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Good vibes

Puff Daddy stands alone

by Franklin Soults

It's easy to hear why "I'll Be Missing You" has topped Billboard's R&B and Hot 100 charts for eight weeks running, to become one of the best-selling singles of the decade. A memorial to slain rapper Biggie Smalls (a/k/a the Notorious B.I.G.), the song turns a horrible tragedy laden with burning questions and bitter ironies into a neatly packaged homily on brotherhood and endurance. Performed by the same man who made Biggie a star -- 26-year-old entrepreneur, producer, and rapper Sean "Puffy" Combs (a/k/a Puff Daddy) -- the hit coasts on the inescapable hook of the Police's 1983 hit "Every Breath You Take" and a smooth rap that is neither vengeful toward Biggie's unknown killers nor overly griefstricken at his passing. Puffy's just grateful to have shared his friendship. The song is a demonstration of Puffy's enduring love, and proof that he's strong enough to survive the loss and keep moving on up. "Even though you're gone/We're still a team," he solemnly raps, and then, with Biggie's former wife, Faith Evans, on background vocals, "Through your family/I'll fulfill your dreams."

Puffy Combs's first solo album, No Way Out (Bad Boy/Arista), has now arrived to seal that promise. As I write, it's poised to debut at the top of both the pop and the R&B charts, making Puff Daddy, in the words of the latest Rolling Stone cover story, "The New King of Hip-Hop."

Sort of. Even Puffy readily concedes that he isn't much of a rapper. "I don't write the rhymes myself -- I co-write them," he admits in a press release, "I'm not an MC. I'm a vibe giver." It's a perfect phrase to describe his specialty of music-biz hustling and schmoozing. After organizing shows, scouting talent, and whetting his hand at production, Combs started Bad Boy in 1993 and very quickly proved his vibe-giving gift by signing fresh new performers like Craig Mack and Faith Evans. It was his discovery of Biggie Smalls, though, that put him on the map. With a voice as recognizable as Tupac Shakur's and rhyme skills droller than Snoop Doggy Dogg's, Biggie was one of the decade's most original stylists, and a near-surefire hit. Combs was often credited for his production work behind his protégé, but it's doubtful his solid but largely standard beats would have gone anywhere without Biggie heating things up on top.

Now that Biggie is turning cold down below, No Way Out has the monumental task of proving that "Puff Daddy & Family" can go it alone for more than just a freak hit single at a time. To some extent, their efforts are pretty convincing. Although the album was being prepared long before Biggie's murder (he's even featured on several cuts), it shows Puffy and his production crew coming into their own as beat makers.

Until now, Puffy had been constrained by his simple, old-school technique of sampling one proven R&B hit per cut. His production on No Way Out remains highly synthetic, but he's suddenly reaching all over the pop-music spectrum for that synthesis, basing songs not only on standards like "The Message" and "Don't Stop the Music" but on inspired oddities. An obscure mock-salsa groove by the Ohio Players. A haunting orchestral refrain from Peruvian jazzbo Yma Sumac. A classic MOR ballad by Diana Ross. Most unlikely of all, the chorus from Lisa Stansfield's "All Around the World" married to the beat from David Bowie's "Let's Dance."

This wide-ranging production suggests that Puff Daddy's true ambition isn't to be just the "King of Hip-Hop" but a major figure in the world of pop. The problem is, he's saddled with a hardcore rep that the new album does little to repudiate. Combs may no longer need Biggie to carry his grooves, but without Biggie, there's no one to alleviate the torpor of the standard hardcore subject matter. The moments on the album that escape that weight -- like "Missing You," or the warm sex rap "Se–orita" -- are anomalies; if anything, Biggie's death has just raised the pitch of the gat-packed threats, the high-living "playa" boasts, the "no-way-out" fatalism.

It's actually the range of Puffy's ambitions that highlights this shortcoming. His head-bobbing hardcore pieces have their own kind of integrity, and there's no denying his flair for strokes of pure pop. But between the two lies all the pain and complexity of real life that his music has never come near, not even in tribute to a fallen friend. To bridge that gap would require an independence and an honesty that are simply beyond the pale of natural-born vibe givers. Even -- or maybe especially -- one as smooth as Puffy Combs.