Puff & the Family: Daddy-Style

As star-studded pop spectacle, last Thursday's show by Puff Daddy and the Family delivered -- the marquee players actually showed up (Nas, Foxy Brown, AZ, Busta Rhymes, Ma$e, Lil' Kim), and there was even an unannounced cameo by Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest. As cultural irony it was like Montezuma's (make that Little Richard's) revenge -- a young black hotshot mining platinum by covering the hits of old white guys. As hip-hop, well, that argument would have to wait.

A self-described "entertainer" (a throwback phrase Tony Bennett's pretty fond of), Sean "Puffy" Combs has always been up front about his performing talent's taking a distant back seat to his roles as producer, A&R mogul, and label CEO. If he's been reluctant to call himself a rapper (his lyrics are often penned by members of his Bad Boy stable) or an MC (his appropriations of hit songs fall short of some hip-hop folks' definition of the term), the ambiguity of his role has had absolutely no impact on his ability to become this year's ubiquitous pop icon. And Thursday's hit parade showed why. A crisply choreographed four-hour showcase that at times looked and felt like a traveling version of the MTV Video Awards, it neither aspired to nor acknowledged any pursuit higher than hitmaking -- and gleefully affirmed Puffy's status as that profession's current pontiff.

Early opening sets by the burlesque-cum-soul dude Usher and Jay-Z (who brought along a grassroots marketing team Colonel Tom Parker would've been proud of) were largely forgettable. But everything after redeemed the arena as a plausible venue for hip-hop -- and as anyone who's seen package shows drown in technical and egotistical glitches can attest, that's no small feat. Foxy Brown embodied the contradictions her liberated-sex-queen persona is built on, then stepped out with hip-hop's newest family, the Firm, with AZ and street poet laureate Nas. Busta Rhymes lit things up with Alice Cooper-style gothic-castle stage props (a story-tall faux stone skull with a DJ booth lodged in the cranium). He proved that though he stole his hip-hop troglodyte routine from the Wu Tang Clan's Ol' Dirty Bastard, he's honed it to Screamin'-Jay-Hawkins-meets-Abbott-and-Costello vaudeville perfection -- and his closer, "Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See," came off as the year's wildest jungle boogie yet.

Unveiling a stage somewhere between Solid Gold and the pearly gates, Puff Daddy gave up the hits -- and just the hits -- interspersed with quickie solo sets by Lil' Kim (who rolled on stage writhing under the covers of a crimson heart-shaped bed), 112, the LOX, and Lil' Cease with Foxy Brown. By design, the set revolved around the Notorious B.I.G., who was beamed in via video from the afterlife for his contributions to the Family's No Way Out, and to whom tributes were offered by all -- none of them any less skin-deep than the Hallmark-card eulogy of "I'll Be Missing You," which, surprisingly, wasn't even an encore (an honor that went to a sing-along of Sister Sledge's "We Are Family.") It went without saying that Biggie was most conspicuous by his absence -- and the absence of any Family member, including Puffy, capable of filling his enormous shoes.

But Puffy's got bigger crossover plans. Whether mining an old Police hit for platinum, performing similar feats of alchemy on David Bowie's "Let's Dance" ("Been Around the World," for which it's rumored Bowie will make a video cameo), or milking his minimalist hit "It's All About the Benjamins" (soon to be a rock video with Foo Fighter Dave Grohl, ex-Replacement Tommy Stinson, and White Zombie's Rob Zombie), Puffy's not interested in merely being "The New King of Hip-Hop," as Rolling Stone has anointed him. He, more than just about anyone else, knows how fleeting that particular monarchy can be.

-- Carly Carioli