“He’s not a competitor yet, but he’s got a great start. It’s not enough to have a hit record, you have to have a hit career.” -Andre Harrell

New York Times circa 1994 months after he fired Puff from Uptown and a few years before he went to work for Puff.

More from that article…

November 1994…
Bad Boy puts him [Puffy] in the position of challenging Mr. Harrell and Mr. [Russell] Simmons. The situation is not unfriendly, particularly since Mr. Combs still helps them develop some of their artists. They regard Mr. Combs as a work in progress, respecting the raw nerve endings he has to spot and market talent, but waiting to see if he has the maturity and staying power to run his own company.

Though grateful to Mr. Harrell, who is 34, and Mr. Simmons, who is 36, for lessons taught, he sometimes speaks of them with the exasperation of youth assessing an out-of-touch generation.

“We just got a little bit more flavor,” he says. “That’s what the kids want: the realism, the lingo, the attitude, the bounce.

“I don’t just listen to the music with my head, it has to give me a rush,” he says. “That’s what separates me from Russell and Andre: I live for the music. I think they live for the money.

“I stay up longer than either one of them, I can be out in the street a lot longer,” he said. “I can handle the hyperness of young, hungry interns jumping around so excited just to be in the mix.”

Read the entire article here