sean combs - MICHAEL BENABIB, CLASSIC HIP HOP PHOTOGRAPHY
I had flown down with Groovy Lew, Puffy’s stylist from New York for the three day shoot. There was definitely an entourage. I remember it was Super Bowl weekend in Miami. When we all went out to dinner it was a motorcade of SUVs. On the flight all the clothes and the photography equipment went missing. Much drama ensued. The next day all the equipment and clothing arrived. The shoot lasted over three day weekend. At any given time the house that puffy had rented had 10 to 20 people in it. I was told that the house belonged to Cher. There was 100 foot yacht docked adjacent to the house for our use. The scene at the house was alot of weed smoking, a lot of beautiful women—basically lifestyles of the rich and famous. Puffy would go upstairs, up this circular staircase and disappear for a bit and then come down and be like ‘ok playboy, let’s do this.’
My style is “let’s go for a walk and see what happens” but with so many people on this shoot, I couldn’t really be so free-form about it. Puffy and Groovy Lew had a vision for what it would look like and since there were six people on the cover, I had to shoot alot to get the one image where they all looked the way they wanted. And where they were all looking at the camera. I usually don’t do alot of prep. I like to just let the magic happen. But to get this shot, I really had to focus. I had never seen the house before. I never saw the clothes. Jadakiss, Mase..they were all in the photo and getting the single perfect shot was a challenge. -excerpt from Washington Post article by Vikki Toba