Combs was fond of Shakur, admiring his ability to marry street credibility with mainstream appeal. Burrowes notes that the Bad Boy team spent the summer of 1993 studying the rapper’s buoyant hit “I Get Around” as a blueprint for a commercial hip-hop record. Desperate to be taken seriously, Combs tried to foster a friendship, but Shakur wasn’t interested. “Pac didn’t have any kind of respect for Puff,” says Nineties hip-hop photographer Monqiue Bunn, who was close with Wallace and other Bad Boy artists. To Shakur and even Wallace, Bunn says, Combs was a “corny executive.”
Instead, Shakur bonded with Wallace, whom he viewed as his peer, Burrowes remembers. As a result, he says, referring to Combs, “there was someone on the sidelines, jealous.”