There’s and old James Bond movie called “Never say never again”. And often, we people use this delicate five-letter-word without thinking of the consequences. Almost every hip hop fan or head called P. Diddy, Bad Boy CEO and Mr. Cash himself, commercial or not real anymore since the death of Bad Boy’s last great MC, the Notorious B.I.G. So did I: I called Diddy (okay, back in the days, I was talking about Puffy or Puff, so Diddy might be a different persona…) a good CEO, but unreal and not a musician. Well, how do I have to explain this… he obviously survived this crap talk!

“The Saga Continues…” was originally meant to be a Bad Boy Records compilation, which it still is, but after a certain time, P. Diddy recognized the record’s importance to the label and made it his own, so that’s why it’s P. Diddy & The Bad Boy Family right now. The MC-lineup is endless, Bad Boy artists and others such as MJG, Eightball or Kokane join the record in different ways. Producers? Well, there are about ten, from Sean “P. Diddy” Combs to the Neptunes, Megahertz, Buckwild and others. Result are 25 (!) tracks of different styles and different musical values, but they come together and make you feel like, well, the saga continues… This “Bad Boy For Life” thing showed us that there is still some dopeness on the label, and even P. – surprise! – rhymes. And if you can’t feel his lines: “Don’t worry how I write rhymes, I write checks!” Got that? The Neptunes and Diddy do “Diddy”, which might be a club burner only because of the beat… Cherri D ennis, a quite new name on the roster and responsible for the female soul/R’n’B-part of the game, performs “So Complete”, “Lonely” features Kokane, Kain, Marc Curry and Diddy himself and rests in your neck in a bubblin’ way. And you open the CD’s booklet, see that Diddy himself produced the track, and it reminds you of times when Biggie dropped “Hypnotize”… “I Need A Girl (To Bella)” is as smooth as the girl that is needed should be – extremely smooth! “Back For Good Now” featuring Black Rob, Diddy, Loon & Cheri Dennis is uptempo and not bad, and good old Faith Evans and Carl Thomas “Can’t Believe” how smooth and souly they are.

The fact of the whole Bad Boy crew reunited on this record makes it very, very various. But that danger of being too versatile, too less homogeneous, they managed to prevent the whole record from. Overall, there are two emcees that seem to me like quite doper than the rest of them and that might be two of the more or less underestimated rappers: It’s Black Rob (okay, his record had four and a half mics in the Source, but did you buy it then?) and Mark Curry (I never heard that much of him, but he shows skills on “Lonely”. Okay, what did we call Puffy yesterday. Never mind, the guy’s back. Holla!