In the summer of 1998, the line to get into Mecca on a Sunday night might stretch from the entrance to the Tunnel nightclub on Manhattan’s 12th Avenue all the way to the end of the block; hundreds of bodies, clothed and barely clothed in Versace and DKNY and Polo Sport, vibrating with anticipation. Passing cars with their booming stereos, either scoping out the scene or hunting for parking, offered a preview of what was inside: the sounds of Jay-Z and Busta Rhymes and Lil’ Kim. These people weren’t waiting just to listen to music. They were there to be part of it. To be in the room where Biggie Smalls and Mary J. Blige had performed. To be on the dance floor when Funkmaster Flex dropped a bomb on the next summer anthem. They were waiting to be at the center of hip-hop.
What they didn’t realize was that the center of hip-hop had shifted. Relocated not just to another club or another borough, but to a beachfront estate in East Hampton. Although Sundays at the Tunnel would endure for a few more years, nothing in hip-hop, or American culture, would ever be quite the same again.
It’s been 25 years since Sean Combs, then known as Puff Daddy, hosted the first of what would become his annual White Party at his home in the Hamptons. The house was all white and so was the dress code: not a cream frock or beige stripe to be seen. Against the cultural landscape of late-’90s America, the simple fact of a Black music executive coming to the predominantly white Hamptons was presented as a spectacle. That summer, The New York Times reported, “the Harlem-born rap producer and performer had played host at the Bridgehampton polo matches, looking dapper in a seersucker suit and straw boater. The polo-playing swells had invited him and he had agreed, as long as the day could be a benefit for Daddy’s House, a foundation he runs that supports inner-city children.”