Diddy announces first solo album in 17 years
Diddy announced his first solo album in 17 years, “The Love Album: Off the Grid”, via a star-studded trailer on Tuesday. The album is set to arrive Sept. 15.
The trailer features an all-star lineup of musical guests, some of whom will presumably be featured on the album.
Justin Bieber, The Weeknd, Mary J. Blige, DJ Khaled, Teyana Taylor, French Montana, 21 Savage, Yung Miami, Swae Lee, Jozzy, and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds all appear in the video.
The trailer begins with reflective questions about the project’s inception. “Why am I doing this?” Diddy asks in the opening narration. “You know what I’m saying? Especially with the success that I’ve had. Especially where my life is. How stressful and treacherous this music industry is, why would I just come back in here and have to do something that I don’t have to do?”
He hints at the meaning behind the album’s title later in the trailer. “We in the love era, that’s the frequency that I’m asking y’all to be a part of,” Diddy says. “I had to go off the grid in order to really lock in ’cause I was so addicted to my phone, so addicted to the work, so addicted to the bulls—.”
Last year Diddy, whose real name is Sean Combs, told Ellen DeGeneres that he’d legally changed his middle name from John to Love, so the album title’s seems to be a bit self-referential.
Diddy has also gone by the monikers Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, and Puffy.
“I don’t make an algorithm, I make a feeling,” he says in the trailer. “You wanna give ’em something that they can sing. People say, ‘Do you want streams?’ I said, ‘I want souls.'”
Diddy’s previous solo album, Press Play, dropped in 2006. In the meantime, he’s released the collaborative albums “Last Train to Paris”, with Dawn Richard and Kalenna Harper, in 2010, and “11 11”, with Guy Gerber, in 2014.
He also released the mixtape “MMM (Money Making Mitch)” with the Family in 2015. And Combs has produced tracks for artists such as Kanye West, Pusha T, Burna Boy, and French Montana in the time between his own projects.
The trailer ends with a bold proclamation: “I’m not leaving here until the world has changed.” – Entertainment Weekly
Diddy announces first solo album in 17 years
