Bad Boy: The Influence of Sean "Puffy" Combs on the Music Industry - Hardcover

Ro, Ronin

3.11

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9780743428231: Bad Boy: The Influence of Sean "Puffy" Combs on the Music Industry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743428234 ISBN 13: 9780743428231

Publisher: Atria Books, 2001

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This is a tale of friendship, greed, and betrayal in the music industry—and a definitive history of America's biggest rap mogul.

No one knows more about creating hits than Sean “Puffy” Combs. For years he virtually ran hip-hop. It seemed the perfect arrangement: “Puffy” provided the sounds and obsessive attention to detail while the Notorious B.I.G. promoted an image that kept rap fans happy. It should have lasted forever, but “Biggie” was murdered at the height of his career—and “Puffy”'s ascension to superstardom ushered in an age of disloyalty and deception that exploded into one of the greatest debacles in the history of the music industry.

Through interviews with label insiders, grand jury testimony, and other sources, America's preeminent rap journalist Ronin Ro

-reveals the true story of “Puffy”

-addresses the larger issues that shaped the man and the industry

-explains how Bad Boy both helped and destroyed hip-hop and R&B music

-details why some artists “Puffy” created ultimately left his Bad Boy family in disgust.

At once an intimate history and a portrait of an era, Bad Boy shows readers exactly how Combs lost his strangle-hold over the multibillion-dollar rap music industry.

The story of Bad Boy Entertainment is the story of the American Dream, an up-close and personal account of the people, the money, the creative process that made it all come true, and the young mogul who caused the dream to fall apart. In this hip-hop tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, readers finally learn the story that Sean “Puffy” Combs does not want them to know.

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About the Author:

Ronin Ro is a journalist as well as the author of Gangsta: Merchandising the Rhymes of Violence; Have Gun Will Travel: The Spectacular Rise and Violent Fall of Death Row Records; and the novel Street Sweeper. A former rapper, he has written for such publications as Vanity Fair, The Source, SPIN, Rolling Stone, USA Today, Playboy, and Vibe. He has appeared on CNNfn, Bloomberg Network, National Public Radio, ABC Radio Network, BET, VH1, and the Fox News Network. He lives with his wife and daughter in New York City.

Chapter One

In 1988, nineteen-year-old Sean "Puffy" Combs graduated from high school, packed his belongings, and moved to Washington, D.C. A thin teenager with his hair styled in a "Gumby," Sean was majoring in business administration at Howard, a predominantly black university filled with New Yorkers who enjoyed hip-hop. On campus, Sean wore his polka-dot shirts, played his hip-hop loud while driving his Jetta, and displayed exceptional dance skills in front of the school cafeteria. After the novelty of being in a new place wore off, however, the driven young student from Mount Vernon, New York, threw himself into his studies. By this point, however, he knew he wanted more: "I knew I didn't want to just get a degree, like I was reaching to be the greatest stockbroker or the greatest lawyer. I had made up my mind that I was going to be successful, a multimillionaire."

He had inherited his drive for success and love for fashion from his parents. Puffy's father, Melvin, had worked for the Board of Education and as a cab driver. "My mom was modeling," he said. "She was always like 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."

When Sean was born in Harlem on November 4, 1969, one million people of color were squeezed into four square miles. Many middle-class families had fled the area nine years before, forcing property owners to lower rent, lose interest in buildings and the neighborhood, and inadvertently create what the media called one of the most feared ghettos in America. Unemployment and the infant mortality rate soared. Rampant poverty encouraged riots, drug abuse, and despair. While neighborhood organizations requested federal funding to rebuild the community and create jobs, no help arrived.

The Combs family, however, lived in a cleaner, relatively safe middle-class section, while Sean's grandmother Jessie lived in the well-kept, government-subsidized cooperative building Esplanade Gardens.

Sean's interest in performing seemed to come from his mother. She'd been interested in fashion since she was six, when her mother, Jessie, had turned a brocaded slipcover into an elegant dress. When Sean was two his mother included him in a fashion show she staged at a day-care center. "I came out and tried to steal the show," said Puffy. "As soon as that spotlight hit me, I just embraced it." An executive from the Baskin-Robbins chain in the audience hired him to appear in a print ad, and since then, his aunt Geri Garcia remembered, "He was such a ham."

In 1972, Sean's sister, Keisha, was born, adding yet another mouth to feed. His father had gone from playing cards and shooting pool at the Rhythm Club to running numbers and dealing drugs. He bought the family a Mercedes and developed a reputation as a Robin Hood figure, but Sean's mother, Janice, claimed his life in the drug trade was "a new thing": "I never knew about the drugs stuff because he always worked. He did it in between times."

Soon after giving Sean a birthday party -- tossing him in the air, Sean recalled -- his father went to meet some people near Central Park. It was January 26, 1972, and he was sitting in his car. Someone else arrived, something went wrong, and this person shot him in the head. Janice had to identify his body. After his father's death, Puffy remembers, "my mom and grandmom pulled together and kept me off the streets."

Today Janice is a fashionable woman with platinum Lil' Kim-styled tresses and a penchant for designer clothing and boots; she charms reporters, supports her son, associates with his ex-girlfriends, and attends fashion industry events.

Back then, she was a young woman with two kids to feed, a high school diploma, bills to pay, and concerns about the future. Back then, she recalled, "I wasn't going to be homeless. I wasn't going to be on welfare, if I had to work all day and all night." She threw herself into work, becoming both mother and father to Sean and Keisha. She found part-time work as an assistant teacher at a local day-care center and as a school bus driver, and a night job as an attendant for children with cerebral palsy while her mother watched the kids.

Sean continues to count his mother as a major influence, and some of her behavior seems to have inspired his own. When she drove the school bus and kids left their seats, she used lollipops and candy as incentives for good behavior. "When I told them, 'sit down'," she said, "they sat down." Later, critics like Jeru and The Lox would accuse him of using champagne, designer clothes, jewelry, and cars in like fashion with his artists.

The drive to be a millionaire also seemed to come from her; she'd tell him conformity would guarantee success. "Go to school and pay close attention to your teachers if you want to be a millionaire," she'd say.

By age eight, Sean was aggressive and stubborn. "He wouldn't take no for an answer," said Garcia. He was already a loner when his mother enrolled him in the Fresh Air Fund, a nonprofit organization that arranges for city kids to vacation with host families in the country. He spent a summer among the Amish in Pennsylvania Dutch country, wandering through empty fields and roads, then returned to Harlem, where he got into a few personality-shaping confrontations.

One afternoon, while leaving a store with a pack of his grandmother's cigarettes, he saw a kid approach; the kid asked for a dollar. Sean put his grandmother's change away, put his hands up, and started fighting. The other kid hit him in the face a few times, took his money, and left him thinking, Before I get into a fight, I gotta make sure I can win it.

Another day he came home in tears and told Janice that another kid had beaten him up and taken his skateboard. She forced him to leave the house and not return until he got it back. Outside, he ran into an older, taller kid and asked him to handle the job. Thus began his habit of forging alliances with tougher kids. He ran with a crew of rap fans called The 7-Up Crew, but viewed himself as a loner.

In 1982, his mother moved Sean and Keisha to Mount Vernon, a working-class suburb in Westchester County, north of the Bronx. Sean was able to escape Harlem's claustrophobic, tenement-lined streets and tougher residents. He had room to breathe, trees, private houses, car culture, well-trimmed lawns, and a less congested, racially integrated Montessori school to attend. He was also enamored with hip-hop: "From Run-D.M.C. to KRS-One to the Beastie Boys to L.L. Cool J, I was there. I seen that." At age twelve, he claimed, "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."

Soon he started looking for a job. His mother was already holding down two of them -- at the day care center and driving a bus -- and searching for a third; she later began selling clothing in a shop: "Like a lot of kids who grow up in single-parent homes, I had to get a job much quicker and start thinking about the future much earlier. I had to help out and become the man of the house sooner, so I had my paper route when I was twelve."

When the newspaper delivery service said he was too young to apply for work, he added a year to his birth certificate and got his route. He had another student apply for a second route and took that one as well. Seeing his mother work numerous jobs inspired his own legendary work ethic.

At age fourteen, Janice enrolled him in Mount St. Michael Academy, a private Catholic school in the Bronx that expected him, as she put it, to "dress accordingly," in a suit and tie. Each morning, he put on his school sweater, slacks, and dress shirt and accepted lunch money from her.

At school, sheltered suburban white and Asian classmates praised the music of Ozzy Osbourne and other rock musicians. He liked hip-hop records, including 1979's Top 40 hit "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang. He also liked having extra money.

During lunch each day, he later told Rolling Stone, he would put away the money his mother had given him and wander the cafeteria to "ask everybody for fifty cents." Soon he was earning money from two or three jobs, including one at an amusement park. Other students laughed at the sight of him working at the park when they came there to relax and enjoy the rides, he said, "but I would always say to myself that I wanted to be somebody who makes history, and not selfishly, not for me. I just wanted to make a change. I didn't want to be a person who just lived and died." He ignored taunts from schoolmates and asked his employer to let him work double shifts.

After school, he traveled to Harlem to attend an afterschool program, hang with old friends, and keep up with developments in hip-hop. He was coming of age during a time when the genre was rising. At the same time, many kids were beginning to deal crack cocaine, to earn fortunes, and to become ghetto celebrities.

Sean immersed himself in hip-hop, having a barber carve trendy musical notes into his Gumby, dancing in clubs, rocking then-fashionable polka dot shirts, and answering to the nickname Puffy. Later, he'd be evasive about his stage name, but finally said, "It came from a childhood friend. It's a silly reason. Whenever I got mad as a kid, I used to always huff and puff. I had a temper."

It was at age fourteen, when he "knew about street life [and] knew who was hustlers," that he learned what really happened to his father. While his mother told him Melvin had died in a car accident, people in Harlem alluded to his father's stint as a dealer, his father's furs, and his family being "the only people in Harlem to have a Mercedes-Benz." Soon, he says he wondered, "Come on, man, my pops was hustling or something?"

Determined to learn the truth, he went to a public library, did some research, and found old newspaper stories that described Melvin Combs as "the biggest of his time when he was here."

The articles also attributed his murder to people eager to take over his number-running and drug operations. "It was just a transition," Puffy decided. "He was the ruler. It was time for a new ruler. That's the life that he led."

By now, hip-hop was boosting his self-esteem. He had dreams of turning his love of hip-hop into a business of some sort. He began to hang out at The Rooftop nightclub on 155th Street, a place where up-and-coming rap producer Teddy Riley, old school rappers like Kool Moe Dee, and future celebrities rubbed shoulders with their fans. After a week at his restaurant job, cleaning dirty stoves, mopping floors, and waiting on tables, Sean would sneak out of his suburban home, travel to the club, and wait outside. After a while, bouncers would let him in and he'd draw attention with his dancing.

At first, one employee at MTV revealed, he planned to form a group with another dancer. But he also dreamed of recording albums. At the time, hip-hop was moving from message rap and toward the stripped-down hard-core of L.L. Cool J's Radio and Run-D.M.C.'s Raising Hell. "Everybody has a dream when they're watching Run-D.M.C. or L.L. Cool J," he told one interviewer. "And I was always somebody who closed my eyes and dreamed, but then opened my eyes and saw what I had to do."

He harbored dreams of performing, and continued to attend a racially mixed private school and an afterschool program in predominantly black Harlem. He wore a school sweater and well-pressed slacks and shirt, played on the school football team, and began to play suburban classmates the latest rap records. He also hung out with rap fans, met artists like Doug E. Fresh, and practiced dance moves while listening to WBLS-FM, to many of the records he'd later set his music to. By the time he graduated, he had danced in music videos by Doug E. Fresh, Babyface, the Fine Young Cannibals, and singer Stacy Lattisaw.

When he arrived at Howard, he felt, "I was nurtured into wanting to be somebody special." Ron Gilyard, who would later work with him, remembered fellow students seeing his videos and idolizing him even more. They had their own dreams and believed hitching a ride on his coattails would bring them closer to achieving them.

He soon had an entourage but wanted more than their adulation. During this period he was so ambitious he later described himself as a "savage." He was single-minded about making history and earning his fortune.

Seeing a promotional video for the compilation album Uptown's Kickin' It strengthened this desire. During one scene, Uptown CEO Andre Harrell, a young, clean-cut former rapper in wire-rim glasses and corporate attire, marched into a conference room and methodically signed a stack of contracts for the camera. Puffy later said this businesslike image inspired him to pursue a career in music.

Another day, on the set of a video, an imposing limousine deposited well-dressed executives with cell phones and briefcases. To his young eyes they exuded as much power as Harrell. Watching them coordinate details of the shoot, he thought, I don't know what they do, but I want to do that! The "Puff Daddy" persona was born.

He formed a company with schoolmate Deric Angelettie, who was impressed by Puff's ability to cater to voids in the marketplace and by his drive to earn money. Though he was flamboyant, loved being the center of attention, and was pursuing a degree, he still found time to run a shuttle service to the airport, to allegedly sell old term papers, and to even hawk T-shirts and sodas.

Most telling was his reaction to an incident in which rebellious students took over an administrative building. That day, reporters took notes for stories as students protested. After the incident, Puffy collected magazine and newspaper clips that described the event, turned them into poster-size collages, and sold them to the "revolutionary" students.

In Puffy, Angelettie saw someone who could profit from even "a crazy situation," and Puff's idea to throw and promote parties could pay off, especially since Howard had a built-in audience just waiting for these events. As Howard alum Ron Lawrence remembered: "At the time, probably seventy percent of Howard was New Yorkers. So we brought the music with us; we brought the style of dress with us. And in trying to keep that vibe, we would throw parties all over the campus. You had guys like Puffy and Deric forming their little team as party promoters just to keep that New York spirit alive."

"When Puffy came, he was a very flashy guy," Angelettie remembered. "He was always out at the clubs, and the young girls loved him. He'd be in the middle of the floor doin' all the new dances. And his style of dress was a little more colorful, bolder. Everyone took notice of this cool, overconfident young dude. I was deejaying at the time, and one night he came up to me and said, 'I'd like to throw a party with you. You're pretty popular.'"

Operating under the name "A Black Man And A Puerto Rican Productions," Sean and Deric prepared for their first event. Sean wanted to invite as many celebrities as possible, and reached out to twenty-one-year-old Heavy D, a Mount Vernon-based rapper who recorded for Uptown Records. Puffy overwhelmed Heavy with his interest in music, his ambition, and his constant flattery, and Heavy accepted his invitation. Almost immediately, Puffy included his name on promotional materials with Slick Rick, Doug E. Fresh, and the R & B group Guy. Remarkably, every celebrity appeared. "And ever since that first party, everyone made it a point to go to Puff's parties," said Gilyard.

Puff's success united music-minded students Ron Lawrence, Chucky Thompson, Nashiem Myrick,...

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