If you mute Diddy songs, what about his hits with Mary J. Blige, Mariah, J. Lo and more?
If you don't want to listen to Sean “Diddy” Combs music following his arrest and federal sex crimes case, it's easy to mute his songs.
As a lead artist, his handful of hits – “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down,” “Been Around the World,” and, most notably, the Police-sampling ode to Notorious B.I.G. “I’ll Be Missing You” – peaked in the late ‘90s.
His 2000s output shuttled the heavy lifting to Ginuwine, Nelly and Keyshia Cole, among others. Last year, Combs dropped a reasonably received comeback with “The Love Album: Off the Grid,” an R&B-focused offering that enlisted collaborators Swae Lee, Summer Walker and Justin Bieber, who has been in Combs' orbit since he was a teen.
But Combs' solo work is secondary to the empire he built as the mogul of Bad Boy Records and a producer. His reach as a behind-the-scenes creator goes deep and wide within the music industry, making it tricky to avoid his work if you wanted to try.
As Combs, 54, now sits in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn on charges of racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution, fans continue to grapple with the same dilemma that hit when appalling allegations against other megastars such as Michael Jackson, Chris Brown and R. Kelly surfaced: Do I stay or do I go?
Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.
Combs has fingerprints on music of Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey and J. Lo
There are a few differences between the Combs case and others, including the publicly released video of him assaulting singer and former girlfriend Cassie Ventura in a hotel hallway in 2016.
“That film of him really makes a difference,” says Anthony DeCurtis, contributing editor of Rolling Stone. “It takes it out of the realm of the way Dave Chappelle would say when he heard Chris Brown smacked Rihanna, ‘What did she do?’ You can’t do that here. Just seeing it is so startling.”
The graphic visual evidence might be enough to convince Diddy devotees to shun his music, but it’s about as possible as dodging raindrops to eliminate all of the Combs-tinged music proliferating playlists.
When Combs established Bad Boy Records in 1993, he brought along a recent discovery: rapper Christopher “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace (aka Biggie Smalls). The first major release on Bad Boy, Wallace’s “Ready to Die,” immediately established the label as a player in the competitive record label sphere and Combs as a genius young producer.
Soon, more acts including Craig Mack, Faith Evans, 112 and Mase joined Bad Boy.
Wallace’s death in 1997 was followed 16 days later by “Life After Death,” his landmark second album produced by Combs. The album, featuring Combs on the crossover smash “Mo Money Mo Problems,” is considered an iconic entry in hip-hop history.
Prior to starting Bad Boy, Combs worked at Uptown Records, where he executive produced Mary J. Blige’s debut, “What’s the 411?,” also co-writing the album’s “Leave a Message” and "Changes I've Been Going Through." Two years later, Combs orchestrated Blige’s breakthrough “My Life” album, including as a producer on the hit “I’m Goin’ Down.” The collaborations ignited a lifelong friendship with Blige, who, along with some of Combs’ children, presented him with the MTV Global Icon Award at the 2023 VMAs.
The catalog of artists bearing Combs’ influence is impressively extensive, from TLC (songs on 1994’s “CrazySexyCool”) to Mariah Carey (“Honey,” from 1997’s “Butterfly”) and LL Cool J (the title track of 1997’s “Phenomenon”) to Burna Boy (songs from 2020’s “Twice as Tall” album).
Artists who worked with or were professionally close to Combs, such as Usher might now wince at their association. The R&B megastar's relationship with Combs began as a teen, when LaFace Records label honcho L.A. Reid sent him to live with the rapper to learn the music business.
When Combs and Jennifer Lopez dated in the late-‘90s, Combs took the romance to the recording booth as well, co-writing and producing “Feelin’ So Good” from her “On the 6” album, which has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. Her 2001 follow-up, “J. Lo,” which Combs also produced, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart.
But DeCurtis doesn’t think Combs’ transgressions will filter to musical bystanders.
“His own music I think will suffer. But every person he signed or produced? I don’t know if most people are that aware of all of those aspects of his history,” DeCurtis said. “The starkness of what we’ve seen has put him in real trouble, but as far as people feeling comfortable with his music, that’s tough.”
Listeners ask 'Is it time to ditch Diddy?'
Fans online are digging into their feelings and asking others how they feel about not only Combs’ music, but the output of the myriad artists attached to him professionally.
“So are we boycotting Diddy’s music for sure? If I stop listening to the songs he made/produced/collaborated on I’m going to lose 80% of the music from my era and I’m all about the throwbacks! Panicking!!” wrote one X user.
Reponses ranged from, “What he did to get to the top is as evil as one can get” to “I (sic) still listening to no way out, one of the best albums in the '90s including life after death, the greatest rap album ever made.”
Meanwhile, conversations on Reddit parse the merits of Diddy as an artist and producer, with some praising his “good ear” and ability to precisely weave a sample into a song and others slamming his “nursery school rhymes” and “cringe” dancing.
Combs doesn't mean much on the dance floor, but Kesha does
The dilemma of whether or not to listen to certain artists based on issues in their personal lives extends beyond fandom and into the professional music arena. Radio programmers, who often rely on listener comments to determine the level of public acceptance, and all types of DJs are forced to reassess when sticky situations occur.
Nick Spinelli has been a club and wedding DJ in the south New Jersey area for 20 years and says some DJs “look at their moral compass” when deciding if it’s acceptable to play an artist's music at an event.
“The other side of it is to stick with what works and play for the people and only ‘cancel’ an artist and stop playing them if it stops working,” Spinelli said.
He hasn’t had any requests for Combs’ music and wasn’t playing him previously simply because his songs weren’t requested.
But, Spinelli notes that since Combs’ arrest, whenever he spins Kesha’s 2009 hit “TiK ToK,” the song’s opening line – “Wake up in the mornin’, feelin’ like P. Diddy” – elicits a crowd response.
“There is always a reaction, either an ‘ohhhhh!’ and laughing or groaning,” Spinelli said. “It wakes them up. I’ve been making a point to play it because if you have a spark like that in the crowd, you want to go for it.”
(Kesha announced in August that she was rerecording the song and changing the lyric to ‘(expletive) P. Diddy’).
While Spinelli has nixed R. Kelly from his playlists, citing the example of a couple requesting “Ignition (Remix) Pt. 2” at their wedding and the song “literally letting the air out of the room,” he’s going to continue to let his audience steer his decisions.
“I don’t think Diddy’s involvement (with other artists) is a thought with my crowds,” Spinelli said. “Most people don’t have knowledge of Usher, Mary J. all of that stuff. It’s just a slippery slope. It’s best to leave it to the crowd. If they stop reacting, I’ll stop playing it.”
