3 Kings

by Zack O'Malley Greenburg

  We’ve been talking for two hours, and in that span we’ve covered the first two decades of hip-hop and polished off a couple of sandwiches. As we finish by touching on the rise of gangsta rap, Fab’s briefly derailed train of thought gets back on track.

  “Fascination with the gangsta genre is a part of American culture,” he muses. “America, to me, is based on a gangsta concept: ‘We’re going to come over here, take the land from indigenous peoples, bring black people here to work for free, a.k.a. slavery, and build this great capitalist economy.’ Is that not gangsta?”

  Fab pauses.

  “I guess the only thing I could add in closing this session is the most interesting thing about hip-hop musical culture… It’s become the first kind of business, postsegregation, where black men have been able to have a significant business role in the entire process,” he says. “Versus prior, based on the way America was constructed, when there were black businessmen during the times of segregation, but we couldn’t reach other segments of the American populace.”

  And that’s where the three kings really come in.

  “These individuals, particularly, have been able to benefit in that true American capitalist paradigm,” he says. “It’s kind of cool, because it never happened [before]… They’re getting a bigger piece of the pie.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Bad Boys

  “I heard something on the radio today,” says Branson Belchie, seated at a dimly lit bar on Manhattan’s 109th Street and Columbus. “I was trying to really interpret it and trying to decipher and figure out sort of what it meant. I mean, understand the music. It usually has a certain feeling… It would move you… A lot of what I hear today is, like, these kids aren’t saying nothing… They make sounds.”1

  He swirls his glass of Malbec. The atmosphere, along with his champagne-colored puffy jacket, is fitting: better known as Branson B, he is hip-hop’s unofficial sommelier. The dreadlocked Harlem native grew up around hip-hop forefathers like Kurtis Blow and gangsters such as Frank Lucas. (Branson also served as a consultant on the film American Gangster.) And he was among the first to bring certain high-life hallmarks—Dom Pérignon and Cristal, along with other goodies—to Jay-Z, Diddy, and Notorious B.I.G.

  Back in the early 1980s, he would host parties in Sugar Hill that extended five blocks through the city streets. Neatly arranged rows of empty Veuve Clicquot and Nicolas Feuillatte bottles would stretch along St. Nicholas Place from 151st to 152nd Street as the evenings wore on. Today, he runs a nearby shop called Branson Got Juice and has his own Guy Charlemagne–backed champagne line. But right now, he’s uncorking on the state of hip-hop.

  “Who’s the artist now, got a song out, he’s just humming or something?” asks Branson. “Came from Brooklyn. What’s his name?”

  I tell him I can’t remember.

  “He’s humming the whole song,” he continues. “He’s not rapping, he’s not singing, he’s just humming… Where does that come from? Then you got other people, other youth, they identify with that. How are they connected to that?”

  The waiter brings me a plate of cheesy garlic bread.

  “A lot of the things that go on today, I don’t understand it. But the youth of America, they understand it,” he says. “It’s just completely different.”

  I offer Branson some garlic bread.

  “What kind of cheese is that?”

  “Parmesan.”

  “It’s Parmesan?”

  “I don’t like grated Parmesan,” I explain. “But I like the melted Parmesan.”

  At this moment, the absurdity of our conversation strikes me like a bottle of champagne over the head. Things have changed quite a bit in Harlem and its environs. Just a few decades ago, Diddy’s father was gunned down four blocks from where we are now, sitting in a trendy bar co-owned by a handful of local entrepreneurs (including one of Jay-Z’s business partners), drinking wine and debating the merits of grated cheese.

  Things have changed similarly for Diddy. Branson remembers going to clubs around the city in the early 1990s and, on multiple occasions, finding the aspiring mogul waiting in line with everyone else. “I told the gentleman at the door to let him in, because he’s family,” Branson recalls. “At that time, he was nobody.”

  Kenny Meiselas, Diddy’s longtime lawyer, first met his client in the early 1990s—after a rapper named Father MC hired him to get the brash young A&R guy away from his second album at Uptown. Though Diddy, in one of his first tasks at Uptown, had helped the artist create a well-received debut, complete with a gold-certified single, Father MC wanted full creative control over his follow-up.

  “Father was never heard from again,” says Meiselas. “But Puff was so impressed on how I handled myself in the room representing Father and getting him thrown off the project that he came to me… and basically was like, ‘I like how you did that. Will you represent me?’”2

  An astonished Meiselas agreed, and watched as Diddy assiduously applied his brand of urban panache to acts on Uptown’s roster, starting with Mary J. Blige. “This A&R comes in with a cape on, like Superman… understands who this girl is from the hood, puts me in a hat turned backwards, baggy pants, Timb[erland]s,” Blige explained between songs at a recent concert. “Now, I’m the queen of hip-hop soul, because of this dude.”3

  Diddy took the same sartorial approach with Jodeci, a God-fearing gospel turned R & B quartet out of Charlotte that Harrell had signed. “They were from North Carolina, and they looked like they were from North Carolina,” says Meiselas. “By the time Puff was done with them, they all looked like him… He merged hip-hop culture and music and style and fashion into R & B.”4

  Meanwhile, Diddy expanded his party promotion sideline with Jessica Rosenblum, quickly graduating from errand boy to equal partner. The two started throwing weekly parties at a popular nightspot called Red Zone, drawing a diverse crowd that ranged from Diddy’s Harlem cohort to Rosenblum’s downtown crew and beyond. Diddy put himself front and center at the events, morphing his childhood nickname, Puffy, into the more commanding Puff Daddy—and giving the parties he promoted with Rosenblum a new label: Daddy’s House. He had those words printed on T-shirts that he passed out to friends and colleagues.5

  “He’s always felt like he was bigger than life,” says Branson’s goddaughter, Chenise Wilson, who became friends with Diddy in the late 1980s on the New York party circuit. “It was one of them things that you could admire, but the person looking from afar who didn’t know him would probably hate it.”6

  Diddy’s party promotion career continued its upward trajectory until December 28, 1991. That night, he and Rosenblum were hosting what they dubbed the Heavy D and Puff Daddy Celebrity Charity Basketball Game at City College’s Nat Holman Gymnasium, with proceeds set to benefit AIDS charities. Big Daddy Kane, Jodeci, and members of Run-D.M.C. were listed among the headliners. The lineup attracted a sold-out crowd north of twenty-five hundred—and thousands more gathered outside, even when it became clear that there wouldn’t be enough room for everyone.7

  Wilson, who was working the event, remembers going with Diddy to ask a police officer to put up a barricade as the crowd grew unruly. But before anything could be done, the multitude began to push frantically toward the entrance, fearing that they wouldn’t get in. Within minutes, the crowd surged into the building and down the stairs, right into the closed gym doors, which could open only into the packed stairwell. The stampede slammed dozens of people against the doors, and nine were crushed to death.

  “Puff was on the floor, trying to resuscitate people,” says Wilson. “I grew up in the crack era… yet I never seen nothing like that in my life. Nine people taking their last breaths.”8

  Because Diddy’s name appeared on the flyer, he drew much of the public blame, along with Rosenblum. Both of them stopped working for a spell and lay low, haunted by the images of that night, wondering if they’d be found legally or financially responsible for the tragedy.

  “It was just an overwhelm
ing kind of situation—some of those people that passed, Puff knew [them],” says Fab. “I said, ‘Listen, man, what he’s going through right now, if he can survive this, there’s nothing that will ever stop him.’”9

  While Diddy found himself thrust into the spotlight for reasons planned and unplanned, Jay-Z squeezed vast financial rewards from his expanded role in the drug trade as he ventured south along the Interstate 95 corridor. One source estimates that, in the early 1990s, Jay-Z and his business partner were moving about a kilo of cocaine—which would have translated into tens of thousands of dollars in cash—per week.

  Jay-Z had nearly given up on music, but there were some who still believed in him. Shortly after Brooklyn native Rodolfo “DJ Clark Kent” Franklin landed a job at Atlantic Records, he remembered an encounter he’d had with a teenage Jay-Z in the Marcy Houses years earlier, and tracked him down with the goal of convincing him to turn his focus back to rap. But Jay-Z was making so much money that he had little interest in revisiting the world that, only a few years before, had barely allowed him to survive on the road. Kent eventually convinced him to appear on a few tracks, including a 1993 cut called “Can I Get Open” with the group Original Flavor, and another with the middling rapper Sauce Money.10

  But Jay-Z’s early work simply failed to catch. Branson, who dabbled in the music business, remembers putting together a mixtape with Todd “Too Short” Shaw at around this time; the Oakland rapper had recorded a few tracks with Jay-Z, and offered up a handful to Branson, who declined to release any of them. “I could’ve had a record with Jay-Z on it,” he says. “But I didn’t see him as a major talent at the time.”11 The young rapper seemed more focused on being a hustler than a musician. Too Short remembers the high-rolling vibe that accompanied Jay-Z and his crew as they sat in the studio playing cards: “They showed you the money.”12

  Jay-Z didn’t seem like a good pick to become a fashion magnate either, at least not until Kent introduced him to his future business partner Damon Dash, a flashy Harlem party promoter, in the mid-1990s. Wilson remembers meeting Jay-Z through Kent at around the same time—“He’s going to be the greatest rapper ever,” the DJ told her—but she couldn’t get past his outfit: brown suede hat, brown suede shirt, black pants, and white Timberland boots. “Don’t ever come outside with them on,” she remembers telling him. “That matching hat and shirt? Nah, We don’t really do that.” (“[Damon] gave him his style,” she adds.)13

  Meanwhile, Jay-Z’s future nemesis was having much better luck establishing himself. Queens-born Nasir “Nas” Jones scored a healthy five-figure advance and a $250,000 album budget from Columbia Records.14 The silky flows of his 1994 debut, Illmatic, cause many even to this day to consider it one of the best hip-hop records of all time. Nas released his first album, boosted by Columbia’s cash and seal of approval, before Jay-Z and Diddy launched theirs. Perhaps because of this, he spent most of his early career focused on music rather than on building a label or lifestyle brand of his own (he opened his opus with an uncompensated nod to Hennessy) before diversifying in recent years to paid endorsement deals and startup investments with the help of a forward-thinking young manager (more on this later).

  Those early days were a good time to put music first, even from a commercial standpoint. From 1984 to 1987, an average of 2.5 hip-hop albums achieved platinum status each year; from 1988 to 1993, that number quadrupled.15 Hits by the likes of MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice strengthened rap’s hold on the mainstream map, while N.W.A. and Public Enemy continued to develop hip-hop’s sociopolitical reach. Def Jam benefited handsomely: PolyGram, the Dutch company whose chief had given Simmons a decadent welcome on his first trip to Amsterdam a decade earlier, purchased half of the label for $33 million in 1994.16

  In the early days, the recording business brought more money to hip-hop acts than did touring, which today is usually the largest piece of a musician’s financial pie. Hip-hop shows developed a reputation as security risks, thanks to reports of fights breaking out in crowds and unruly artist entourages acting up backstage. Of course, this sort of activity happened in other genres as well.

  “In the earliest days of rock and roll, [the music] was considered dangerous,” says Gary Bongiovanni, chief of live-music publication and touring data outfit Pollstar, noting that Alice Cooper and similar acts were once viewed as a threat to society. “If you’re an arena manager, there’s very little downside to bringing Ringling Brothers into your building. However, if you’re hosting N.W.A., there’s a host of things that probably pop into your mind that could happen that aren’t good.”17

  A complex stew of risk aversion, racism, and soaring security costs caused many major venues to shy away from booking hip-hop acts well into the 1990s. As a result, the rap shows that did happen were often handled by second-rate promoters, or by entrepreneurs who had little experience with live music. “Nobody else really wanted to step up and do it,” says Kevin Morrow, a Los Angeles concert promoter who remembers going to a Public Enemy show at the Palace—and seeing a SWAT team perched on the roof of Capitol Records across the street. “They were afraid of it, you know?”18

  An unfortunate feedback loop developed: inexperienced promoters put on shows that weren’t properly planned, the concerts went poorly, and top promoters felt justified in their initial stance. Morrow was one of the first to get the hip-hop touring paradigm right, booking shows at the now-defunct House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. He took a professional approach: he beefed up security and made sure he and his artists were on the same page. Soon he was doing forty hip-hop shows per year with some of the biggest acts in the genre—mostly musicians who could exert control over their crowds, like Chuck D of Public Enemy.

  “I don’t want any of this gang shit in here,” the rapper would say, defusing potential conflicts at the very beginning of his shows. “We’re all human beings that got to deal with a lot of problems, some of us more than others because of the color of our skin, and shame on us for black-on-black violence.”

  Less than three weeks after the City College tragedy, Milton Mollen—then New York’s deputy mayor for public safety—released his official review of the situation. His conclusion: “Almost all of the individuals involved in the event demonstrated a lack of responsibility.”19

  The report particularly skewered the police department for its delayed intervention in the situation, and for not summoning more officers earlier in the evening as it became clear that more than five thousand people had shown up to a gym that could hold only about half that total. Mollen also called attention to a damning radio transmission in which an officer on the scene said of the crowd, “They’re not people: they’re animals.”

  Diddy got slammed for letting inexperienced subordinates handle key aspects of a challenging event and not hiring enough outside security. But neither he nor Rosenblum ever faced criminal charges for the tragedy. In the end, Mollen’s report laid much of the blame at the feet of the spectators themselves, excoriating the “crowd psychology” that led everyone to push into the gym “with a total disregard for their fellow attendees.”20

  As the events unfolded, Harrell stood by his protégé, and Diddy returned the favor at Uptown. Mary J. Blige and Jodeci’s debut albums were both on their way to selling more than three million units apiece, and major labels had lined up to lure away the young A&R. Rather than depart, Diddy decided to launch his own imprint, Bad Boy Records, within Uptown. “The deal was significantly smaller than what it would have been had we gone with one of these other suitors,” says Meiselas. “He was very loyal to Andre.”21

  But the workplace tranquility didn’t last. Diddy brought in an army of two dozen unpaid interns to help him run Bad Boy, and soon he was cranking out as much music as the rest of Uptown. According to Meiselas and others, Harrell began to feel threatened by his protégé, who appeared to be taking over his company. Diddy’s attitude didn’t win him fans among Uptown’s other executives either. “I’m walking around the office with n
o shirt on, cursing white people out,” explained Diddy at his 2016 Bad Boy Reunion show in Brooklyn. “I’m not understanding the rules of the game.”22

  And so, one evening during the summer of 1993, Meiselas came home to find an agitated message from Diddy on his answering machine. Harrell had fired him. Meiselas called right back.

  “Congratulations,” said Meiselas.23

  “What are you talking about?” his client replied. “I got fired.”

  “This is the best day of your life. You were very loyal to Andre, but he’s right. There are in essence two kings in the castle, and there are always major companies that are trying to do bigger and better deals with you… Time to move on.”

  One of Diddy’s first stops was the posh Mark Hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where he met with executives from EMI. Rob Stone, then a twenty-four-year-old who’d recently transitioned from selling jewelry on the beach to serving as EMI’s head of crossover marketing (and would go on to cofound creative agency Cornerstone and music magazine The Fader), sat in on the meeting and still remembers how the unemployed impresario two years his junior walked in with the swagger of a middle-aged billionaire.

  “When I talk on my records, that’s so people know it’s me, and they don’t even have to hear the artist,” Diddy explained, delineating his vision for creating and curating the Bad Boy sound. “They’re going to know it’s hot. They’re going to know the record. They’re going to like the record before my artist even starts spitting.”24

  Whoa: this guy is full of himself, thought Stone.