Because the fiftieth anniversary of hip-hop has been celebrated this 12 months, many props have been paid to the pioneers who launched the Bronx-born culture within the ‘70s and ’80s. And rightly so.
Nonetheless, one ’90s game-changer — the artist formerly generally known as Puff Daddy — has been strangely MIA from the festivities, akin to the epic Hip Hop 50 concert, held at Yankee Stadium in August.
But it surely was inconceivable to disclaim the lasting impact of Sean “Diddy” Combs when the 53-year-old rapper, producer and all-around mogul rocked the stage at Tuesday’s MTV Video Music Awards with a career-spanning performance that greater than merited his Global Icon Award — and showed the youngsters half his age the way it’s done.
And there’s loads of Love — the center name that Combs officially adopted to switch John in 2021 — for Daddy Diddy from the younger generation on his star-studded latest album that dropped on Friday.
“The Love Album: Off the Grid” — Diddy’s first studio LP since 2010’s “Last Train to Paris” with Dirty Money — features everyone from pop stars (The Weeknd, Justin Bieber) to R&B divas (H.E.R., Summer Walker) to rappers young enough to be his children (21 Savage, Swae Lee), alll showing as much as kiss his blinged-out ring.
And if you happen to thought Diddy was going to sound like your formerly hip father crashing the party, reassess. In actual fact, “The Love” Album shows just how much Combs is The Blueprint (sorry, Jay) for today’s hip-hop music.
While some hip-hop purists dissed Diddy when he began bringing more of a melodic R&B and pop sensibility to hip-hop within the ’90s — sometimes basing whole tracks around sampled songs akin to the Police’s “Every Breath You Take” (on his 1997 smash “I’ll Be Missing You”) — it set the template for the fashionable hip-hop sound with Kanye West within the ’00s after which Drake within the ’10s and also you name it today.
“He’s from Harlem, and he brings that Harlem sensibility to all the things he does,” said culture expert Emil Wilbekin. “He really pioneered what would grow to be this great mixture of hip-hop and R&B if you happen to take into consideration Mary J Blige, Jodeci and Heavy D [& the Boyz].”
Indeed, all of those artists were developed by a young Diddy when he worked in A&R at Uptown Records before he went on start his own label, Bad Boy, where he launched the careers of the Notorious B.I.G., Mase and his own act, Puff Daddy & the Family.
“You consider the storytelling and the melodies, the male vulnerability, the ladies singing their hearts out with passion — all of that was work that he pioneered,” said Wilbekin, who likens Diddy to a music giant from a previous generation.
“The individual that I often take into consideration after I take into consideration Diddy is Quincy Jones,” said Wilbekin. “Quincy Jones is a musical genius who wouldn’t be afraid to take pop music, R&B music, rap music and jazz and blend all of it together.”
But in fact, Diddy’s impact on hip-hop has gone beyond the music. Along with heading Bad Boy Records, he launched his own Sean John clothing line, his own Ciroc brand of alcohol and even his own cable music network in Revolt.
In the method, he has shown the world what it means to be “ghetto fabulous” — a phrase coined by his late Uptown Records mentor Andre Harrell — whether it was together with his luxury branding or his “Great Gatsby”-esque White Parties within the Hamptons.
“Diddy made it a way of life … with a really unapologetically black perspective,” said Wilbekin, who put the star on his first cover as editor in chief of Vibe magazine in December 1999. “He really brought hip-hop music and culture to life as a way of life brand.
“He was very influential in changing not only how black Americans saw themselves, but how luxury brands saw themselves.You now see all these high-end luxury brands during Fashion Week all internationally bringing in rappers, bringing in R&B singers. That’s the type of stuff that he pioneered.”
