The power of P. Diddy

Hip-hop was only a starting point for Sean "P. Diddy" Combs. His clothing line sells millions. He's a restaurateur. And now he's the new idolmaker of MTV's musical reality show.

By Devin Gordon

Combs first made a name for himself by cultivating artists like Notorious B.I.G.

There are certain things the boss doesn't do. Cutting off a singer during an audition -- uh-uh, no way. P. Diddy's got his man sitting next to him, and he does that. As soon as Diddy's heard enough, he turns his head and nods. "Thank you," his man calls out, usually mid-note, and the singer slinks away.

It's past 9 on an August weeknight, and Sean Combs (a k a P. Diddy, a k a Puffy), 32, is in a Manhattan studio at early-round auditions for MTV's "Making the Band 2". The reality show, which premiered last week, features the image-conscious hip-hop mogul as he attempts to fashion pop's next supergroup from a cast of unknowns. Each act gets roughly 20 seconds in front of Combs. That's all he needs to judge its potential.

Combs has always been a one-man focus group. For over a decade, he has consistently defined not only what's hot, but what will be hot tomorrow. It isn't a matter of merely frequenting nightclubs or associating with the right kind of people. He just knows, instinctively, the way Jordan knew how to beat his opponent to the basket. "It's my talent," he says, simply.

Combs whizzes through tonight's entire audition roster, about 20 people, in 45 minutes. Afterward, he huddles briefly with his Bad Boy mates and MTV producers. Then he thanks all the contestants, encourages the dismissed not to lose faith and reads off a list of 10 names. Across the room, there are squeals and screams and hugs. The ones who advance relax and chat up Combs' staff. But the moment they all file out, the boss' face hardens. Combs gathers up everyone, yanks them into a corner and explodes. "They're way too comfortable, and they ain't done s---. And y'all let this happen. They should be nervous; they should be bitin' they nails. This is TV, yknowhaImsayin?" Combs looks at Rick DeOliveira, the show's co-executive producer, who's smiling. "You think I'm joking?"

"No," DeOliveira says. "I know you're not joking."

"They in Oz right now. You don't be chillin' in Oz! ... We should throw them all out. All of 'em!" With that, Combs sweeps out of the studio, phone pressed to his ear, three of his men at his heels. "I'll call y'all tomorrow!" he yells back. "We're changing this whole game."

After he's gone, DeOliveira shrugs and smiles. "Well, that's Puff."

The guy is hip-hop. And he can change on you just as fast as a DJ mixes records. Like Madonna, Combs figured out long ago that there are three ways to stay on top: You can ride a new trend, get ahead of the next one or create one yourself. Taking the first option, Combs is now going the reality-show route. (You

didn't think he'd pass up that gold mine, did you?) He has captured the audience with almost every kind of music, from hard-core gangsta rap to bubblegum teen pop. He has recycled classics, remixed current hits, collaborated with rock stars and contributed to soundtracks, and he's now experimenting with dance music on the side. He's changed up his style, his name (and his name again) and, yes, he's changed the game.

His big idea: Take a single product (hip-hop) and turn it into a youth culture movement. "Bad Boy," he says, "isn't just a record label. It's a lifestyle." Using MTV and BET as a platform, Combs introduced mainstream America to the fast-paced, thrill-seeking world of "player" culture, with its $1,300-bottle champagne, custom-made cars and two-way pagers. Naturally, the doors to the Establishment swung open, and suddenly Combs was in the Hamptons toasting with Donald Trump and Donatella Versace. It was a marriage of convenience: He lusts after their cachet; they're desperate for his cool. Soon everyone wanted into Combs' extravagant parties, like his $500,000 1998 birthday bash at a Wall Street restaurant, for which the videotaped invites were wrapped in velvet and delivered by hand.

"Making the Band", Combs' first major TV venture, is more than his latest bid to extend his estimated half-billion-dollar Bad Boy empire, which also encompasses an upscale soul-food restaurant chain, a marketing/ advertising firm and a clothing line: It will once again put his hitmaking skills to the test. The irony is that Combs has never, ever made a band this way. Genuine talent, he says, crosses your path "when you least expect it. It's hard to force the issue." Many of his best discoveries are tales of happenstance. He signed the R&B trio Total after its members stopped him outside a nightclub and begged to sing for him. ("You got 20 seconds," he told them.) He famously cut a deal with Notorious B.I.G. after the Brooklyn rapper appeared in The Source magazine's "Unsigned Hype" column.

Although "Making the Band" vaguely resembles "American Idol", it's more cinéma vérité, less "Star Search". The audition process isn't a blood sport: Combs rarely says much, and he certainly doesn't tell acts they're dreadful. In the early episodes, Combs will winnow the cast of 10,000 down to four or five, along the way schooling them in the art of being a star. "I wanted people to have a better understanding of what I do," he says. Combs is dressed this afternoon in a Gucci denim suit, his low-slung pants bunching over a pair of crisp, old-school white leather Pro-Keds. "People think we just jump around, drink Cristal, party all day and night. We go to jobs in office buildings and boardrooms. It's a real business."

Filming "Making the Band" has proved unexpectedly difficult. Combs and MTV say they've kept things friendly, but it's clear the production has been a strain. The main sticking point: Combs' availability. He routinely shows up an hour late for engagements -- anything less and he's effectively early. (Sometimes the punctuality-challenged star indulges his personal sense of time at the expense of his pocketbook: Last month, a North Carolina judge ordered him to pay $2.45 million to a man who said he'd been beaten in 1995 by bodyguards hired by Combs. Combs had not responded to the allegations within the 30-day time limit.) Part of this is prima donna preening, but he's also legitimately swamped. "With him, the button is on 24 hours a day," says Derek Ferguson, CFO of Bad Boy Entertainment Worldwide, noting he just spoke with the boss moments earlier. (Any time you talk to someone who works for P. Diddy, they've just gotten off the phone with him.) "I still haven't figured out when the guy sleeps -- if he sleeps."

Raised in Mount Vernon, N.Y., Combs dropped out of Howard University and in 1990 joined Uptown Records as an intern, working his way up to VP within a year. He first made his name engineering the success of R&B acts like Mary J. Blige and Jodeci. Combs fine-tuned their image and released remixes of their hits with harder-edged beats, creating a new sound: hip-hop soul. The CD that took him over the top was B.I.G.'s "Ready to Die" (1994), a masterly concept album that became the template for rap's do-rags-to-riches formula. Over the next few years, Combs lit up the airwaves with the sort of party-rocking jams that inspire clubgoers to wear the paint off the dance floor. Two of his biggest were "It's All About the Benjamins" and "I'll Be Missing You", an ode to B.I.G. after his death in a 1997 drive-by shooting.

Of course, Combs has been knocked down almost as many times as he's been up; most notably, a 1999 shooting incident at a Manhattan nightclub landed him on trial for illegal gun possession. Although he was exonerated, the trial badly damaged his reputation. Combs had fled the scene in his chauffered Lincoln Navigator, and rumors linger that Jamal "Shyne" Barrow, Combs' protégé, took the fall for him. (Combs has repeatedly denied it.) Barrow is doing 10 years for assault, gun possession and reckless endangerment. Combs' chief punishment: His superstar girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, dumped him shortly before his March 2001 acquittal.

Since the trial, Combs has been his label's only top-dollar act. But he's always been at his best when on the ropes. During the trial's darkest days, he'd drive straight from the courthouse to the offices of Jeffrey Tweedy, who runs Combs' clothing label, Sean John. The two talked fashion and sketched out ideas for clothes. Sean John takes conventional streetwear and nudges it toward more classic style, with straighter lines and closer cuts -- the urban gentleman. "People assumed that because Puff was a hip-hop star, it was just gonna be baggy pants and big shirts," Tweedy says. "I worried, too. But I could tell by our conversations he was serious about taking fashion in a new direction." Sean John is now the fashion success story of the last decade, with reported sales erupting from $30 million in 1999 to $250 million in 2001. This year Combs was nominated, with Marc Jacobs and Ralph Lauren, for menswear designer of the year by the Council of Fashion Designers of America. (He lost to Jacobs.)

In May, his latest CD, "We Invented the Remix" -- with Snoop Dogg, Missy Elliot and others -- debuted at No. 1. The "exclamation point," Combs says, was his electrifying performance at August's MTV Video Music Awards show, which began with him perched atop a 17-foot platform and flanked by a 25-person orchestra. Usher and the Neptunes' Pharrell Williams took turns onstage, then Busta Rhymes emerged from the crowd to perform "Pass the Courvoisier as 22 bungee jumpers from a group called AntiGravity soared across the stage, amid pyrotechnics, like a hip-hop Cirque du Soleil.

"If I'm gonna do something," Combs says, "I'm gonna be the best. I'm always challenging my artists to work as hard as me. It's the same thing with "Making the Band". The only way you're gonna get to be where I'm at is if you're as dedicated as I am. But don't try to be me. Because you can never be me."

Devin Gordon, an associate editor at "Newsweek" magazine, writes about pop culture and sports.

Photograph by Keith Major for USA WEEKEND

Hair by Curtis Smith. Grooming by Ashunta Sheriff. Styling by Mike Bogard. Jean jacket by Gucci, T-shirt by Calvin Klein