Andre Harrell Explains Why He Let Diddy Take Biggie

One of my favorite writers, Dream Hampton, interviewed the legendary Andre Harrell for Jay-Z’s site, Life & Times. Hampton titled the peice, The Originator, which is reflective of Harrell’s influence in the R&B and hip-hop industry. Peep an excerpt where he (Harrell) discusses why he let Diddy (former known as Puffy, real name Sean Combs) take Biggie (Notorious B.I.G.) with him after he fired him.

Puff and I agreed on everything that Uptown released, we had the same taste in music. The only thing we disagreed on was Heavy D‘s “Blue Funk.” Rap had gotten darker with [Dr. Dre’s] The Chronic and [Heavy D.], who was a party rapper wanted Puff take him darker. I was like “I don’t get this,” I just didn’t understand why you’d take an artist with wide appeal like Hev and make a record his audience wasn’t about. It ended up being Hev’s lowest selling album. It went gold. Before that he was a platinum artist. With Big it was the record where he stole the baby mama chain [“Gimme Da Loot”]. I asked Big, “Do you realize what kind of karma this is gonna bring you and Puff?” I couldn’t relate to the worker on the train robbing women, I asked Puff “Why isn’t Big the hustler giving out work? Why is he playing the guy on the front line?” When you play that guy then people want to test you to see if they can touch the armor, to see if you’re real.

One of the more interesting lines—-> I asked Big, “Do you realize what kind of karma this is gonna bring you and Puff?”

Peep Hampton’s full article here.