S. Samuel
Bad Boy Records CEO Diddy speaks on his run in the rap game and being an urban innovator on his first-ever XXL Magazine cover feature which drops next month.
In the feature, Diddy declares his legacy in hip-hop.
“Hands down, undisputed, I’m the undisputed heavyweight champion of hip-hop. We are going to have to deal with those facts. There is nobody that can f*ck with me with what I do, which is getting busy. We are going across the board, as an entrepreneur, innovator, motivator. Who was there first? Who traveled to Europe first? The first. The first. The first. The first. I was the first.” (XXL Mag)
Last year, Diddy talked about how he has been able to keep his Bad Boy brand popular for nearly two decades.
“With me and [Jay-Z], you gonna have to get down or lay down anyway,” Diddy said in an interview. “There’s other rules to this game that you gonna have to abide by. At the end of the day, we understand. We understand the importance of telling the truth. If you’re just getting into the game, you’re probably telling a lie anyway because you’re telling somebody else’s game. If we still here, we’re still here because we’re telling the truth. Number two, we have relationships, and number three, we still know how to make hit records. That’s what this thing is about. You could be five years old, 70 years old — you make a hit record, it’s gonna stand the test of time. It’s something the game has to get used to.” (MTV)
Speaking at the Core DJ’s conference in Atlanta in April 2009, Diddy explained Bad Boy’s impact in rap.
“Bad Boy is important,” he explained in a video. “We have not sold out and all this stuff, we trying to do these types of records over here and those, we make Bad Boy records. And that’s preserving your brand, and the thing that’s bigger than Bad Boy is we are the last label standing. No disrespect to the other labels, but there is no Roc-A-Fella. There is no Ruff Ryders, there is no Death Row. So if this label doesn’t make it, this is the last of the labels and that means nobody else can come out with a label. Then it just turns into production deals.” (YouTube)
Despite close ties with Rick Ross and Nicki Minaj, Puff recently denied managing both rap stars.
“For the record, as I said before, don’t believe the rumors,” Diddy said on a UStream broadcast. “I have not made no announcement yet, don’t believe no rumors about anything y’all hear. me and Nick, we just cool. I like her style. Rick Ross, he’s my brother. There’s no management announcements or none of that. So everybody, worry about what you’re worrying about. It’s all right for people to know each other and have an admiration towards each other and maybe pick each other’s brains for advice. I will be making an announcement in a couple of weeks on some things. But right now, everybody let’s chill out and be cool and stay focused on being positive…” (UStream)
Check out some recent Diddy footage down below:
