On a recent episode of the Rock & Roll High School podcast with Pete Ganbarg, legendary music executive Clive Davis shared a story about how he was convinced of the merits of Hip-Hop music by a young Sean Combs.

“Puffy was 23 years old and I knew the artists that I had–Aretha, Dionne, Whitney–was one kind of music,” Davis says. “LaFace ushered in blue collared R&B at its height. But, sensing the Hip-Hop revolution, both LA [Reid] and I agreed that we could use someone really attuned to the street. You gotta know what you can do for yourself, and you gotta know when you need to look to other people.”

Diddy was then still an ambitious young record man who'd come up under Andre Harrell at Uptown Records. In teaming with Davis, Sean "Puffy" Combs would soon launch his own Bad Boy Entertainment imprint.

“And I said ‘What have you got to illustrate that point?’ and he played me Craig Mack’s ‘Flava in Your Ear’ and he played me the then unknown artist that he felt and believed so strongly. He played me four or five cuts from Notorious B.I.G.”

Davis was convinced and connected the young soon-to-be mogul to industry executives.

“I said ‘OK, you proved your point.’ That’s when I introduced him to the weekly, what we called singles meetings,” Davis adds. “I introduced him to an executive there as someone who would help lead us to the street and share in the forthcoming Hip-Hop revolution.”