 Now people may be wondering how can that be when he has sold over 1.5 million units. Let's put it simply, he had two singles off that album that were pushed heavily to commercial radio and video outlets. Everywhere you went one heard the Public Enemy inspired 'PE 2000' and the Luniz/Club Nouveau inspired 'Satisfy You' with R Kelley. To start he had to pay for the samples and licensing of those songs. Trust me Chuck D nor the Luniz gave those cuts up for free. Then he most likely had to pay the original artists which would be James Brown and Club Nouveau. After that, Puff had to sink in quite a bit of 'promotional' money to ensure that me, my mother and even my grandmother would hear these cuts every hour. In this business when you have a 'top 10 record', that usually means anywhere from 4-8 hundred thousand dollars was sunk into the 'promotion'. He had everything from expensive TV ads to bus billboards to trade ads etc.. By the time everyone got their cut and Puff's album only sold 1.5 million, you can see how he had a disappointing year. Adding insult to injury, he sunk tons of money into obtaining Shyne and producing his album. Not only is there a possibility this album won't come out because of Shyne being indicted for attempted murder, there are now several other Biggie sound alikes dropping records. Most notably is BBJay who has a slamming cut called 'Hot To Def' which was released the other week on Jive records. Here in the Bay Area there's a new kid who I heard the other day that has some bumping material that's about to drop. His name escapes me for the moment. I heard there was another Biggie sound alike coming out of Texas. It's questionable how Shyne would've done coming off of Bad Boy. I'm not so sure if folks who revered Biggie would allow themselves to get passed the thought that Shyne's existence on Bad Boy was solely to exploit the memory of Biggie. In any case, the money sunk into this project which may not get released or even do well if dropped, has no doubt been a set back for Puff and Bad Boy. |