There are many examples of young Sean Combs’ ambition and recklessness as a budding mogul in New York. Anyone around hip-hop in that era usually has two or three. One that I witnessed first hand, and left a lasting impression, occured a few months after the shooting death of Christopher Wallace in March 1997.
In the ‘90s a lot of music folks gathered for pick up basketball at various gyms around New York. My home gym was the Reebok Sports Club on Columbus and 68th Street, which had an NBA quality court where many teams did morning walk throughs before games against the Knicks. Puff and his Bad Boy team became regulars at Reebok and usually played as a crew. The rapper Mase, who had a great handle, loved playing the stockbrokers at the club and talking smack. Puff wasn’t a good player, but he hustled with the same almost demonic energy familiar with anyone whose seen him dance in a music video. This a summer night was a few months after Wallace’s death and his tribute to B.I.G., “Missing You,” was already a hit. The No Way Out tour, which originally was too headline Wallace, was now gonna star Puff following the success of “Missing You” and that tour was set up to be one of the pop music events of the year.
So, there was really no reason for Puff to be playing full court basketball. In fact, there was every financial reason not to be playing a sport where professional athletes regularly pop Achilles, twist ankles, and rupture tendons. But there was Puff, playing with reckless abandon, running around and into the other players, endangering his well-being and, to be honest, that of the other nine guys on the court. And then it happened.
A player went up for a jump shot and Puff leaped over at him. The shooter kicked out his legs, hitting Puff, and tripping the rap mogul. Puff grabbed his left ankle and came up limping. I was standing on the sidelines waiting on the next run. I gasped. By then I was no longer a full-time journalist, but tabloid headlines filled my mind: ‘Rap Tour Goes Up in Puff,’ ‘Bad Break For Tour,’ ‘Bad Break for Bad Boy.’ Puff hobbled over to one of the benches next to the court and put his leg up. I went out of the basketball area to find a trainer, got a bag of ice and brought it to the injured MC. Puff pressed the ice on his ankle, propped his back against the wall and sat on a bench. He was remarkably relaxed, looking much less concerned than I was. After a while he stood up and tested the ankle. It was definitely still a bit sore, but it hadn’t swelled. I told him how stressed out the incident had made me. He brushed it off but, thankfully, called it a night.
Looking back on that era of Puff’s life, it strikes me that a big part of young Combs’ fuel flowed from his impulsive nature. When Puff felt something he reacted to it. He wasn’t that he didn’t make calculated moves, but living in the moment was one of his strengths. He wasn’t hampered by procrastination or self-doubt. Obviously leaping in the air at a jump shooter in a meaningless pick up game and endangering a multi-million-dollar tour wasn’t something he’d given a thought. But, in a creative sense, that connection to his impulses made Puff quick to react to cultural change, whether it was in music, fashion or slang, and be intuitive in his decision making, and inspired in his choices.
Puff’s impulsive nature could make him willful and confrontational. When he was a young executive at Uptown Records his relationship artists and older label staff at Uptown were often fraught. I was told Puff and the members of Jodeci definitely had meetings during his Uptown tenure could break out into fist fights and leave holes punched in walls.
Artistically, group member Davonte Swing had a strong musical vision for Jodeci, one that would manifest itself on the music of the group’s second album ‘Diary of a Mad Band’ in ’93. But it was Combs who helped styled the group after they relocated from North Carolina to New York, transforming an unpolished and gifted group of Southerners into the epitome of then current NYC hip hop style (work boots, baggy pant, the right brands, a look that made old school vocal group suits & ties obsolete and Boyz II Men’s blazers and slacks look corny. Puff had dressed Jodeci like himself and, in so doing, helped bring R&B closer to hip hop.
The incident at the basketball court was nearly thirty years ago and a lot has happened in hip-hop and Puff’s life since then. Dude is billionaire or pretty damn close. But, I sometimes wonder, if he’d seriously sprained or even broken that left ankle play what would have happened.