I dunno, do I want him to bleed or something?
Cos watching this 11 years later, the main message I’m getting off it is “Totally it is OK for grieving men to get their groove on while riding on a disco-lit treadmill”. Then it strikes me – we are talking about this man:
Knowing what we know of Puff Daddy/Puffy/P. Diddy/Diddy, would it not be natural that this man would express trauma by falling off a motorcycle and receiving no injuries as a result? That he would express grief by doing an extended dance routine underneath a rain machine? That, were he to announce that “This one goes out/To everyone/That has lost someone/That they truly love”, he would do so in the manner of one who believes that they are the first person to have ever dedicated something to people that have lost someone that they truly love?
What I’m tryna say here is that this record is not necessarily an insincere gesture; Puff Daddy being the man he is, it is entirely plausible that he really believes this is the best way to mourn a friend. The trouble is that it’s horribly inarticulate; it doesn’t go any deeper than “You are dead and I am sad because you are not here anymore, and that is because you are dead, and so I am sad. Because you are dead”. It doesn’t offer any meditation, any insight beyond “On that morning, when this life is over, I know I’ll see your face” – exactly the same as “One Sweet Day“, basically, American pop stars cheerily writing themselves into Heaven, except here someone’s actually died and nobody’s trying to coin the term “melismatic clusterfuck”.
Actually, that’s not entirely fair – “memories gimme the strength I need to proceed, strength I need to believe” is a pretty neat expression of how grieving and moving on with one’s own life need not be contradictory activities; we move on but we do not forget, cos our lives have been impacted; we remember by living, but we keep our selves at the same time. If you get my meaning there.
Even so, these days this record just seems to be bereft of impact. I remember I used to find it quite moving when I was younger, but not now. The clean surfaces, and especially the anodyne mumbles of 112 at the end, just don’t do anything. They sound like they’re not really singing about anyone in particular, rolling flat their vulnerabilities for the radio, muttering about some generic idea of sadness or what have you.
Still, I’m turning 25 today, and the closing shot reminds me that that’s a couple of months older than Notorious B.I.G. ever got to be. A chilling thought for all kinds of reasons.
If I were American, this would have been:
Puff Daddy, Faith Evans and 112, “I’ll Be Missing You” – yup, our second occasion upon which both sides of the Atlantic were in agreement. Which is convenient.
American Me: 7
Actual Me: 6
Other notable UK number ones of this year:
Spice Girls had three number ones, everyone else had to be content with one each. There was Hanson, R Kelly, the Teletubbies, The Verve, Tori Amos, Blur, LL Cool J, Elton John, Oasis, Will Smith, Olive, U2 and Gary Barlow, but the ones I retain the greatest fondness for are:
(Lene’s solo album= pretty decent)
But, most of all:
So far as I can tell, still the only number one with “crap” in the lyrics.
1998 next. This isn’t gonna get done on time, but it’ll get done.
