Song under a magnifying glass: Puff Daddy: I’ll be missing you.

Puff Daddy was one of Sean Combs’ stage names. He was born in 1970 in Harlem, then a poor black neighbourhood in New York. His father was shot and killed when Sean was just two years old. The family left New York. Sean turned out to be an ambitious boy, having finished university by the age of 20, and went to work at a record production company. After a few years, he founded his own company ‘Bad Boy Entertainment’ with which he made a lot of money that allowed him to live a luxurious life with women, money and drugs. 

Now listen to the song this post is about:

The lyrics of a song are sometimes a whole story, like ‘I’ll be missing you’ will reveal, behind many songs there is also another story.

The song

One of Sean’s best-known performers was the rapper ‘Notorious B.I.G. He was killed by a gunshot in a dispute between rival groups. Sean wrote this song, a kind of ‘in memoriam’, in response to this event. It was an international hit and Sean’s singing career took off.

The refrain of the song is very poetic

Every step I take
Every move I make
Every single day, every time I pray
I’ll be missing you
Thinkin’ of the day
When you went away
What a life to take, what a bond to break
I’ll be missing you (I miss you, B.I.G.)

As is often the case, the song has been covered by other artists. Here is another rather smooth version.

Its style

The actual lyrics are a ‘rap’, as you may have noticed. As I explained in the former post, rap is a musical style, reciting lyrics in a rhythmic way. As such, this is nothing new; medieval troubadours were already doing it. The ‘rap’ we know comes from ‘hip-hop’ (sub)culture, that developed in the 1980s in the Bronx, then also a poor neighborhood in New York. 

As illustrated by the presentation of Eminem’s songs in the previous post, much rap is opposing (American) society and lyrics are often sexist and glorify violence. The popularity of this genre has grown rapidly and so has the variety of styles. Puff Daddy’s song is gospel rap, having a religious background.

Another hallmark of hip-hop culture is breakdancing. Young people in New York’s black ghettos had few opportunities to make a difference in society. So, they all wanted to become famous rappers or to perform as dancers. Their style is called ‘breakdance’, also popular in the Netherlands in the 1990s. How perfect can it be? Here is an example.

What’s wrong with the song?

But there is something wrong with ‘I’ll be missing you’. Listen to the performance of Sting singing ‘Message in a bottle’ (Paris 2017).

Sting’s song is much older than Puff Daddy’s. Another famous song was found to be plagiarised. A court therefore ruled that all royalties from ‘I’ll be missing you’ would go to Sting until 2023. In 1997, the two men became acquainted, and appeared to like each other. It was decided that from then on, Sting would no longer receive all of his royalties, but ‘only’ an amount of $5,000 per day. They also decided to do a concert together, featuring Faith Evans, the widow of Notorious B.I.G. You can look and listen to this performance here:

Covers

‘l’ll be missing you’ is also a favorite song of amateur choirs. Finally, you might listen and look at an example

What do you think of this performance, compared to the earlier chorus I showed?