the godfather revisited

IN A plush office deep in the heart of the North American megapolis reclines a man many believe to be the Randall Flagg of rap, a squeaky-clean Staggerlee. Scottish ambient rockers Mogwai even dubbed him the Antichrist on the closing track from their hypnotic Come On Die Young album.
Here in this shiny citadel, Puff Daddy, aka Sean Combs, talks to God on one big white telephone and converses with the devils of the press on the other. There are few lines on his face (and none on his palms, some will wager) but there is a tattoo of the 23rd psalm on his lower right arm, there are rings on his fingers, designer labels on his clothes . . . and he shall make money wherever he goes.
At 30 years of age, this ebony-skinned man in an ivory tower is one of the most powerful men in the music industry; a multi-millionaire producer, artist, A&R man, record company CEO, restauranteur, publisher, fashion mogul, presser of such celebrity flesh as Donald Trump, Tommy Hilfiger, Madonna and Donatella Versace, and squire of Latin-American singer/actress Jennifer Lopez.
Combs is also widely regarded as being responsible for the decline of mainstream hip-hop from an art form into a glorified manufacturing industry. If pioneer producers like Dr. Dre and The Bomb Squad were master thieves distorting, distending and disguising their genius steals then Puffy s off-the-rack appropriation of backing tracks and melodies by artists like David Bowie, The Police, Earth Wind & Fire and The Bee Gees is regarded by purists as corporate piracy. Like another famous rhymester once said: Steal a little and they throw you in jail/Steal a lot and they make you king.
Yet there have been whisperings that cracks are beginning to show in big Puffy s empire, that his stable of artists are getting restless, that his crown is slipping. Three days before speaking to the press to publicise his forthcoming European tour, Combs appeared in court charged with three gun-related felonies. Consequently, these pow-wows with the newspapers amount to a sort of Faustian pact (or, if you prefer, a Proustian fact): free publicity in exchange for not making even the faintest of allusions to the case.
Here s what happens when Puff Daddy gets on the press treadmill (any similarities to scenes from Bob Roberts or Bulworth are purely coincidental). An assistant dials the number of the journalist on a miniscule v-series Motorola cellphone. Almost as soon as Puffy has completed one call, he s handed another phone, and the next interviewer s name is whispered to him. Puffy greets the reporter and the 15-minute exchange begins. The first couple of questions are generally harmless ice-breakers, but no matter how many warnings and conditions Puffy s PR people lay down, the line of interrogation inevitably inches towards one off-limits area or another: his relationship with Lopez, the current court case, the assault on record executive Steve Stoute last April, the deaths of Tupac and Biggie.
Combs point-blank refuses to discuss the first two subjects ( I don t want to talk to you about that side of my life because personally I don t think that s any of your business ) and deftly sidesteps the rest before getting back to plugging the tour.
Despite the legal situation, today is not that different from any other on the campaign trail. A woman from Arista Records calls up an Irish journalist, identifies herself, then puts him through to one of Puffy s personal assistants. The assistant then says something like this:
Before your interview I just want to go through some of the guidelines. He (Puffy) cannot comment about the events that happened last December, and he can t talk about the court case because that s still going on. And also, he d prefer not to talk about Jennifer. So I hope that you will respect them, and I m sure you ll have a good interview if you do. He s more than happy to talk about the tour.
Yeah, right, the hack thinks. Ask him about the tour. Nevertheless, he agrees to the terms, and is asked to hold on a moment while they get the star on the line. The moment lasts about ten minutes. Just enough time to reflect on the events of the last few months.
The last time Puff Daddy stood on an Irish stage, at the MTV Europe Awards in November, he performed Best Friend , a quasi-gospel number about the singer s love for God, about faith and redemption, all rapped over the anodyne tones of a sample from Christopher Cross MOR standard Sailing . Puffy, dressed all in white, spun around The Point stage with shirttails flailing, looking like an enraptured Jehovah s Witness.
Some of the more cynical onlookers found this holy show a bit hard to swallow. After all, here was a man who, by nature of his profession, had broken daily bread with the most fiercesome beasts in the hip-hop jungle. A man whose career like it or loathe it, and by his own admission had benefitted from the death of his friend Biggie Smalls. A man who, if he has no blood on his hands, must shake hands with those who do.
After the MTV Awards, across town, some of Combs party were involved in a scuffle with Boyzone singer Shane Lynch, when they allegedly tried to oust his wife, Eternal singer Easther Bennett, from the VIP area in the Temple Theatre. Wags might speculate that Lynch got away lucky. Mere weeks later, Combs was back in the headlines.
Puff puff. Bang bang. Death all too often imitates art in hip-hop, but even by this most violent of genre s standards, 99 hadn t been a good year. Ol Dirty Bastard, Coolio and Busta Rhymes all had highly publicised brushes with the law. In early December, Jay-Z (real name Shawn Carter), one of the world s biggest selling rappers, was accused of stabbing Lance Un Rivera, head of Untertainment Records, over a bootlegging dispute. (Puff Daddy was on the guest list for Jay-Z s launch party, while Jay-Z, who shot and wounded his own brother as a young man himself, guests on Puffy s latest album).
It s one of the great ironies of hip-hop that, despite all the ancient antipathies between Italian and Afro-American, rappers love that mafioso shit. Reputedly, notorious Death Row mogul Suge Knight once incorporated a move from GoodFellas in his attack on two brothers named Stanley at the record company s LA HQ in 1992. Similarly, one newspaper reported that as Jay-Z carried out the alleged stabbing of Rivera, he delivered a line lifted from The Godfather Part II Lance, you broke my heart .
The events that befell Puff Daddy last December could also have come straight out of a rap-remake of the Coppola classic. All the elements were there: a history of Montague/Capulet-style feuds; the beautiful starlet shivering in a holding pen; the hotheaded young buck out for blood; the male lead, sick of all the fighting, trying to go straight but finding himself pulled back into the clutches of the thugs with whom he used to run . . .
On the night of December 26/27, Combs and Jennifer Lopez attended Manhattan s Club New York. According to eyewitnesses, Combs was tossing money around the crowded room like confetti. This antagonised some patrons, one of whom reportedly threw a wad of bills at him. According to the Manhattan prosecutor, Combs then waved a gun around, and one of the artists from Puffy s stable, Shyne (real name Jamal Barrow), opened fire with a 9mm Ruger, hitting two men and a woman. There were no fatalities. The club s assistant manager Chris Pollock told Rolling Stone that he saw a young man later identified as Barrow exiting the club and running into a police officer, who arrested the rapper when he saw the gun.
Combs and Lopez fled the scene in a Bad Boy-owned Lincoln Navigator with driver Wardel Fenderson and bodyguard Anthony Wolf Jones (an ex-con with a cop-killing conviction). They ran 10 red lights, pursued by police, who pulled the vehicle over and say they spotted a stolen 9mm semi-automatic Smith & Wesson under the front seat. Combs attorney Harvey Slovis maintained that the rapper had no idea the gun was in the Lincoln, and that they had earlier travelled to the club in a limo.
On the face of it, Shyne has been nothing but trouble for Puffy. After signing with Bad Boy for an advance of $1 million over two years ago, the young rapper crashed his new Mercedes, and a friend died in the accident. A few months ago, following a fight, Barrow was shot at in Puffy s recording studio. His debut album has still not been released.
Puffy and Lopez were detained at the Midtown North Precinct. Lopez was fingerprinted and manacled to a bench for 14 hours. A police source said that she was scared to death and crying in the precinct . She was released after the DA s office determined there was not enough evidence to hold her, with the understanding that she would testify before the grand jury.
Later, Jones and Fenderson were charged with possession of a weapon in the third degree. Shyne was charged with three counts of attempted murder. Combs faces three gun-related felony counts, including gun possession in the second degree, meaning police believe he intended to use the weapon to harm another person.
Following his release on bail, Puffy and Lopez checked into room 801 at the plush Peninsula Hotel under the alias Rios , where, according to Combs publicist Dan Klores, she helped plan his press conference.
At that conference, Combs said, I want to make sure this is 100 per cent clear. I had nothing to do with the shooting. I think it is terrible that people were hurt that night. He also told reporters that, I do not own a gun, nor did I have possession of a gun that night. In early January, it was reported that Lopez testified to the Grand Jury that she had no knowledge of Puffy carrying a gun; apparently she was looking the other way when the shooting began.
As long as Combs remains tight with the likes of Shyne and Jones, his player pedigree ( player , that is, in the sense of possessing industry clout, rather than continuing to be a playa , a high-roller in gangsta rap parlance) appears unstable. Since the shootings, his attempts to raise money for an Internet venture have been less than successful.
There were also reports that Lopez distanced herself from Combs on the advice of friends, family and handlers, and plans for a joint performance at the American Music Awards were swiftly cancelled. Her managers have reassured cosmetic giants L Oreal, with whom she has an endorsement deal, that there ll be no more trouble with Puffy (L Oreal insist there has been no change to her contract).
Lopez s confidantes suggest that while she genuinely admires Combs ambition and drive, she is also aware it might be her relationship versus her career. The pair have attended social functions separately and Lopez failed to show at the recent wake for rapper Big Punisher. According to a close friend: The people around her have repeatedly told her that you can t be Hollywood s sweetheart if you re running from the cops.
And while Puffy maintains that he s too old to fight, it was only last April that he was accused of assaulting Nas manager/Interscope executive Steve Stoute after MTV aired a video for Nas single Hate Me Now featuring images of Puffy being crucified, which he had asked to be edited out. However, the pair sorted out their differences, and Combs got off with a day of anger management training plus a payment.
Hey Puffy, do you ever feel like Pacino in Carlito s Way?
Yeah . . . (laughs). That s definitely me.
Combs voice is faint, almost inaudible. He mumbles a lot. Much of the conversation will be indecipherable on tape, most of the interview unusable. Throughout the exchange, the line keeps breaking up, probably as Puffy paces around the room, cellphone in hand. The guy exists in such a permanent state of wired hyperactivity, he can t sit still ( Got to keep movin . . ./There s a hellhound on my trail ).
I allow myself a brief moment of paranoia. Maybe Combs is doing this on purpose every time the questions get irksome. But if that s the case, why bother doing press at all? Why not just pull the shutters down and wait it out until this latest storm has blown over? Because there s a European tour to publicise, and tickets to sell, that s why. And business ain t quite as hot as it used to be.
Against all odds and logic, Puffy s second album Forever has bombed. Despite a characteristically massive promotional blitzkrieg, the reviews ranged from lukewarm to poor. The 207,000 copies that it shifted in its first week of release proved insufficient to knock Christina Aguilera s album off the top spot. The following week, sales dropped to less than half that figure.
Some observers blamed it on the unusual choice of lead single: P.E. 2000 , a thunderously noisy cover of an old Public Enemy track, failed to make much impression on the Bilboard Hot 100. Puffy chose it ahead of any of the glitzy-sounding Eighties retreads that make up the majority of Forever. A subsequent single, Satisfy You , did get to number one, but so far has failed to bolster album sales.
For all its troubles, though, Forever's sales did at least turn platinum, something that most other acts can still only dream of. And while it is true that Bad Boy Entertainment has taken a pounding of late not helped by Puffy ploughing most of its promotional budget into the ad campaign for Forever it will be easily kept afloat by the sales of the posthumous (some would say grave-robbing) album from Notorious BIG, Born Again.
Puffy is a survivor, claimed veteran Arista boss Clive Davis recently (and he should know; Davis is currently fighting off a vicious boardroom putsch from LA Reid of LaFace Records, TLC's label). He is showing resiliency.
Mind you, if convicted of gun possession, Combs could face up to 15 years in prison. He s taking no chances, with OJ/Snoop super-lawyer Johnny Cochrane on his team, alongside Benjamin Bratman (presumably the legal eagles late night cramming sessions are periodically roused with cheerleading choruses of, It s all about the Benjamin ).
But there have been some unsavoury developments. Manhattan District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos has accused Combs of offering Wardel Fenderson $50,000 and an inscribed #180,000 diamond ring (given to him by Lopez) at the front desk of the Precinct on the night of the shootings, in exchange for claiming ownership of the gun. In a statement, Combs said he was outraged and not guilty , while his lawyers have described these latest allegations as outrageous and baseless .
So, write your own ending. Maybe Combs gets 15 inside, serves five, joins the Nation of Islam and disappears off the face of the earth. Or maybe he walks. The camera pulls back. Puffy s sitting in his giant office ( the Frank Sinatra room ) at his midtown recording studio, Daddy s House, surrounded by five TV screens, a pool table, a fully stocked bar, bottles of Remy Martin and glass Gucci boxes full of chocolates.
He s alone, with only the black and white portraits of Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway for company, like Michael Corleone at the end of Godfather II, wondering what fate will befall his soul. Let s wait and see.

STUCK INSIDE A MOBILE WITH THE PUFF-PIECE BLUES AGAIN

(The following is an edited transcription of the Puff Daddy interview conducted for Hot Press on February 17, 2000.)

Reporter: I understand there s a lot of things you can t talk about right now . . .
Puff Daddy: It s not, it s like . . . I can talk about em I don t wanna talk about em, I just wanna talk about me coming in for the show.
Your last Irish show was at the MTV Awards in November . . .
The last time at the MTV Awards . . . was a lotta love. I appreciated the fans. We had a great time.
What exactly happened between you and Shane Lynch in the Temple Theatre?
I wasn t even really aware of it till I guess a couple of days later, when somebody asked did I have a fight with somebody named Shane, and I was like, Nah. I was a fan of Boyzone when I came. I was over there for a couple of days and I saw all the videos and I met a couple of the guys and everything s cool. As far as I can remember, I just think there was drinks in the air, and maybe people took things the wrong way. I mean, I don t have no problem with him. I d love to come out there and talk to him.
Is this what happens when you have an entourage around you and it gets out of control?
People like, crowd around and it looks like an entourage that night I had, like, two friends with me, I didn t have any entourage, but there was a lot of people around. If I m-a have a problem with somebody . . . that right there, that wasn t a problem.
You once admitted in an interview that when you were about 11 years old, you had your skateboard stolen by another boy. Your mom told you to beat the kid up, but you got another older boy to help you. Do you find it hard to confront people on your own?
No, not at all. That story s inaccurate. By the time I got outside, somebody had brought me my skateboard back. I fight my own battles, I don t need nobody to fight . . . to be honest, I m too old to be fighting. If I ever have a problem I would try to talk my way out of it.
What s your response to reports that the new album is not doing as well as expected, and Bad Boy is experiencing a crisis at the moment?
I mean, my response is that, as far as Bad Boy (is concerned), all we do is try our best every time. That s all we can do. As far as there being a big crisis . . . it s not like that. We just didn t sell as many records as last year. That happens, I mean, every film company or record company has its up and downs, these different phases. But it s not like even a down, it s just . . . we had one of the most successful years in hip-hop history. It s definitely unfair.
There s a lot of talk about playa haters in hip-hop.
Yeah.
Isn t that a little paranoid?
(animatedly) Oh no, it s definitely a real thing, y know? I mean, it s not just hip-hop, (inaudible) being jealous or envious.
How do you deal with that perceived negativity?
I just keep on workin and keep puttin out hits.
Success is the best revenge?
Yeah, definitely. It s always the best . . .
Does it concern you that the sentiments of a tune like Best Friend are undermined by recent events in your personal life?
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. The personal life things you go through definitely affect it . . .
Why did you get the 23rd Psalm ( Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me ) tattooed on your arm?
I d been through a lot of dark times (inaudible) . . . a lotta things.
Looking back over the last five years, a lot has been written about the East/West Coast saga . . .
I ain t really talkin about that (inaudible), old news, it s all played out.
Do you think the problem is when the fans and the artists get the fantasies portrayed in the videos confused with real life?
Definitely . . . but at the same time, people like that, that s part of it, and I think that whenever they cross that line you re always gonna have that problem.
But at the same time, the confusion s inevitable. After all, hip-hop thrives on codes of honour like keepin it real .
I m not even sayin it has to do with the streets, but it has to do with the person s life experiences more than, Okay, I m gonna make this up . Like, a movie is just somethin that people made up. Hip hop is things that a person thinks. There s some exagerration in hip-hop, but a lot of it is true, no matter how dark . . .
You were seen very much as the peacemaker in the East/West coast conflict. For instance, you went on TV with Snoop Doggy Dogg to try and diffuse . . .
(Puff Daddy now makes an indecipherable comment, but the tone implies, Don t go there . He talks about the forthcoming tour some more, then says something to the effect of: One more question. )
Tell me about working with Johnnie Cochran. He s as big a star as you are.
As far as Johnnie Cochran . . . is not somebody that I went and hired (as) a lawyer, but somebody that s a friend of mine . . . he s not even practicing criminal law now . . . he saw that they were trying to set me up, railroad me (indecipherable) . . . make sure that everything s prepared.
Is there a certain amount of PR risk in getting Cochran involved, in terms of guilt by association?
Yeah, but it s really not about . . .it has nothing to do with . . . what I m charged with is not a murder case. There s definitely a media risk . . . I mean, that happened to somebody else . . . If somebody wants to say that I had a gun because Johnnie Cochran s my lawyer, then . . . n
Mobile phone connection deteriorates. End of interview.
Puff Daddy and The Family play the Point Depot on March 14. Forever is out now on Arista/BMG.