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When Bad Boy Records' highest profile star was gunned down earlier this year, it left label chief Sean "Puffy" Combs with some notoriously B.I.G. shoes to fill, in both his company's roster and the East Coast rap scene. B.I.G.'s career represented Comb's greatest success as behind-the-scenes star-maker; Biggie's death, the all-too-real dangers of selling the gangsta image. But Combs turned tragedy into triumph as Puff Daddy, a self-created superstar who has risen to the tops of the charts by borrowing rhymes from his cohorts and rapping over less than artful loops of familiar Police and David Bowie hits.
What he has created is a way to show some of the strength and unity East Coast hip-hop lost when B.I.G. was gunned down. And the Pepsi-sponsored Puff Daddy and the Family, which opened at the Worcester Centrum Thursday night, is just such a show. Boasting a line-up as overstuffed as Smalls' suits -- wild-stylist Busta Rhymes, mafia-styled supergroup the Firm, lite-gangsta Jay-Z, New Jack soulster Usher and an extended Puff Daddy "family" that included Mase and Lil' Kim -- the concert isn't likely to change any minds about Combs' skills, but it certainly confirms his genius as a Svengali, or, to borrow one of his own phrases "a vibe giver."
Not to mention an effective organizer. In contrast to most hip-hop caravan tours, the Family affair kicked off on time, with some old school two-turntables-and-a-microphone action that led into mercifully short minor league sets by Usher and Jay-Z. It took the Firm, particularly fabulous Foxy Brown, to turn up the talent level beyond that of a block party with a hard-boiled mix of Don Corleone fantasy and John Grisham fiction fueled more by Foxy's pussy power than the cock sure stylings of Nas and AZ. With a little help from A Tribe Called Quest's Q-Tip, Busta Rhymes finished Act I by waging a riveting, comical war against the forces of orderly language.
It takes a certain conceptual flair to make an entrance set to a thundering Wagnerian overture that smoothly segued into the theme from "Shaft," retooled as "Puff." But Puffy has always been less about original music than effective concepts, and his 90-minute set was peppered with pyrotechnics, dance routines, a full gospel choir (for "I'll be Missing You") and props like Lil' Kim's red satin bed. Puff Daddy's showmanship borrowed mostly from the other old school -- Vegas. The thunder and flash of escapist fun overshadowed any message; perhaps, it was the message.
Even in the man's world of hip-hop the show remained, as Puffy put it, ladies night: Brown and Lil' Kim easily outshined Combs and his right-hand-man Mase in the personality department. But that only brought the spotlight back to Combs when the entire Family emerged in Bad Boy baseball uniforms at the end of the show. After all, he's the player/manager who has proven that he can still field a winning team without his former Most Valuable Player.