Like any good virus, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs makes his presence felt in the most unlikely places. Over the past few months, he’s been a slippery little bugger, sensing his imminent disappearance from the pop landscape and compensating by appearing just about anywhere anyone will let him.

And everyone does. Since January, Puff has appeared on a slew of remixes by other artists. Given his generally acknowledged lack of rapping skills, you have to assume it’s his celebrity and stature that are on loan. Otherwise, he adds nothing to the remixes of Eightball & MJG’s "Stop Playin’ Games," Mary J. Blige’s "No More Drama," and Mr. Cheeks’ "Lights, Camera, Action" (though he did score the former Lost Boyz frontman an opening slot on the American Music Awards, which Puff hosted). He does slightly better on Busta Rhymes’ "Pass the Courvoisier (Part 2)," despite urging female listeners to "shave it off" and, after politicking with Mr. T, encouraging Busta to stomp on a woman in the song’s video. But he’s totally useless in the video for Usher’s "U Don’t Have To Call," in which he appears apropos of nothing. Maybe that was a prelude to his subtly vindictive epic with Usher, "I Need a Girl," which is little more than an MTV-delivered apologia to Jennifer Lopez, the first of a three-part series. Tired yet?

The first two installments of the "I Need a Girl" set are collected on his latest "family" effort, We Invented the Remix! (Bad Boy). For the record: Puff didn’t invent the remix, and neither did any apocryphal "we" that includes him. Sure, Bad Boy remixes used to be the shit — you could slap a Biggie verse on just about anything and make it classic — but this CD showcases the label post-1999, a far leaner time. Occasionally, genius does shine through, as on the new version of G. Dep’s "Special Delivery," which features energizing verses from Keith Murray, Craig Mack and, best of all, Ghostface Killah.

But Puff can’t deny himself a bit of nostalgia for better days. The spartan, black-and-white "Special Delivery" video is a direct copy of the one for the remix to Craig Mack’s "Flava in Ya Ear," one of Bad Boy’s biggest early hits. Even when he’s remixing someone else, he’s sampling himself. He does the same on Ashanti’s "Unfoolish," the original of which ("Foolish") samples the same El DeBarge song ("Stay with Me") that made Biggie a crossover superstar (on "One More Chance"). As if that weren’t enough intertextuality, this new version lifts a Biggie verse (from "Fucking You Tonight") to seal the vicious circle of (mis)appropriation.

It says something that this remix collection sold more copies in its first week than Puff’s previous album, The Saga Continues. It’s as if the specter of Puff, the hint of him, were more compelling than his actual presence. In this space last year, I gave Puff what was perhaps a presumptuous get-out-of-purgatory-free card. At the time, "Bad Boy for Life" was dominating radio, the freshest, most aggressive and least pretentious cut to come from the label in several years. Even the Neptunes-produced "Diddy" dripped with unexpected, and seemingly genuine, old-school charm. Suddenly, the man had humility. Skill was still lacking, but he seemed to revel in the riot-boyishness of it all rather than cover it up with flashy outfits.

But the spotlight from that album faded quickly, and soon Puff became like any other mid-career mogul. His Bad Boy brand had been hemorrhaging its best acts for years, whether to the ministry (Mase), to jail (Shyne), to the ruff-ryding streets (the Lox), or to the grave (Biggie Smalls). And this spring, within a couple of months, the two longest label holdouts were gone too: 112 were trying to negotiate a deal with Def Jam, and Faith Evans fled for Arista, Bad Boy’s parent company.

Now, it’s generally understood that Arista isn’t planning on renewing the cost-heavy relationship with Bad Boy (word is Puff will take his camp over to Sony). Part of the problem is that Puff’s age seems to have passed. Ostentation is slowly receding from the hip-hop forefront, and the legacy Puff built will always define him, no matter how much he attempts to run from it. Appearing on a remix or in a video is, in a sense, a humble act, indicating a willingness to check ego at the door. But more than anything, this saturation of the market with Puff’s image smacks of desperation. Maybe if he’s everywhere, he seems to be hoping, he’ll stave off the fate of becoming the one thing he always seemed farthest from: an afterthought.