DJ M-Dash writesDid P. Diddy and the 90s Save Live Music?

Maybe it wasn't all about the Benjamins.

In mid-June, I went to see Lauryn Hill up at Ravinia. Besides the fact that many of us, roving around the grounds with craft beers and even White Claw cans in our hands, were mostly middle-aged people, Gen Xers (‘90s kids as we call ourselves now), I was reminded of one other very ‘90s thing. 

Hill came on after dark—easily 9:15 pm. And we weren’t surprised it would be a fabulous but brief show. As Hill trumpeted out tunes from her nearly 25-year-old album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the other flashback that hit was that back then… the short hip-hop show was standard. 

In the first half of the 1990s, whether Fugees tipped your consciousness or Digable Planets’ dreamier tales were more your style, live tours were the same. You went to see an act that would come on at least an hour, maybe two hours later than scheduled. 

Hip-hop artists opened their shows in Chicago, Philly, and Portland with one radio hit before greeting the crowd. They’d give it up for departed rappers (first Scott La Rock, later Tupac and Biggie) and play another 20 minutes max. Then, “Yo! Buy my album,” and it was good night. 

The worst thing was everyone did it. A Tribe Called Quest did it. Cypress Hill too. 3rd Bass, a popular Def Jam outfit, played barely 15 minutes when I saw them in 1991. Even Biz Markie, who staged a mini-comeback despite no second album until 1998, did his 15 minutes then, see ya!

Exceptions were few and far between. Like if you caught Ice Cube at Lollapalooza ’93 or Public Enemy on tour with U2. If you loved hip-hop music, you accepted that good live shows weren’t part of the deal. 

Then in 1997, it all changed. Ex-A&R rep turned producer Sean Combs, aka P. Diddy, or Puff Daddy, as everyone in the world called him then, released No Way Out in July 1997. Some of us “old school” fans, curmudgeonly at age 25 then, didn’t feel it at first. 

But No Way Out, today unmistakably a classic, seemed heavy on flash, light on substance, and reviews were mixed. Robert Christgau gave it two stars. Entertainment Weekly gave it a C+. Vibe deemed it merely “favorable,” by no means the next Chronic.

The album’s bright singles, ”It's All About the Benjamins,” "I Got the Power,” and “I’ll Be Missing You,” were unabashedly rich in very familiar samples of very, very famous songs. Eventually, no one would be surprised when Combs took Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” in its entirety and made a rap tune of it. 

Yet Combs set out to do something else in the 1990s we must give him credit for. He revived hip-hop in a new way by making his live shows the new greatest show on earth. 

Whether it was quick success or perhaps pure ego, Combs put on over-the-top, two-and-a-half-hour concerts in every venue they played, from the coasts to podunk, middle America. And it wasn’t just the music. It was big lights, troupes of dancers, fireworks, and explosions. On any given day when Puff played in your hometown or live on TV, it was with the whole Bad Boy crew: Puff himself, Mace, Faith Evans, Foxy Brown, Lil’ Kim, sometimes Busta Rhymes, and one fairly new artist known as Jay-Z. They brought it all and left it all on stage. 

But it’s important to consider the context of the times too, and how Combs filled a huge vacuum about to emerge in live music. 

By 1997, Lollapalooza was kaput. And if the whole three-day music fest idea weren’t on its way out, soon Woodstock ‘99 would see to that. Also, by 1997, alt-rock stalwarts like Soundgarden, Living Colour, 7 Year Bitch, and Dinosaur Jr. had disbanded, along with dozens of others. Kurt Cobain was long gone, and soon other beloved artists would pass too. 

Boy bands emerged again on FM radio. Like barbarians at the gate, they signaled that the DIY in music was soon DOA and that maybe, somehow—to the music industry people, at least—the New Kids On The Block was indeed a model business idea.

And, as I first mentioned, hip-hop artists on tour between 1991 and Combs’ 1997 world invasion generally seemed to treat touring as a nuisance. Whether it was the dislike of playing outside New York City or L.A. or the whole corporate circuit that put artists off, the prevailing hip-hop acts of the time, pre-Diddy, seemed not to care about the fans who paid to see them. 

Now all that seems like ancient history. Big production music fests have been back for years. The experience of great music weekend-long is not just mainstream; it’s an expectation fulfilled. 

For us Gen X curmudgeons like me who won’t go to Lolla, which is mostly a pop music showcase, there’s Riot Fest and Pitchfork, plus options nationwide like Bonnaroo, Louder Than Life, and SXSW in Austin if you can find a place to stay. 

If Combs did anything revolutionary in hip-hop—and we can debate vigorously about his music—he did show up everyone else in music on stage. By being over the top, Combs implored artists within every sub-genre to be accountable once again to their fans. Whether you love No Way Out or prefer to pass on it, Sean Puffy Combs deserves a medal, or at least a nice cold beer—and your thanks—for kicking live music in the butt when it needed a swift kick 25 years ago.

Andy Frye has written for Rolling Stone, ESPN and Forbes and is the author of NINETY DAYS IN THE 90s: A Rock N Roll Time Travel Story