Thank you for visiting Bad Boy Blog.

There's no way for me to say this without it being a surprise, but unfortunately, the time has come for me to step away from the site. I'm still a massive fan of Mr. Combs and a big fan of Bad Boy Records, but I have decided that I want to focus my time and efforts on other projects.

I launched Bad Boy Blog on March 14, 2006 - coming up on 7 and a half years ago - with specific goals. I wanted to create an outlet for fans to follow Bad Boy related news, good and bad, from a fan's perspective.

We have been different from many other online publications in the responsibility that I take for this platform and how seriously I take it. This wasn't a gossip site, but a publication dedicated to getting accurate information to Bad Boy fans. We also took a hard line against piracy, only sharing music provided by legitimate parties. There is no doubt that this forced us to grow at a slower pace, especially in a world where plenty of outlets post MP3s, get the traffic, cash the checks and ask questions later.

I've written over 10,000 posts here and it's been an interesting ride. There are several articles that stand out to me, from what I've written over the years, but my favorite has to be The Making of "No Way Out, a look at the creation of Diddy's first album, from some of the people who helped put it together.

There have been many great, fun moments, too numerous to list. There have also been plenty of disappointing moments.

It's always been a mixed bag when reaching out to professionals for help putting together stories. In fairness, you want to try to represent both sides of an issue. This would lead to me contacting people at Bad Boy, artist management, artists themselves, PR representatives and more. Some acted like professionals - even if they couldn't help, they would decline respectfully. I appreciated that.

Unfortunately, more often than not, these people were not courteous. Sometimes, they were worse than that. Many people, going as high as an executive at Bad Boy (who has now moved on), have tried to intimidate me. I've seen people lie and I've been asked to lie to fans, which I never did. One manager even suggested, threateningly, that people from their camp would show up at a speaking engagement of mine. Why did he say that? Because I told him that the artist's website was simply copying and pasting articles from other sites, which was copyright infringement, and that he should stop. I wanted the artist's website (which is now long gone) to stay online.

When artists and, worst of all for this site, Mr. Combs bash "the blogs," they take aim at legitimate writers and published authors like myself and they do so at the risk of their own credibility. These comments demonstrate a lack of understanding in that "blogging" is just writing on the web. It's a medium. The writer defines the tone and the pursuit. Those comments always made me question the people surrounding these artists - shouldn't someone say something?

At any rate, with all of the ups and downs, I value the experience that running this site has provided and it definitely makes for a lot of interesting stories.

Thank you to Mr. Combs for being an inspiration to me, personally and professionally. Thank you to those at Bad Boy and related companies who were savvy, professional and kind.

I'm grateful to everyone that has read this site over the years who, like me, are fans of Bad Boy or, at least, specific artists. I appreciate all of the kind words and support, the great comments and people who have spread the word about the site. This includes all of our subscribers via email, RSS, Twitter and Facebook. Thank you. I don't think I'll ever stop being a fan of Mr. Combs and Bad Boy, but I will miss contributing to this website.

If you'd like to stay in touch, I'd love to continue to do so. Here is where you can find me:

Twitter
Facebook
Google+
YouTube
Personal Blog
Professional Blog

If this is good bye, once again, thank you for your kindness, support and for sharing in my appreciation of Bad Boy.

Sincerely,

Patrick O'Keefe