The problem, the thing that can't be disguised by increased ongoing success, any number of outrageous PR stunts or changes of moniker, is simple. P Diddy, or Puff Daddy, or Sean "Puffy" Combs, is as many things to as many people as anyone who needs that many names ought to be. But the one thing he ain't is a rapper.
Of course, Combs knows this. Certainly, anyone with his track record as an auteur in as competitive an environment as rap and R&B music can't be ignorant of the truth. His genius is not as a lyricist, and he isn't a stylist about to revolutionise the rap game with a new flow or a voice of depth and resonance. What he is good at, has always been good at, is being a musical window-dresser. Puffy takes things that other people make - beats, raps, songs, choruses, whatever - puts the makers in new poses and fresh clothes, and provides them with a globe-sized stretch of double glazed store front in which to impress anyone who happens to pass by.
So this third album by Puffy The Artist is, as were its predecessors, a bunch of tracks on which he features alongside others better able to carry them off. But, also like both 'Forever' and, to a greater extent, the excellent 'No Way Out' before it, 'The Saga Continues' is as clever, as crafty and as sussed a slice of mainstream hip hop as you'll hear in a while. OK, so it's not as peerless as Jay-Z's barnstorming current opus. But neither is it as self-serving or self-consciously hip as many of the latest lauded offerings from hip hop's increasingly irrelevant margins.
There are moments where Puffy stars - such as the point during 'On Top' where he reminds us he's "Still the same cat who put that Flava In Ya Ears / Most-wanted successful rap mogul", and the knowing confession of the brilliant 'Bad Boy For Life' single where he shouts "Don't' worry if I write rhymes, I write cheques". But for the most part, he's happy again to let the extended Bay Boy family and sundry others strut their stuff - and in the process he's caused the creation of another record that will delight his fans, annoy his detractors and pick up sufficient floating voters from the remaining middle ground so as to shift the platinum numbers he's used to.
He still can't rap though.
