Once Upon a Time in America: My Interview with Sean John Combs

FINDING OBAMICA, VOL. 3

"Remember what we talked about so much?" Bigger asked in a flat neutral tone.
"Naw."
"Old Blum."...Bigger took a deep breath and looked from face to face. It seemed to him that he should not have to explain.
"Look, it'll be easy. There ain't nothing to be scared of. Between three and four ain't nobody in the store but the old man. The cop is way down at the other end of the block...Can't you see? This is something big," Bigger said.

Richard Wright,
Book One: Fear
Native Son, 1940.

"What nigga, you wanna rob the muthafuckin' train? Is you crazy?!"
(Background noises inside a New York subway station: Biggie responds
to his hesitant accomplice)
"Yes, yes, muthafucka! You muthafuckin' right!"
"Nigga what the fuck?!"
"Nigga, it's '87, nigga. Is you dead broke?!"
"Yeah, nigga but..."
"Is you dead broke? We need to get some muthafuckin' paper, nigga!"
"Nigga, it's a train, ain't nobody ever robbed no muthafuckin' train!"
"Is your mother givin' you money nigga? My moms don't give me shit, nigga.
It's time to get paid, nigga. Is you wit me?"
(Biggie clicks the cartridge on his 9 milimeter.)
"Muthafucka, is you wit me?!"
"Yeah I'm wit you, come on!"
"Alright, nigga, let's make it happen, then!"
(Biggie and his accomplice step onto an arriving subway train:the two stick-up kids brandish their guns. Biggie barks out his instructions to the passengers.) "ALL YOU MUTHAFUCKAS, GET ON THE FUCKIN' FLOOR!" (Biggie fires two shots into the air. Screams of fear and pandemonium fill
the subway car. Biggie repeats his command.) "GET ON THE MUTHAFUCKIN' FLOOR!! GIMME ALL YOUR MUTHAFUCKIN'MONEY, I WANT THE FUCKIN' JEWELRY!..."

Christopher Wallace and Sean Combs,
Intro Skit from Ready To Die, 1994

I didn't always know that Sean John Combs was a genius: I had a difficult time recognizing it. Maybe it was all of the personalities that confused my cultural GPS: Puffy, Puff, Puffy Combs, Puff Daddy, P.Diddy, Diddy, Sean John, and now, Sean Combs. That's a lot of people living in one body. A lot of different faces. A lot of different personalities. Like David Bowie and Madonna before him, Sean Combs recognized there is strength in the number of times you can reinvent yourself. More is mo'. Mo' people, mo' celebrity. Mo' celebrity, mo' opportunities. Mo' opportunities, mo' money.

Mo' money, mo' problems.

Unlike Zelig -- Woody Allen's brilliant mock-doc about a man with the bizarre ability to morph into the people around him -- Sean J. Combs various transformations had nothing to do with conformity. His protean talent is a jamming device in the spinning blades of the big machine called Famous. The machine that loves to taste the flavor of the month before chewing it up and spitting it out.

The Frenzy Of Renown -- to borrow the title of Leo Braudy's great meditation on the definition of fame -- is suspended between the moral polarity of the sacred and the profane. Supplication at the throne of celebrity always becomes the toilet primed for the royal flush. It's the Great American Past Time: build 'em up to woosh 'em down the sewer of irrelevance.

Lest we forget, Elvis died on the commode.

Sean John Combs is not about to be irrelevant. To paraphrase Oscar Levant, S.J.C. is a study of a man in chaos in search of frenzy. The chaotic need for attention, recognition, adoration, love, understanding. The frenzied blowback of controversy, rumor, innuendo, gossip, and misinterpretation. The blogs love the online parlor game called, Use This Blind Item To Pin The Scandal On The Jackass. Somehow, Sean Combs continues to slip away from the collective pin-stick of heated condemnation. Somehow, Sean Combs continues to make news about house-guests in glass houses dodging judgmental stones, club preferences and story retractions, successful haute couture at Fashion Week, a box office smash, the epicurean distinctions between Popeyes and KFC.

What gets lost in the translation of the inscrutable writ known as Sean John Combs, is his stature as one of the greatest music producers of all time. Time to rewind: before Ciroc, before Saint-Tropez, before Gatz bulleted into Gatsby, before I Am King jet-skied into our subconscious group-think, there was Ready To Die. On the 12th anniversary of his untimely death, it's long overdue to take another look at the musical birth certificate of the greatest MC who ever lived, Christopher Wallace. The same Christopher Wallace who transformed into "Biggie Smalls", a monster created in the lab of a Frankenstein crack economy, who looked in the mirror and saw a dude "fat, black/and ugly as ever/however..." The Biggie Smalls who was the 1994 model of Richard Wright's 1940 Bigger Thomas, from his storied classic, "Native Son". The impact of Ready To Die is even more powerful in this futuristic age of a Black Commander-In-Chief, President Barack Obama -- this age of Obamica -- because I don't think that Bigger Thomas nor Biggie Smalls could have ever imagined that reality in their lifetime. Smalls would probably say it was "un/believe/a/bowl"...

Once upon a time in America -- Reagan's America -- Biggie opined that a young black kid only had two exit strategies out of the hood: slinging crack rocks or having a wicked jump shot. Part gangster melodrama, part soulful tone poem, part 1930s radio play ("The Shadow Knows"), part porn film (was Biggie really getting his socks blown off by that groupie in that skit?), and part suicide note, Ready To Die gets my vote for the greatest Hip Hop album of all time. It was the album that gave a voice to a generation of young, fatherless, disillusioned, and disenfranchised black males, who assumed nihilism and death were the only answers to life's puzzling absolutes. Maybe Ready To Die was Hip Hop's first existential album: I bang out, therefore, I am. I don't know.

What I do know is this. It took the hungry drive and visionary intuition of Sean John Combs to harness and direct the unmatched lyrical brilliance of Christopher Wallace. In my interview with Combs last week, at the New York headquarters of his Bad Boy Worldwide media empire, I asked him if he and Christopher knew they were recording the greatest rap album of all time, and other questions about the making of Ready To Die. Some of his answers may surprise you. This much is clear: the story of Sean John Combs is truly an American dream. Even if Ready To Die is the epitome of a tragic American nightmare. Without question, it feels as if some Things Done Changed -- to borrow the title of a track from Ready To Die -- on 20 January 2009. However, ghetto life now -- as it was on the release of Ready To Die in 1994 -- sadly reminds U.S. that the song remains the same.

Here's a segment of my interview with Sean Combs:

Click here to view the entire interview with Sean "Diddy" Combs.

Comments

[cmeans29]

Excellent post! Biggie was a great MC, no doubt! He only recorded two cds, so it's difficult for ME to consider Biggie " The Greatest." One of the greatest, yes.

The "Ready To Die" cd, without a doubt, is a classic. At the time of it's release, the NY rap scene was colder than the current GOP. The west coast based, Death Row Records, was the hottest label, Dr. Dre "The Chronic", Snoop Dogg , Above The Rim Soundtrack, and Tha Dogg Pound.

Biggie's "Ready To Die" cd put NYC back on the map!

I remember when Clive Davis, Arista Records, CEO, offered Puffy the inital Bad Boy production deal. After the success of Biggie, Davis voided the first covenant and reissued a very lucrative offer.

[Barry Michael Cooper - Huffpost Blogger]

Thank you cmeans29. And you're right: Biggie and Puff brought the East Coast back when Dre and Snoop had the game on lock back in the early '90s. Thanks for your insight.

[Cinqueorange]

I enjoyed this interview. I love reading about the way albums are created behind the scenes especially an album like Ready To Die. Sean Combs is misunderstood because he's young, Black, rich, flashy and boastful at times. But we have him to thank for Big, Mary, Jodeci, Faith, 112, Lil' Kim and whoever else I forgot. I was telling my friend the other day that dance music needs a Puffy to commercially revive it in America. I liked your questions because they were about the music and not what car he is driving or who he is dating. People think that him using a sample (piece of Black music history as Greg Tate called it) behind a hot rapper is a no-brainer but if that were the case there would be a million Puffys. As a Black woman there have been times I was concerned about what they were doing but unfortunately a lot of hip-hop is a guilty pleasure for a woman. For example, you could've asked him why did he tell Big not to say " I don't care if you are pregnant" on "Gimme The Loot" as if that would cancel out all the other misogyny on the album? But the lyric was there anyway because they just dubbed "pregnant" out. But I understand that Biggie's dysfunctional issues with women were a part of the overall incomplete package.

[Barry Michael Cooper - Huffpost Blogger]

Thank you for your response. I appreciate it.

[salvesons]

Lastly, it would seem that the reason Cooper thinks W and C redeem themselves is cause they didn't "sugar coat" things (as if we needed reminding that things are hard for lower income neighborhoods and that there immorality and and brutal conditions there?) That's not quite a newsflash. Are you sure that they didn't contribute to it by glorifying it for profit?
You state that they consciously intended their works to " show... where the road to perdition ended".
Prove that by extensive quotations of their lyrics, but you'll have to avoid the thousands that refer to killing or raping women, etc...
What you are saying is that W martyred himself just to show how wrong he was? I think whatever unintended consequence of his acts and words (such as exposing the problem of the "only two ways to get out out" mentality) was mostly beyond him or hatched in retrospect; he may stand for something slightly more than his words now but only as a case study in failure.
Maybe there's a human beneath the cartoon image W profited from? Maybe I just don't get it, being who I am? Well, I think that the internal contradictions of Wallace's and Comb's own words and actions indict them just fine. Peace and positivity, education, intelligence, morality... that's what we need. (But prove me wrong with evidence of their words and acts... I'd like to see it....) Peace out.

[Barry Michael Cooper - Huffpost Blogger]

Bingo...you confirmed your own doubt...
you just don't get it.

And your condescending tone underscores that. You talk about "positivity" and
"morality", and you are judging and condemning folk you don't know. Biggie and Puff have many self inflicted wounds, and one lost his life behind it. But who knows if there is a young Black man sitting in a masters or doctorate course at Morgan, Howard, Harvard, Nyu, Stamford, or even Oxford who listed to "Ready To Die", and was so scared out of wits, he decided to go "right" and not left. He decided to make a conscious decision not to get ensnared by the narcissist nihilism that the street life uses to corrupt and kill young black men. Do you have absolute proof that this album didn't help someone do the right thing? Empirical data? Of course you don't and neither do I.
In my opinion, "Ready To Die" is a masterpiece, and a work of modern literary genius. Like "Native Son", "Like Crime and Punishment", like "Notes From Underground", like "The Outsider", like "Invisible Man", like "The Blacker The Berry", like "Cane", like "Banjo", like "A Movable Feast", like "The Great Gatsby". This is my opinion, You have yours. That's all that matters, and I am glad my essay inspired you to write such a passionate response, whether we agree or not, and I hope you continue to read my posts. Have a Blessed day.
And that's the Whole of the Peace. Bmc

[salvesons]

(Continued) Is Wallace critiquing the problem, or capitalizing on it? A novelist is most often clearly separate from his characters. Its a function of what literature students would call "narrative distance". Richard Wright might have had a criminal as an actor in his play, but he did not capitalize on or create a violent mysogynistic greedhead biography of his own to sell books, did he? Did P.I.G. offer any indication that he was "distant" from his narratives? He was a crack dealer who never reformed; he didn't care about the damage he did, the lives he helped ruin, the dangerous environment he promoted; he sought to profit from glorifying it on record ad naseum. He represents everything that is wrong about entertainment and criminal minded chanters in this society, and his early death confirms it. Are you missing that rather obvious truth? Listen, this country has a rich poor gap, social ills, a dark history and a difficult present. Did P.I.G. seek to solve the problems, or exploit them? Did he donate his estate to charity or his hood? Did he or Combs even play an instrument, or did they just rip off others' hooks? Genius? Baby, Please.Try forgettable, except to fourteen year olds with ghetto power fantasies. Meanwhile, there are better chanters out there than W. Howabout Freestyle Fellowship for intelligence, flow, social critique, etc. Howabout Busdriver? Those guys right there kick his ass around the block. peace out. (No piece, know justice.)

[Barry Michael Cooper - Huffpost Blogger]

Well salvesons, you are entitled to your opinion. But you don't know if Christopher's lyrics and Puff's production­/conceptio­n of "Ready To Die" touched a young black man to avoid the nihlism depicted on the album. Most inner city kids are not going to listen to Freestyle Fellowship. They are quite talented, but some of the "conscious" MC's have a unconscious tendency to talk at/down to their listeners. And a lot of the listeners have an unconscious tendency to tune them out. A lot of these kids have not been exposed to Baraka, Giovanni, bell hooks, and other fountains of inspired African American knowledge. They are citizens of "Generation Crack", which nearly wiped out two generations of African American children. The same children who Charles Krauthammer dismissed as a "bio underclass". That's Big's audience, Jay-Z's and Lil Waynes. Big was a petty criminal, not a major crack dealer. Big was foolish and now...he's been dead for 12 years. The genius in "Ready To Die"--like "Native Son" and even "Crime and Punishment" which was a huge influence on Richard Wright, as was most of Dostoevsky's work, especially in the way "Notes From Underground" had a huge impact on Wright's short story classic, "The Man Who Lived Underground"--was a fully realized, realistic but Fictional reflection
of the environment that impacted him. Most young Black men who grew up in the age of Reagan
felt hopeless, helpless, and angry. And most assuredly, they were "Ready To Die."

[salvesons]

That's a fair response, that he spoke to them in a way others couldn't, and if you feel he had a net positive effect, you are also entitled to your opinion (which perhaps has more credibility than mine). But what did he seemingly speak to them? That being "ready to die"/self-suicide via a criminal lifestyle was a good thing? That selling crack and murdering to survive is a path to success when things are bleak? Where in the words or actions of Mr. Wallace is the subtext that the lifestyle he adopts/cha­racterizes is really actually unhealthy? Wright and the other authors you mention (who are all great, no doubt, and I'd add Ntozake Shange or Toni Morrison or Wanda Coleman and a whole host of others who absolutely made positive contributions to the culture to that list) didn't try to personnify the criminal aspect of their characters for marketing purposes. If one kid was turned from nihlism, good, but what about the thousands who had to live in a more violent environment which I'd argue Wallace engendered in his own community by seeming to celebrate criminality if only to "speak to" the criminal element with credibility? Sure there's some dimension and potential net positive effect there if you look hard enough after the fact, but how much of that was because of Wallace's intent and purpose? Looks to me like he exploited the problem more than anything. thanks for the reply, tho.

[ConcernedAboutRFuture]

Definitely NOT genius. Identity crisis....maybe, but not genius. Nowhere near. I wonder what his name will be THIS year?

[spiderbucket]

Great post in my opinion as I am interested in almost any artist when profiled with intelligent insight. But Sean John Puffy Diddy Whatever Whocares is FAR from a genius. Stevie Wonder is a genius. Prince is a genius. Chuck D is a genius. Diddy makes pop and it's not very enduring either. His best work is when he collaborates and the other party carries the load. Diddy can barely form a sentence and is as out of touch as old men on my block. I'm fascinated by most any artist who has been in the game for as long as he has but what does he really have to show for it ? Compare his track record to someone like Norman Whitfield or Quincy Jones - 'genius' suddenly sounds like a bit of a reach, no ? He's good looking and well dressed. That's about all I got for him whatever his name is the year.

[Barry Michael Cooper - Huffpost Blogger]

Thank you for your comment spiderbucket and thank you for reading. I appreciate it.

[Kit Rice-Gibson]

Richard Wright is one of my favorite authors. I had two great English teachers in middle school who made sure that we read his works. The mere fact that you reference him in a write up on Puff and Big is genius. The haters out there will never give Big his dues just like back in the day Richard Wright wasn't given his props. Now his works are considered a part of an era: The Harlem Renaissance. Well, Big will go down under the Hip-Hop Renaissance. Puff's marketing style was ahead of the times in the 90's. Biggie's rhymes were right on time. So many could relate to him and his plight to become a star. They can relate now but they rather hate. Big opened the doorways for the avg black man. Let's face it most stars had to be petite and good looking in the industry. I love both Tupac and Biggie. They are different and should never be compared. I pray the youth will look at the lives of these two and decipher the good from the bad before they embark on a journey into the life of Hip-Hop.

[Barry Michael Cooper - Huffpost Blogger]

Kit thank you so much. You definitely got the point I was trying to make: Puff--despite
his own self inflicted wounds and the endless haters out there--is a genius for putting together
an album with Biggie, and using it to be a mirror of life in the inner city for disillusioned young black men in the '90s. Biggie was the voice for guys like Larry Davis, for a whole generation of men who were and are the dregs of society, who feel they have no other recourse but self-destruction. Like the "Bigger Thomases" that the late, great Richard Wright saw during his time in Chicago in the '30s. The beauty of the Biggie Smalls caricature of "Ready To Die" is that he was the exception, not the norm. President Obama, is The Norm: young black men who hustled through the same adversity, sorrow, bleakness, and despair, to see a light at the end of the tunnel. The media never played up the winners like Barack Obama: the soundbites were the dudes coming out of the building in cuffs or a bodybag. Puffy and Notorious B.I.G, get my nod for best hip hop album ever, because they portrayed that life without sugar coating it, or making excuses for it, and showing were the road to perdition ended. At the graveyard. Thank you again for your kind words. Bmc

[Kit Rice-Gibson]

BMC, I apologize. I only skimmed the article yesterday and didn't even catch who you were. This morning I checked out the interview and it is very revealing about several men that we, as parents, must infuse into the education of our youth. Because I am old school I know about some of them. Many schools aren't even touching the realness of African-American genre. Talk to Puff and get something together to educate our youth further on our history. There are kids out here who don't know what symbolism, imagery or themes means in our works. They are tv-spoon fed to believe what is on the surface. If we show them what went wrong and ask them how to fix it, they will develop problem solving strategies to avoid the many pitfalls along the path. They will get it right the first time and not have to re-invent their character. Obama put stimulus money in place for us to add some quality of life for our youth. You and Puff have to go out there and bring it home even if it isn't a direct action. Delegate, delegate, delegate and let's bring some unity and progress to our youth. Thanks again for the inspiration. I am taking Big Poppa(my choco-pit) for a walk and meditating on what I can do from my end.

[WillKC]

Puffy almost singlehandedly killed hip hop, and besides being friends with/producing BIG, has never even associated with talent or anything good.

[nicole44]

While I will agree that Diddy's business knowledge and drive is amazing, the only thing I could think of after reading that intro of the article was... Oh my God look at how society has gone done hill. Not to sound uptight or anything but how is that genius? The whole dialogue consisted of 4 words and maybe 1 of them I would say infront of my mother. I know you are making the comparison between a great book and the similarities of both minds (great minds think alike sorta deal) but what does this say about our culture today... I think it says that we have none. I think that it is not a glowing example to our communities to point out not one but two dialoges that talk about robbery as genius. I know it's not the point of the article but I think we take away what sticks out in our minds and thats the first thing that I saw. Sad...

[Ohioan730]

The first quote is an excerpt from the 1930s (? 40s?) novel "Native Son" by Richard Wright and the second is a quote from an Intro on a hip-hop record from the 1990s. It shows me that there is a serious problem in society and hip-hop, poetry and fictional novels sometimes provide the dialog so that people will know what's happening in the hood. Its 90% of the reason for black music. Its a newspaper. Its a grapevine. Its shocking and its true. Things like that are being done by the children that the world has forgotten and thrown away. Their parents were once children who were forgotten and the cycle continues until somebody is shocked enough to notice. That's hip-hop.

[nicole44]

I know what both quotes are, I found it disturbing on 2 fronts, that this language was overseen by the blogger and accepted as normal- thats what was sad to me, and that he chose these passages to praise when there was a lot of work that Sean Combs did other than this skit to compaire to another great novel. I think it sends the wrong message to kids to think of this language as acceptable and the topic of it as not shocking.

[prabbit]

This is just my opinion...­but....I'd call Combs one of the luckiest music producers of all time, but not one of the greatest. He lucked into Biggie and has been making his bucks off his legacy ever since.

Other than Biggie's output and "Ready To Die" in particular, what can you really point to that he has contributed in a meaningful musical sense?

Dre has done tons more worthwhile work and look at people like EL-P...in terms of artistic creativity, both of the aforementioned blow Combs really far away. Metaphorically, that is :)

And though there is no doubting Biggie's talents behind the mic, his "message", as such, was often, well, vile.

I'm not saying everyone has to be like Common (who I enjoy), but hey, Tupac was a much more complex and rich artist than Biggie ever was.

I find the mythmaking of both Biggie and Combs to be a little sad and desperate. Talented? Biggie was, no doubt. Combs? Eh. Right place, right time, and shrewd.

Actually, the Madonna comparison is pretty accurate. And that isn't a putdown.

[EZD]

I agree that Biggie was a very talented young man... but I tire of people mostly his fans claiming he was the "Best Ever MC" their are many living and One Dead who have more creditials for that title. So let us give props, but for the body of work he was not the Greatest.

[Pulemerci]

I won't get into all of the violent icidents in which Combs' and other "artists" were involved. It amazes me that entertainers actually kill each other. Just amazing. One incident I cannot forget is Coms' charity basketball game . In 1991 Combs promoted a concert headlined by Heavy D. The concert was held at the City College of New York gymnasium following an AIDS charity basketball game. The event was massively overcrowded; it was oversold to almost twice the capacity of the gymnasium. In addition, thousands without tickets were outside. In order to keep them from sneaking in, Combs' people shut the only door to a stairwell and put a table behind it, despite the crowd jammed inside pounding on the door and pleading for help. At some point people in the crowd outside broke several glass doors in an attempt to get in; this caused a stampede inside the gymnasium in which nine people died.

[Ohioan730]

I remember when that happened. That was totally irresponsible for him to oversell those tickets and block the entrances. What a dolt he was.

One thing about "artists" is that some of them like to stay grounded in the poor neighborhoods they come from because thats where their families and friends are. This is a mistake because violence is prevalent in poor communities. Neither BIG, 2Pac, or Sam Cooke were kil led by other "artists". They were famous black men who should have not been frequenting the hood anymore, but they know the minute leave it, they lose the appeal and the underground edge that the fans love. I used to see Bone Thugs and Harmony at night clubs in Cleveland all the time. They'd do a concert at the Gund and I'd see them at the club later on. Rappers insist on hanging out with us regular people (without bodyguards) and I think its a big mistake, IMO.

[Pulemerci]

Good point.

[ohioan73]

Good times, the 90s. One thing about Puffy, he knows what makes the girls dance. When you make the girls dance, you fill the club which results in your music being wildly popular. He got a lot of criticism from the guys but the girls were buying up all the Jodeci, Mary J. Blige and Heavy D Cds Puff was producing so he kept doing his thing. You have to respect that he was able to pull in the guys--the hard core raw hip-hop underground fans--by introducing the world to BIG. BIG would have eventually made it but Puff was instrumental in getting him there faster and on a bigger stage. BIG was the best thing that ever happened to Puffy. If ya notice, he's been desperate to find the next best thing ever since BIG died. He's chasing a ghost. He's going about it the wrong way which almost caused him to pass up BIG at first because he was looking for a "pretty boy". If I was him, I'd quit holding auditions to put together a boy band and go back to the streets and find another "ugly as eva" who can actually perform.

[Barry Michael Cooper - Huffpost Blogger]

I like that insight Ohioan73. Thank you for posting.

[LiberalBuzz]

Hmmm not quite sure what to say without offending you but GENIUS? Really?

I'll stop now.

[Nommo]

LOL!

[Barry Michael Cooper - Huffpost Blogger]

It's a free country, don't bite your tongue, and thank you for reading my post. I appreciate it.