icons, even though whites are the majority of Welfare recipients. Puffy can't see the disproportionate number of Black men who are incarcerated versus the number of Black male college applicants rejected each year, or other forms of systematic racism. Puffy thinks it's getting better, but, meanwhile, down the street at Polygram, Eric Kronfield, former president and chief operating officer, said that if he didn't hire criminals, he wouldn't have been able to hire Blacks. Perhaps Puffy thinks things are getting better because Kronfield didn't call anyone a ni-ger, he just views us as ni-gers.

  But really, though, speaking of business, Puffy’s business practices have little difference from the shadiest of industry execs who practice industry rule number four thousand, eighty. Let's check the rumor mill... one piece of inside information states that during the holiday season of 1996, Biggie Smalls was so broke, he had to borrow money from Faith to make the season jolly. Scuttlebutt also has it that Mase, who has reportedly been writing all of the lyrics for Puffy, signed a deal that provided Combs with all of his publishing. Puffy has blown poor Mase’s head up so crazily that he actually believes that he's the "first Rap Cat with an R&B budget." Well, first of all, that just isn't true. Hammer was the first Rapper to have bus stop billboards, and commercials. Fresh Prince and Hammer were both shooting $500,000 videos back in the day, and in fact, Fresh Prince shot one for $750,000 that was never even released. "Nightmare On My Street," was held from release due to an unauthorized characterization of Freddie Kruger. Second of all, even if it were true, can Mase use his royalties to pay back the loot from that advance? Not if Puffy has indeed ganked him for his publishing.

  One last scandal...  if Lil’ Kim is really riding the subway (unable to afford a car), then why won't Puffy let her drive "the Benz I ain't even drove yet?" The "Puffy jacket" has been tried on a couple of people, but it just won't fit. It won't fit Jermaine DuPri, who has been compared to Puffy since he is a producer who is now rhyming. Jermaine can't wear it because he has been writing lyrics for years and coaching artists like Kris Kross and Da Brat on the delivery of those lyrics. It's a natural for him to make the transition. And please don't try the jacket on Teddy Riley, a producer who kicked his first lyrics at the opening of this decade on a track called "New Jack Swing," which described the musical movement he created.

  In all of his imminent corniness, Puffy has been compared to MC Hammer. But even if you don't like Hammer, you have to admit that the Puffy jacket just won't fit. You must acquit. First and foremost, Hammer came into the game and created his own fan base among Rap music lovers. He was a Rapper from the beginning and danced from the beginning. He only came under fire when his music crossed over into the Pop charts. Any hater's claim that no real Rap lovers ever loved Hammer’s music is pure bullshit. Secondly, Hammer’s lyrical content was positive--his lyrics were designed to either motivate, spiritualize or at the very least, make us dance. And let's talk about the real reason Hammer’s millions began to diminish. Anyone would go slowly broke supporting throngs of Black people well beyond the time when financial advisors say stop. And Puffy has never been accused of altruism. Finally, Hammer began to update his image at a time when the whole Hip Hop game was changing. Fans always have difficulties accepting any type of change.

  But we're not talking about a man who was questioned for a change in his image, we're talking about a man who created a career and an image based on fake lyrics which contradict his life.
And there are a great deal of other contradictions.

  Out of one side of his mouth, Puffy wants people to believe that he never hated Tupac, and that there was never any beef between he and anyone from Los Angeles. In the Rolling Stone interview, he claimed that he still frequents Los Angeles.

  Out of the other side of his mouth, he creates a national tour, but conveniently leaves Los Angeles out of the plan, dissing whatever fans in L.A. who support him, claiming that he's only worried about the people who are on the tour with him. Okay, who from the West Coast has a beef with Mase, Lil’ Kim, Jay Z, Foxy Brown, or for Christ's sake, Usher?

  Out of one side of his mouth, Puffy says that he wants to "uplift as many people as I can out of" hardcore street life. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times Calendar, Combs said, "If I earn money (from people in the hood), I can't be blind to the problems you face everyday: poverty, lack of hope, lack of leadership. I don't suffer from any illusions about what it's going to take to change things, but I believe it's important to reinvest in the future of my community."

  Out of the other side of his mouth, he has built an empire around the hardest lyrical content in the game--B.I.G. spoke of drugs and violence and elevated the game with tales of death, punctuated by his demise at the end of "Ready To Die." Those lyrics were not designed to uplift. Lil’ Kim speaks in graphic terms about a lifestyle of sexual deviancy that she claims is true at times, but false at others. It is the producer--Puffy in this case--who sets the tone and brings the best out of each artist. It makes sense, then to look at Puffy as the reason Lil’ Kim constantly clowns herself on wax and in interviews, only to angrily deny her own words in subsequent interviews.
None of the lyrical content coming from these artists was designed to uplift, and certainly the content of Puff Daddy himself can only serve to dishearten and discourage the masses, since he flaunts a lifestyle most will not achieve, and gives no specific guidelines for attaining success.

  And there is no reinvestment in the community if there is any truth to the statements Total have made on NYC radio about coming off tour and returning to the projects in abject poverty while their hit singles play on radio and video. There's no reinvestment if Mase has to return the Rolex watches he flaunts as soon as the cameras stop rolling tape. If Puffy really wants to "reinvest in the future" of any community, he has only to take a page from the Master P notebook. According to The Rap Sheet Journal, P is opening a community youth facility in the very neighborhood in which he grew up, forming the Master P Foundation to provide educational scholarships and financial support to underprivileged kids, and he's recording a compilation album containing 15 of Rap's biggest artists, then donating 50% of the proceeds back into the community via the foundation.

But it seems that Puffy is a man who speaks with a forked tongue.

  Out of one side of his mouth, he says that he is not a violent man when Suge Knight verbally assaults him in public. Out of the other side of his mouth, he hints at a violent lifestyle on Ice T’s radio show, One Nation (conveniently after Suge Knight has been incarcerated.)

  Out of one side of his mouth, he brags about his finesse and business smarts (he never finished college). Out of the other side of his mouth, he rolls through lyrics and even interviews with a butchering of the English language that would even make poor Buckwheat flinch. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he says, "...in order to keep my sanity, it's like I don't be living in a reality... I be trying to block that out."

Out of one side of his mouth, Puffy claims a spirituality which moves him.

  Out of the other side of his mouth, he and Craig Mack parted ways, apparently because of Mack's commitment to spirituality and reality, which prevented him from making the Versace and Moet rhymes Puffy demanded. Where was Puffy’s spirituality when it came time to release Craig Mack's single "When God Comes?" That record, which chastised heads who make and promote music with a negative impact on the community, was perhaps left unreleased because it's finger pointed at it's own producer, Puff Daddy.

  The original intent of this piece was not to present a one-sided "I hate Puffy" editorial, although it may look that way. I wanted to interview Puffy and Mase to get the answers to the issue raised here and to have them address any rumors directly. The sad fact is that neither his company, Bad Boy Entertainment, nor the publicist at his distributed label could make it possible for Combs to respond to some serious concerns held by this publication and throngs of music buyers who will either make or break Puffy’s career. An interview was scheduled via phone for Los Angeles, but when it failed to materialize, I made myself available for a person-to-person interview in Chicago the next day. Puffy’s people couldn't even make a phone interview happen that day, nor on the following Monday, when I was back in my office in Los Angeles.

  Apparently, Mase is on the same avoidance program. He failed to make an interview happen on three occasions during the same time period. The final excuse was extremely weak. I was told that he was on the tour bus, and that no one had cellular phones. Really, though? This from the crew who flippantly throws their "Rollies" in the air? I think not. I believe that their program of treating everyone like minions in an effort towards diva-dom finally failed on this writer. I refused to go through the jerkouts and delays other writers subjected themselves to. After all, I really don't believe the hype.

  But I don't hate Puffy, nor do I see him as completely without value. As much as I loathe the career of Puff Daddy, the wanna-be Rapper, I can't front on his track record as far as production prior to 1997. He created a new movement with Mary J. Blige, merging soulful singing with Hip Hop beats and styling, and no matter what the content, Biggie Smalls’ powerful lyrical skills and storytelling capabilities met their musical match at the production board manned by Sean Combs--before the remixes. But his venture in lyrical delivery and direction of lyrical content has become problematic for an art form which is judged by it's most visible icon. Currently, the world is viewing Puff Daddy as a Hip Hop icon, believing that he represents the current state of Hip Hop and Rap music.

  I grew quickly tired and worn by the barrage of so-called Gangsta Rap, but I never became angry, because I knew that when the trend began, it was an important and seldom heard voice of the Black community. It is my contention that Puffy’s voice has no merit, but can become a black eye on the face of an art form that has taken too many public beatings. That's why I've taken inspiration from an interlude on Common's album One Day It'll All Make Sense, in which his father calls to say that he wants to set up an exhibition boxing match so that he can kick Jesse Jackson's ass.

  That's what I want to do. I want to create an exhibition boxing match between myself and Sean "Puffy" Combs. I want to get Puffy in the ring before the world and his fans and kick his ass. I'm so upset over his dilution of Rap music that I just want to beat the shit out of him. I could never catch him on the street and challenge him man to man because his body guards are too deep, his lawyers are too powerful, and I'm too far above meaningless public brawling anyway.

  So I want to do the exhibition match with Puffy, live via pay-per-view. The proceeds should go to charity, but there are personal particulars at stake for us both: If I lose, I'll pen his autobiography and spin the greatest yarn, praising his accomplishments to his complete dictation. When he loses, he simply has to put down the mic.

Silly rabbit, tricks are for kids, and the microphone is for grownups.