Summary Rap mogul Diddy on Wednesday celebrated his 46th birthday with a gift to others -- a free album.
NEW YORK (AFP) - Rap mogul Diddy on Wednesday celebrated his 46th birthday with a gift to others -- a free album.
Diddy -- whose real name is Sean Combs and whose stage names include Puff Daddy -- announced that he would release the mixtape, entitled "MMM," for free later in the day.
The rapper posted on Instagram a short video in which he is seen walking down a street in New York, with one of his hometown s signature yellow taxis near him, as onpassers shout, "Happy birthday!"
"Good morning, New York! Today s my birthday and I m out here in the streets of New York and it s a celebration. I m dropping an album -- a sonic motion picture," he said.
Diddy, who earlier announced the news at a birthday party in Harlem on Tuesday night, said that the mixtape would be called "MMM" and showed a back-cover picture of the rapper opening a bottle of champagne.
Diddy has rarely performed in recent years and has not released an album since "Last Train to Paris" in 2010.
In the meantime, he has become a successful businessman, especially through a venture selling French-made Ciroc liquor.
Wealth magazine Forbes estimated that he was the top-earning rapper in the year to June 2015, grossing $60 million.
While the distinction between albums and mixtapes has increasingly become blurred in hip-hop, "MMM" is not believed to be a substitute for a long-awaited album by Diddy.
The rapper has said that he is working on a sequel to his debut 1997 work "No Way Out" -- to be entitled "No Way Out 2" -- that will be his final album.
Diddy has spoken repeatedly about the "MMM" project without specifying the meaning of the acronym.
But Diddy s friend and fellow rapper Rick Ross last year said it stood for "Money Making Mitch," a reference to the 2002 film "Paid in Full" about drug-dealing in New York before the crack craze in the 1980s.
