Press Play marks Diddy's first release since 2001's The Saga Continues, which, sadly for the famed hip-hop impresario, was released within months of The Blueprint, assuredly one of the finest hip-hop albums of all-time. The Saga Continues came and went without creating anything of a critical stir. Since then, much has changed. Sean Combs went from Puff Daddy to P. Diddy to simply Diddy, in moves seemingly geared toward cultivating focused publicity while he was putting out a dearth of hits.
Additionally, an excitingly seismic shift occurred on the modern music scene, manifested in two works of knockout pop-rap versatility and vibrancy — namely The College Dropout and the classic Late Registration. Yes, the genius of Kanye West arrived. On those releases, Kanye flourished by balancing a sugary pop appeal with adequate rap overtures, an act undertaken with scattered success by Diddy in the mid to late nineties.
But this is the 21st century, which prompts the question: Is Diddy still culturally or artistically relevant? Or has Kanye West, and more generally, the passage of time, rendered him moot — a mere redundancy? Perhaps, it could be asserted, he was always a middling talent.
Press Play is a maddeningly vacant collection — overlong, self-deluded but not even sonically ambitious enough to be demeaned as overwrought. Even in his varied exploration of tempos and music genres (Motown, club romps, moody hip-hop), Diddy fails at concocting pleasingly creative flows or anything that hints at a touch of singularity, distinction or freshness. Evidently, he was too preoccupied with reverential self-references and bittersweet invocations of his mid-90s prime to recognize the insipid tenor of his clunky musical backdrops. Ultimately, Press Play leaves one vividly perplexed by its mismatch of conceited airs and bland follow-through.
"Testimonial (Intro)" bears immediate false signs of Diddy in that it opens with music that is not his own. Set to the chiming piano notes of Tears for Fears' "Head Over Heels" (belatedly brought to fame by "Donnie Darko"), Diddy earnestly presents himself as a hyper-juggernaut of skill, wealth and incomparable notoriety. "But it (the world) fueled my fire, ignited my desire, gave me the bricks and sand to build an empire." Later, in an aberrational moment of lyrical subtlety, he crassly derides the current president as "evil." His self-flattery, though, stands as the central (and laughable) theme of Press Play and urges on its blank appeal.
"Special Feeling" proceeds like classic Prince, with punchy beats and an underlay of organs. But whereas Prince imbued his sexuality with cryptic tension, Diddy is boringly up-front and unsubtle. "Special Feeling" oddly represents a rare moment of overt mimicry. Diddy still samples with regularity but not on the shameless scale of his Zeppelin splicing "Come With Me" or the Bowie rip-off "Been Around The World."
This adjusted approach does not, however, yield consistent results. "Everything I Love" should explode in its collision of dueling egos between Diddy and Nas. But its choppy production, with a faux brass section and sporadic organs, sputters out in its repetition. "Come To Me," a sexy club outing, is all texture — dashing laser beats and spare clicks — without any rousing core sound. At times, you'll yearn for excess, but the production is often too guarded for such flair.
Press Play also features a trio of moody, nourish pieces — "Hold Up," "Wanna Move," and "Through the Pain" — that uses tight, twilight beats to create atmosphere and distant emotion. "Hold Up," driven by rhythmic female backups, stands out among the rest but is only a half success. On "Through the Pain," Diddy is largely absent while the silky drip of Mario Winans' voice creates an aberrational note of genuine sentiment. This number is instructive on two levels. It exemplifies Press Play's penchant for partial successes and reveals the superiority of Diddy's many guests to his own skill.
Diddy brazenly proposes the opposite view in much of his lyrical output. "The Future" offers the most piercing window into his fatuous claims. Here he boasts of his "potential to be the first black president" and suggests he's "always before you, always ill." Its sonics are horrendously stilted to begin with, but Diddy's delusional sense of self-worth adds on a further layer of emptiness. I cannot remember loathing a song so viscerally.
When he's not obsessing over "Gucci, Prada, trips to Nevada," Diddy still reminisces on his friendship with the fallen Notorious B.I.G. and speaks with an irrelevant parlance that includes "Harlem world, Bad Boy and J. Lo." These are constant reminders of what he may have once represented, but they do not point to a lasting legacy.
With any sprawling, 19-track production, gems will surface, even if only by accident. The sexual spice of Christina Aguilera's ever-electrifying vocals elevate the lead single "Tell Me" to easy hit status. The brass rumblings and shifty production of "We Goin' Make It" also achieve a high level of catchy competence — although Jay Z's strikingly similar new single "Show Me What You Got" outdoes "We Goin' Make It" at its own game. But this is hardly adequate.
In the past, Diddy has excelled at assembling a host of talent to surround him and obscure his shortcomings. On Press Play, not even the presence of Big Boi, Cee-Lo, and Jamie Fox can resuscitate the failing pulse of his work. So little about Press Play wears the distinct appearance of Diddy because, from the start, he was an artist of contrivance and artifice, a mimicker rather than an innovator. In this regard he differs decidedly from Kanye West. Kanye similarly has employed the services of mega talents — Common, Jay Z, Nas — and has spliced recognizable grooves for his own hits. But very few doubt his music's primary source of overall ingenuity and character. Not so with Diddy. With Press Play, his shtick has imploded and laid bare its banal artistry.
Grade: 1.5 out of 5
