Puffy

By David E. Thigpen/Nassau

On a balmy winter's night in Nassau, the Bahamas, Sean ("Puffy") Combs kicks back in an office at Compass Point Studios. Dressed down in a polo shirt, Gucci slippers and a glittering diamond ear stud, he is taking a break from recording his new album, Forever, to explain the world according to Puffy. "Kids don't want to be like Mike anymore," he says, referring to a certain recently retired athlete. "Their heroes are rappers. In five years if Master P and I endorse a presidential candidate, we could turn an election. Hip-hop is that deep."

If all that sounds a tad over the top, it's because these are heady times for hip-hop, and no one has done more to lead it to the promised land of mainstream acclaim than the man called Puff Daddy. Whether it be the Hamptons polo match he played host to last year or his coronation-like 29th birthday bash thronged by well-wishers from Muhammad Ali to Martha Stewart, Combs has planted hip-hop's flag in places undreamed of a decade ago.

As a rapper and producer, and as the owner of Bad Boy Records, one of hip-hop's most powerful new corporate dynasties, Combs has his fingerprints all over rap music in the '90s. His recycling, or sampling, of old hits by the likes of Diana Ross and the Police proved to be pure gold, bringing in millions of new fans even as critics carped that he is to music what Andy Warhol was to painting--a salesman in artist's clothing.

But Combs makes no grand artistic claim. He never studied music, and relies on an intuitive sense of what is marketable. "If I learned to play an instrument, it would take away from what I do, which is to listen and let the feelings come and absorb them. Then I can say, 'Put that beat there, do this, do that.'"

Three Bad Boy releases--Notorious B.I.G.'s Life After Death, Mase's Harlem World and Combs' debut, No Way Out--each sold more than 3 million albums. I'll Be Missing You, Combs' 1997 elegy to B.I.G., who died in a drive-by shooting, outsold every other single that year except Elton John's tribute to Princess Diana, Candle in the Wind. "Puffy is one of the main reasons for hip-hop's mass appeal," admits Ruffhouse Records boss Chris Schwartz, a Bad Boy rival. "He's made the music more accessible."

Just as important to Combs' popularity is the high-style, fun-loving, money-making persona he cultivates. After the murders of B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur, many music fans soured on gangsta rap's verbal gunslinging. Combs' videos portrayed a stylish, monied crowd more concerned with the good life than living out gangster fantasies--"ghetto high fashion," he calls it. Offstage too Combs cuts a swashbuckling figure. In white-on-white suits and a black bowler, he is chauffeured around in a Bentley, and hangs his hat in a cavernous $14 million Manhattan mansion that he shares with his girlfriend, Kim Porter, and their 10-month-old son Christian. When the weather turns cold, Combs suns aboard a yacht moored off the island of St. Bart's.

Combs grew up fatherless in New York City: Melvin Combs was killed when his son was three, a victim of a street deal gone awry. "Because of the way he died, my mom and grandmom pulled together and kept me off the streets," says Puffy. Janice Combs moved Sean and his younger sister Keisha to the suburbs, selling clothes and driving a bus so she could send her son to private schools.

At Howard University, Combs was a business major but schooled himself in party throwing. In 1989 he dropped out and returned to New York. He joined Andre Harrell's Uptown Records, where he rose rapidly from intern to vice president, launching Bad Boy there in 1991. Combs' greatest debacle still dogs him: a disastrous stampede that year in which nine people died at an oversold party he promoted with the rapper Heavy D. Last month a judge found that both men and New York's City College, the host of the event, shared responsibility for the deaths, although the finding carries no penalties or damages.

By 1993 Combs had become so rebellious and impatient that Harrell fired him. "He was hot tempered, very passionate, very creative," says Harrell, who now is a consultant to Bad Boy. "But Puff was like Dennis the Menace. Every now and then something would get broken." (Combs' huffing and puffing earned him his nickname.) When Combs exited Uptown, Arista's Clive Davis stepped in and gave him another chance.

"Power and success didn't change Puffy," says one former associate. "He's always been a great businessman and a master manipulator." Combs rules Bad Boy with a firm, sometimes ruthless hand, controlling a dozen producers and rappers, supervising them in the studio, approving their lyrics and sometimes even dictating the color of their shoes. If he is tough, Combs says, it's because "there's never been an opportunity like this, even back in the Motown days. Very few people have the chance to be their own boss, to own what they create." Sometimes, to lead the way to the promised land, it takes a warrior, not a prophet.

--By David E. Thigpen/Nassau