All About the Benjamins
Splendour in the time of Puffy.

Mr. George is an editorial page writer for the New York Post
March 6, 2001 12:15 p.m.

ast week, the Census Bureau determined that "sampling" will not be permitted in tabulating the population of the United States. At the same time, Napster faces the death penalty for "stealing" music. Considering these two precedents, one would think that things would not bode well for Sean "Puffy" Combs, the maestro of sampled "stolen" music.

Puff Daddy, as he is also known, is on trial for discharging a weapon in a New York nightclub in December 1999, fleeing the scene, and attempting to bribe potential witnesses. Make no mistake: This is the big news in New York right now.

Pardons? What's that? Bush tax cut? Bush who? Clinton coming to Harlem? Hmmm…might have heard something about that.

But, Puffy? Ah, it's Puffy all the time. While celebrity trials are a dime-a-dozen in L.A., they aren't quite as plentiful out here. Sure, you get the regular big-time divorce proceedings and the occasional insider trading/Wall Street shenanigans, but a criminal trial involving an A-list celeb who counts Donald Trump and Martha Stewart as his pals? In the middle of Manhattan. Oh, no.

The trial has produced an atmosphere both the sublime and the ridiculous. Black Studies superstar Professor Cornel West showed up to give Combs support. Wednesday, in the middle of the frenzy of former Knick/now Seattle Supersonic Patrick Ewing's return to Madison Square Garden, a bright pink sign could be seen under one of the baskets: "Puffy Is Innocent/Free Puffy," it declared. On Thursday, The Today Show's Katie Couric showed up to take in Combs's testimony.

Meanwhile, in the backdrop of this trial, another outbreak in the rap war. It will not affect Puffy's trial, but it certainly won't do much for rap culture's public image. On Sunday, female rapper Li'l Kim's entourage was involved in a shoot-out with another rap posse. The star of the other posse, Capone, is associated with Li'l Kim's rival X-rated female MC Foxy Brown. Anyway, following a throw-down outside of the city's most popular rap-oriented radio stations, one of Capone's friends ended up shot in the back, allegedly by someone from Kim's group. As the saying goes, I couldn't make this up if I tried.

One of Combs' lawyers is O.J.'s star defender Johnnie Cochran. But, significantly Cochran is not the sole lead attorney here. That role is shared with the more corporate, more white Benjamin Brafman. The combination of Cochran and Brafman sends the signal that the defense is playing this one pretty straightforwardly. The race card is lurking in the background, but the defense is not leading with it. Instead, as Combs's Thursday testimony showed, the portrait they are painting is of a celebrity suddenly "caught up" in a melee, thought he was being shot at, and immediately fled the scene. He claimed he didn't know the cops were pursuing him and that his only concern was for the safety of his then-girlfriend, the Callipygian singer-actress Jennifer Lopez.

Lopez has "stood by her man" for most of the year-plus since the initial shooting. However, with a recent Number One movie and album, "J. Lo" has, as the saying goes, kicked Puffy to the curb. She declares though that she will be there to testify in his behalf if he wants her too. Combs' team made the basic argument this week that it would be dishonorable for him to appear as if he was hiding behind Lopez's ample skirts. Thus, Combs took the stand on Thursday.

It's rather sad, but Combs represents both the best and worst in hip-hop culture. Ignore the basic aesthetics of rap. It's partly a generational issue: Either people consider rap a legitimate music or they don't. But Combs is an interesting figure; he is a legitimate entrepreneur. He started out as an amateur concert promoter with mixed results — a show he produced in 1991 at City College of New York ended in tragedy with nine people trampled to death. Later, after dropping out of Howard University, he became star record producer with Arista records, before getting his own "Bad Boy" label.

At Bad Boy, he took excellent rapper Biggie Smalls, AKA the Notorious B.I.G., nee Christopher Wallace to the top of the charts. Simultaneously, he produced his own Number One album, No Way Out, with multiple hits, "Can't Nothing Hold Me Down," "I'll Be Missing You" (an elegy to the slain Wallace, heavily sampling the Police's "Every Breath You Take") and the rock-rap smash "All About the Benjamins." The latter is an anthem to the power of material wealth in society ("Benjamins" being slang for money, i.e. "Benjamin Franklins"). Perhaps not so ironically L'il Kim was a guest singer on "All About the Benjamins." In '97 and '98, Puffy ruled the music world. He topped Forbes' list of wealthy entertainers and stood as a positive symbol of an urban boy succeeding in the corporate world. He bought a restaurant and started his own fashion line.

His tenure has been somewhat tenuous since then. Biggie Smalls died, another star rapper, Mase, decided to retire and join the ministry and Puffy's second album bombed. In the meantime though, Combs became the darling of New York's elite, throwing great parties in the Hamptons, hanging out with Trump, Stewart and others. He took up with Lopez and became a star of the tabloids. It all culminated on December 27, 1999, in a premier Times Square nightclub. Puff Daddy, rapper, producer, entrepreneur, celebrity, was arrested and faced 15 years behind bars.

Could it actually happen? Could the "Bad Boy" be sent up the river?

Prediction: Don't bet against Puffy beating this particular rap. Look for the jury either to acquit or be hung. There has been too much conflicting testimony on whether he had a gun. One of the more convincing witnesses was one of the club security officers who testified that she fell upon Combs during the melee and that he had no gun in his hands. The bribery count is a little bit harder, but of course Combs benefits from his many shady associates. Not even the driver is exactly pure as the driven snow and his testimony is impeachable.

Far more likely that Combs protégé, Jamal "Shyne" Barrow, is going to be the one to take the "rap" here. Barely 21 with just one album under his belt, he is clearly more expendable than the Hamptons Bad Boy. Besides, there seem to be combined eyewitness reports that he definitely had a gun in the club and was shooting wildly. He's charged with attempted murder, as one woman was seriously injured when she caught a bullet in the face.

So Shyne will go down, a rather simple thug put away for quite sometime. Meanwhile, Maestro Puffy walks away free, rejuvenated and with his street cred restored (his last album bombed when even his fans realized that he can't really rap and his production skills don't extend much further than sampling '70s and '80s hits.) The whole experience will be, short of death, turn out to be one of the better celebrity career moves. In fact, he already has a new "girl-group" called Dream that is soaring up the charts. Don't expect Combs to be ostracized like O.J. Both the 'hood and the Hamptons will welcome him back with open arms.

Will there be any valuable lessons learned in the rap community from Puff Daddy's experiences? The Li'l Kim-Capone shootout this week suggests nothing has been learned. Then again, considering Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls have both been dead for more than four years, why should a simple celebrity trial stop the continued boasting and shooting.

Certainly can't let either lawyers or guns get in the way of the money, eh? It's all about the Benjamins, baby.