P Diddy is an entrepreneur and business brain of global proportion, the first person to truly understand the power of global branding from the hip hop world. He is a label owner, record producer, fashion icon and lest we forget major major artist with over 11 million records sold in the US and xxxx worldwide. All this makes the release of P Diddy's latest album "Press Play" a very significant event indeed.

Combining all the artistic influences that have defined him as a hip-hop fan, artist and producer over the years P Diddy has done something artists always tell you they intend to do, but rarely actually accomplish: He's taken it to the next level, creating a sound that might best be described as New Wave-meets-Hip-hop, sexy electro-pop with a urban street beat. Like hip-hop has always been, it's a riveting mix of the new and the old. It is the cutting edge of musical forms; it's sounds like nothing you've ever heard before, massaging the ear as passionately as it makes you shake your bum.

It has been five years since "The Saga Continues" ...and indeed the saga is continuing. P Diddy has upped his moguldom to unprecedented levels, adding fragrance designer, clothing designer, Broadway actor, marathon runner, and television producer to his growing list of accomplishments. It would be easy for the man to rest on his laurels, to release a CD that plays on the same P Diddy template that made him a global superstar. Instead he's taken his years of experience and created a sonic experience that breaks new ground while it sustains the P Diddy mystique.

"I originally started producing records 'cause I wanted to make people dance," he says. "I've been quietly working on this for the last two years, taking everything I've learned over the years, from growing up in the 70s, to being out in the streets in the 80s listening to hip-hop and watching how it affected my culture, to the 90s, working with Uptown and Bad Boy. Add to that all the experience I've had traveling and being exposed to all kinds of sounds. It was time to rekindle the thing I loved. I've achieved a great deal of success, but music is my passion."