"When I came out rapping on my record, a lot of people said, Oh, you just want to be like Puff"

In this quote, Jermaine Dupri is assessing his experience as a rap artist and the criticism he dealt with from others. He points out how when he first started rapping on his record, many people implicated him of attempting to imitate Puff Daddy, a popular rap artist at the time. This suggests that Dupri was not taken seriously as an artist and was seen as a copycat instead of an original skill. However, this quote likewise highlights the pressure and expectations placed on artists to comply with a certain image or style in the music market. In spite of the criticism, Dupri remained true to his own design and continued to pave his own course in the rap world.