The wet cardboard box full of puppies at Bad Boy Records just got more spacious.

R&B group Day 26 were offered the opportunity of a lifetime when hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs hand-picked the boy band on the MTV reality series ‘Making the Band 4.’ The group have since left Diddy’s Bad Boy Records, but claim they are still very much connected to the Bad Boy crew. “Bad Boy is always our family, but we’re with Atlantic right now,” member Willie Taylor told The BoomBox.

Without Diddy’s backing, Day 26 is setting out to prove that they are more than just television stars. “We really want to get people focused on the artistry, on the music,” Taylor explained. “I think a lot of people lost it with the entertainment of the show. So now, we really want to show people what we’re all about, that we do our thing whether its on stage, in the studio, writing and producing — we do it all.”