It’s A Bad Boy/Junior M.A.F.I.A. Reunion on “Auction” With Puff, Kim, Styles & Los (Video)

With the shiny jackets, posse camera shots, and braggadocious lyrics, the Bad Boy family certainly left its imprint on the Rap video canon, and the Jiggy Era for many Heads will always symbolize a heyday of mainstream New York City Hip-Hop. A key player in that movement was, of course, Puff Daddy. The producer-rapper-mogul has since become a giant in the industry, a promotion which has given him considerable space in which to experiment with his sound. 2010’s Last Train to Paris featured the then-Diddy embracing sounds not usually associated with his past discography, but the experiment paid off and many applauded his creative leap. However, it seems the Mount Vernon-by-way-of-Harlem native felt a yearning for his Rap roots and Heads reacted positively to a full Puff Daddy return on November’s MMM (Money Making Mitch).

 Released as a free mixtape, MMM features an array of megawatt Rap stars including Big Sean, French Montana, Future, Pusha T, and Wiz Khalifa. But it was the inclusion of Jadakiss, Lil Kim, and Styles P which got many longtime Puff Daddy fans listening – especially fans of the Lox. Having been signed to Bad Boy by Puff himself back in 1995, collaborations between the artists still gets fans excited, even 20 years later. On “Auction,” the reunion of Puffy and Styles P is welcomed enough, but the inclusion of the one and only Lil Kim gave the track some serious buzz, thanks to Kim’s relatively absent voice in recent years. Her appearance on the song in many ways signaled her return, a return further demonstrated with a new single from what looks to be her first solo album since 2005’s The Naked Truth. In the video, the three channel mid ’90s Bad Boy aesthetics with a new face – that of King Los, a relative newcomer whose long history with Bad Boy makes him a fitting inclusion. Directed by Hype Williams – whose past work with Craig Mack, Mary J. Blige, the Notorious B.I.G., Blackstreet, Foxy Brown, Mase, and Puff Daddy makes him as much a progenitor of the era as the artists he directs – the video is simple in concept, but lush in context.

Related: Through Thick & Thin Puff Daddy & The LOX Still Make Great Music Together (Audio)