Puffy made all that commercialism and shiny shyt, it was the anti-thesis of Public Enemy and even Wu Tang. Basically, a lot of people looked at Puff like the Black Vanilla Ice that happened to sign talented MCs. You let wackness be the norm, and the rap game never reached the level of legendary lyrical potency again.
Puff being a black vanilla ice is absurd.
Puff opened a lot of doors for black ceo’s.
Having a label, clothing line, and restaurant.
He caught heat for all the sampling.
By 98 he was falling off by 99 he was a heel everybody hated puff at this time.
Thats why his album tanked for 99 standards only going double plat when his first album sold over 500,000 first week , went on to sell 7 million + and win a grammy
By 1999 mase was out the door and all puff really had was his r&b groups like faith evans and 112. Rza made comments about puff in 97-98 talking down on the sampling but let’s be honest the so called real hip hop mc music wu was bringing to the table from 93-96 was gone. Wu from 98 and on released a bunch of forgotten music nobody talks about that got brushed under the radar like sunzofman and wu killa bee’s that brouught no revenue to the game or drew any money. The things that make money now in hip hop are due to the credits of puff.
That includes also having a very successful hip hop tour in 97 “no way tour” that opened doors for “hard knock life tour” “ruff ryders/cash money tour”, etc etc.
The Fact that hip hop degreased in 97 is in somewhat ways bullshyt. Because the tools we're there to make money it’s just people didn’t utilize them correctly.
