Dark side of Diddy’s American Dream

Article content

He was a modern-day Jay Gatsby.

Article content

That’s how media outlets often referred to Diddy – previously known as Puff Daddy, Puffy and P. Diddy – at the turn of the millennium. Already an established rapper, record mogul and businessman who forever transformed the hip-hop world, he bent the culture to his will. The colorful White Parties he threw from 1998 to 2009 didn’t only attract A-listers. They cemented them.

Article content

He was a kingmaker.

“He was incredibly beloved musically, and an incredibly important part of the culture,” says Touré, a music journalist and culture critic.

And like Gatsby, there was a darkness always brewing beneath the surface of the glamorous life. Violence, rumors and court cases shadowed Diddy, who was born Sean Combs, even at the height of his influence, but none slowed his ascent.

Article content

Now, five lawsuits have been filed against Combs, 54, accusing him of decades-long patterns of sexual assault, vindictive and violent behavior and sex trafficking. A separate lawsuit that accuses his son Christian Combs of sexual assault names Sean Combs as a co-defendant. In late March, the Department of Homeland Security raided multiple homes belonging to Combs.

As news of the federal raids broke, the celebrities who attended his parties and colleagues he made famous have been mostly quiet. The Washington Post asked more than 40 such people about the disgraced mogul who declined to comment on the record.

“I can’t help but think that there are a lot of people who at least had some clue as to what was going on, and that they’ve chosen to protect him,” says culture critic Jamilah Lemieux. “Money will go a long way in terms of protecting you. If you can pay people for their silence, you can get away with a lot.”

Article content

Article content

Combs has not been charged with any crimes, and he has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Federal authorities have declined to comment on the status of the investigation.

If he is eventually charged, then, like Gatsby, his downfall built up slowly and arrived dizzyingly fast, as the rumors and discreet accusations turned into lawsuits, raids and a decaying of his business empire.

RECOMMENDED VIDEO

“When a powerful Black man is accused of these kind of crimes, there are a lot of people who want very badly to believe he is the victim of some sort of plot to take him down,” Lemieux says. She points out how many people were silent about, or defensive of, R. Kelly before his downfall. “I think there are people who are still going to hold Diddy in the same regard that they always have because of what he’s accomplished.”

Article content

“Men are not judged by their relationships to women,” she adds.

On Nov. 16, 2023, R&B singer Cassie, Combs’s ex-girlfriend, filed what would become the first of five lawsuits against Combs alleging sexual assault. Two accusing Combs of rape were filed in New York County court. The other three, which accuse Combs of human trafficking in addition to sexual assault, were filed in the Southern District of New York’s federal court.

Cassie, who was once signed to Combs’s label Bad Boy Records and whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, described in her lawsuit in detail the sex parties, known as “freak-offs,” Combs allegedly threw. According to the lawsuit, Combs would have her and his employees fly in male sex workers, whom he would force Cassie to have sex with, and he would give Cassie a cocktail of various drugs including ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine, marijuana and alcohol. Cassie said she routinely required an IV of fluids the day after to recover.

Article content

She also alleged that he physically abused her throughout the course of their 11-year relationship, and that he exerted total control over her life. In 2012, Combs was allegedly so enraged by Cassie’s brief relationship with Kid Cudi that, during Paris Fashion Week, he told her he’d blow up Cudi’s car. The lawsuit claims Cudi’s car then exploded in his driveway around that time – which Cudi’s spokeswoman confirmed to the New York Times.

In a statement, Combs’ attorney accused Cassie of “blackmail,” citing a previous “demand of $30 million, under the threat of writing a damaging book about their relationship,” before “filing a lawsuit riddled with baseless and outrageous lies.” The lawsuit was settled the day after Cassie filed it for an undisclosed amount. “Mr. Combs’ decision to settle the lawsuit does not in any way undermine his flat-out denial of the claims,” his lawyer said at the time.

Article content

Four more suits were filed in the ensuing months.

One is from a Jane Doe who says Combs and others coerced her to fly from Detroit to New York City to hang out with him at his studio in 2003, when she was 17.

There, she alleges, Combs and two others got her inebriated “to the point that she could not possibly have consented to having sex with anyone” and raped her.

One is from Rodney Jones, a music producer who worked on Combs’s most recent project, “The Love Album,” who says Combs forced him to “solicit sex workers and perform sex acts to the pleasure of Mr. Combs” at sex parties in 2022 and 2023, and threatened physical violence if he didn’t comply. He also accuses Combs of having underage girls at these sex parties.

Several lawsuits allege Combs would film these sexual encounters and two accused him of using the video to control the people involved.

Article content

Combs vehemently denies all charges. “He views these lawsuits as a money grab. Because of Mr. Combs’ fame and success, he is an easy target for accusers who attempt to smear him,” Combs’ attorney said in a statement. “Let me be absolutely clear: I did not do any of the awful things being alleged. I will fight for my name, my family and for the truth,” Combs wrote on Instagram.

On March 25, the Department of Homeland Security raided Combs’ homes in Los Angeles and Miami as “part of an ongoing investigation.” Homeland Security Investigations did not comment further. Combs’ attorney called the raids “a gross overuse of military-level force” and “a witch hunt based on meritless accusations made in civil lawsuits.”

Christian Combs and his father have denied any wrongdoing. In April, their attorney said the most recent lawsuit was the latest in a pattern of “lewd and meritless claim[s]” from a lawyer whose tactics, he noted, were criticized by a federal judge in a separate case.

Article content

As Combs’s star plummeted, he remained defiant. Tabloids ran photos of Combs bicycling around Miami Beach. In one, he flashes a bright smile and a peace sign.

On April 5, after the news cycle had crested and began to quiet down, he posted to Instagram the nearly eight-minute music video for his 1997 song “Victory.” He spends most of the video running from police.

“Bad Boy For Life,” read its caption.

Combs was born in Harlem in 1969 to Janice Combs and Melvin Earl Combs, a dapper man who drove limos for New York drug kingpin Frank Lucas.

Combs has described his father as a hustler and a drug-dealer. In 1972, when Combs was a toddler, his father was murdered in a “drug deal gone bad,” Combs said in 2014. His mother worked three jobs to support Combs and his young sister Keisha while their grandmother watched over them.

Article content

These experiences shaped his own hustle-hard mentality.

Talking to Oprah Winfrey for her magazine in 2006, Combs revisited an incident that happened when he was 9-years-old: His grandmother had sent him to the store to pick up some things, and someone stole his money.

“My mother wouldn’t let me in the house,” Combs told Winfrey. “She said, ‘Go back out there and get that money, and if anyone ever puts their hands on you, make sure they never do it again.’ She knew the reality: if people smell weakness, they take advantage of you. You have to defend yourself.”

Combs has long painted a picture of his childhood as defined by dire circumstances: “One day when I was growing up, I woke up and there was 15 roaches on my face,” Combs once wrote in an Instagram caption.

Article content

His persona as an artist, too, leaned into darker elements. He took the name Puffy, because, as he told Jet in 1998, “Whenever I got mad as a kid, I used to always huff and puff. I had a temper. That’s why my friend started calling me Puffy.”

Combs’s mother casts his life in a slightly different light: In 2002, she recalled to the New Yorker Combs’s dream of starting a paper route.

“We had a Cadillac car and a house, and he liked life like that,” Janice Combs said.

When Combs was 12, Janice moved the family to Mount Vernon, N.Y.; he attended Mount St. Michael Academy in the Bronx, an all-boys Catholic school. He attended Howard University for a few semesters before begging record executive Andre Harrell for an internship at Uptown Records in New York.

Article content

In 1989, Combs made his music video debut dancing behind R&B singer Stacy Lattisaw in the video for her single “What You Need.”

The 19-year-old Combs was working in the mailroom of Motown Records in New York at the time. Lattisaw, already on her 10th studio album, was having trouble learning the choreography.

A stick slim Combs offered to help.

“He danced so well that the producer was like ‘You know what? How ’bout you come along,” recalls Lattisaw. During a break on the 12-hour shoot, Lattisaw and Combs chatted on a nearby couch.

He told her that the mailroom was only the beginning.”He seemed very focused. He had a lot of plans,” she says.

A year later, he joined Uptown Records and worked as a talent director. Three years after joining Uptown Records, Combs started his own record label: Bad Boy.

Article content

It is difficult to overstate the impact Combs had on the music industry. A new type of musical mashup started appearing in Harlem on cassettes and later CDs dubbed blend tapes, in which DJs would drape R&B vocals over harder rap beats.

“The sound was revolutionary, and the sound helped change the music industry itself: the way that hip-hop and R&B were no longer two separate worlds,” says Touré. (The cultural commentator previously claimed to MSNBC’s Joy Reid that a male relative had an internship with Combs that ended when the mogul allegedly sexually harassed the relative. Touré agreed to speak with The Post only about Combs’s cultural status.)

It was the sound upon which he built an empire.

“There was a period in the ’90s, at least in the Northeast, where he is really the dominant sonic figure,” Touré says. “He was constant.”

Article content

Success came immediately. The first song Bad Boy released – “Flava in Ya Ear” by Craig Mack in 1994 – shot to No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100, was nominated for a Grammy and went platinum. The same year, Bad Boy released the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Ready to Die,” an album that has become one of the genre’s defining works and has gone platinum six times. Over the next three decades, the label signed Faith Evans, Mase, Carl Thomas, French Montana, Machine Gun Kelly and Janelle Monáe. At one point, the company was worth more than $100 million.

Meanwhile, Combs rapped under the name Puff Daddy, finding success with the Billboard-topping album “No Way Out” in 1997, which went seven-times platinum. “I’ll Be Missing You,” a tribute to the late Notorious B.I.G., spent 11 weeks at the top of the charts – and its accompanying music video featured the lasting image of Combs dancing alone in a black suit.

Article content

But his ambitions far exceeded music. As Touré adds, “He seemed to always be about trying to make money.”

In 1998, he launched Sean John, a fashion and fragrance line. In 2007, he became one of the first celebrities to endorse a liquor brand when he partnered with Cîroc vodka. He opened two restaurants, and invested in a television network and an athletic beverage line. In 2012, Fortune ranked him 12th on its list of the top 40 entrepreneurs under 40.

In 2022, Combs reportedly became a billionaire.

But a storm always followed him.

His first public brush with controversy came in December 1991, when he helped assemble a star-studded fundraiser for AIDS education at City College in New York. A reported 5,000 people showed up – thousands more than expected. An agitated crowd waited hours to enter the gymnasium’s single entry door. A stampede left nine dead and dozens injured.

Article content

It resulted in at least 10 civil suits and eight personal injury cases, some of which named Combs as a defendant. Combs testified as a witness in a lawsuit against the college in 1998 and would eventually pay at least $750,000 in lawsuit settlements brought by victims and their relatives, according to the BBC.

As hip-hop approached the center of American pop culture in the mid-’90s, a civil war brewed between factions on either coast.

If Bad Boy Records defined the East Coast’s sound, Death Row Records – co-founded by Marion “Suge” Knight – was its California-based cultural counterpart.

On Nov. 30, 1994, Death Row’s biggest star, Tupac Shakur, was in the lobby of Quad Studios in Times Square, where he was shot five times – in the head, groin and hand.

Article content

Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. (a.k.a Biggie) had been close, but the injured rapper suspected Biggie and Combs were involved in the shooting. They were both in the building that night. The gunmen took Tupac’s diamond ring and gold chains but not his diamond-encrusted Rolex. No one else at Quad Studios was attacked.

No one at Bad Boy Records was ever connected to the shooting, and both Biggie and Combs publicly denied any involvement in it.

Tupac released multiple songs blatantly insulting Biggie and Bad Boy Records. In September 1995, witnesses said they saw Combs’s then-bodyguard get into an argument at an Atlanta club with Jai Hassan-Jamal Robles, a member of Death Row’s entourage, shortly before Robles was shot and killed. (Eight years later, Combs’s bodyguard would be killed in a gunfight in Atlanta.)

Article content

In September 1996, Tupac was killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. Six months later, Biggie was fatally shot in Los Angeles, also in a drive-by shooting.

For years, Combs was dogged by rumors that he was involved in Tupac’s death. Combs called the accusations “pure fiction and completely ridiculous.”

In half a year, two of hip-hop’s brightest stars were extinguished.

For Combs, it continued storming. In 1999, he appeared in a music video for Nas’s song “Hate Me Now” as a Jesus figure crucified and wearing a crown of thorns. Combs allegedly had second thoughts and asked Interscope Records executive Steve Stoute to remove the scene. He didn’t.

Later that same day, Combs allegedly visited Stoute’s New York office and, as Stoute told the Los Angeles Times, “he punched me in the face, and then he grabbed the phone and bashed me in the head with it.”

Article content

Combs was arrested on charges of felony assault. He later pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of harassment and was sentenced to one day of anger management. He reportedly paid Stoute a hefty out-of-court settlement.

By early December, Combs was clad in his signature white with his girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, on his arm, chatting with Henry Kissinger at the Met Gala. Later that month, Combs, Lopez and Shyne, one of his burgeoning rappers, were in a nightclub when a patron named Matthew “Scar” Allen allegedly shoved Combs. Money was then allegedly thrown in Combs’s face. Gunfire broke out.

Combs and Lopez were arrested as they fled the club in a Lincoln Navigator. Police found a gun under the front passenger seat.

Article content

Ultimately, Combs was found not guilty of four counts of illegal possession of a gun and one count of bribery connected to the shooting, while Shyne spent nearly nine years in prison for assault and gun possession. Shyne publicly claimed Combs betrayed him to save himself. (“I was found innocent of all charges because I am innocent. It is absolutely ridiculous for anyone to blame me for anyone else’s actions,” Combs said in response.)

In 2001, Combs changed his name from Puff Daddy to P. Diddy, as a way of putting the incident behind him. He later claimed this was a joke, but kept the name.

The change, though, didn’t quiet the waves of controversies.

He was sued by former Bad Boy Entertainment president Kirk Burrowes, who said Combs threatened him with a baseball bat to force him to give up his shares in the company, in 2003. The case was later dismissed by an appeals court that ruled the statute of limitations had expired.

Article content

He was sued for allegedly punching real estate agent Gerard Rechnitzer and shoving Rechnitzer’s girlfriend in 2007. The case was later settled.

He was charged with assault with a deadly weapon after an altercation with his son’s football coach at UCLA in 2015. During the incident, he allegedly swung a kettlebell at coaching staff. The charges were later dropped.

He was accused of sexual harassment and retaliation by his ex-chef Cindy Rueda in a 2017 lawsuit. The dispute was later settled.

Such troubles never slowed down Combs’s ambition. He meticulously crafted the image of a gregarious, self-made American baron. In March 1998, Combs paid about $2.5 million for a four-bedroom manse on the exclusive Hedges Banks Drive in East Hampton, the celebrity-packed slice of Long Island.

Article content

Months later, Combs held the first of his famous White Parties.

“Having an entire party all dressed in white was a stunning sight,” Martha Stewart told the Hollywood Reporter in 2018.

Donna Karan, Leonardo DiCaprio, Howard Stern, Moby, Ashton Kutcher, Al Sharpton, Salman Rushdie, Paris Hilton and Heavy D all showed up in their crisp linen button downs and spaghetti strap dresses.

R. Couri Hay, who was a society columnist for Hamptons magazine at the time, says the parties were ultimately a way for Diddy to promote himself.

“When he [and J-Lo] came out of the balcony of his bedroom … he was swigging Cristal from the bottle, and they had their arms wrapped around each other,” he says. “It was like rap royalty.”

At one point, Combs even hired a valet known as Fonzworth Bentley, whose legal name is Derek Watkins, to carry his umbrella on the beaches of St. Tropez.

Article content

Image, Combs knew, was king.

The same year as his first White Party, Combs launched Sean John. It was fueled by the same ethos as those parties: to insert hip-hop into high society.

The brand officially launched in New York in 1999 with a splashy party at the flagship Bloomingdale’s store on Lexington Avenue.

“He wanted to create fashion – and change the face of the fashion industry. He did,” wrote The Post’s Robin Givhan in 2016. Sold through Macy’s since 2010, at its height the label racked upward of $500 million a year in sales.

In 2004, Combs became the first Black designer to win the Menswear Designer of the Year award, given by the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Sean John celebrated the opening of its first (and only) flagship store on Fifth Avenue with an A-list packed party during New York Fashion Week. (It closed in 2010.)

Article content

At its zenith in 2016, Combs sold a majority stake in the clothing brand for an undisclosed sum, only to buy the bankrupt label back in 2021 for $7.5 million. Macy’s began phasing out the brand last year, according to Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, his relationship with Diageo, the company behind Cîroc, soured after the two parties purchased the tequila brand DeLeón in 2013 and failed to generate the expected profit. Combs filed a lawsuit against the company alleging racial discrimination in 2023. The parties agreed to a settlement by January 2024.

Over the years, Combs earned the reputation as a cutthroat businessman.

Mase, who achieved fame as Combs’s wingman and as a Bad Boy rapper in his own right, has been one of the loudest voices decrying Combs’s practice of retaining publishing rights – a practice that was not uncommon in the ’90s. In a 2020 Instagram post, Mase accused Combs of rejecting a $2 million offer to buy back his publishing rights – rights Mase said he sold for $20,000 when he was 19-years-old.

Article content

“When I see the hurt and the pain of other people on Bad Boy, that motivates me to say something,” Mase said in an Instagram Live broadcast in 2022 explaining his beef with Combs.

Combs also developed a reputation for being a hard-driving boss, pushing his artists to extreme degrees – which some embraced and others decried.

“Diddy was one of my heroes,” says singer-songwriter Kalenna Harper who in 2009 joined Combs and Dawn Richard to form the R&B trio Diddy-Dirty Money.

Being a Bad Boy artist meant hard work in an almost boot camp like atmosphere. But Harper, who grew up as a military brat, said she was prepared for it.

“I didn’t feel like he was trying to break me down. I felt like he was trying to fast forward me,” says Harper.

Article content

Aubrey O’Day, one of the original members of the Bad Boy girl group Danity Kane, sees her former mentor in a much harsher light.

The group was formed as part of the 2005 season of “Making The Band.” In 2008, Combs fired O’Day from the group during the show’s finale. The singer, who regularly clashed with Combs, said she was fired for being too “promiscuous.” (She rejoined in 2013.)

In a 2022 interview with the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, O’Day revisited her dismissal, claiming that Diddy fired her because she didn’t do what was “expected” of her: “Not talent-wise, but in other areas.”

“Diddy would be like, ‘You’re not hot anymore. Like, what happened? You don’t have any curves. I can’t get people to think you’re my good-looking person,’” she added.

Diddy’s final reinvention was Love.

He legally changed his middle name to Love in 2021. Two years later, he released “The Love Album,” his first solo studio album in 17 years.

Love, he told Vanity Fair, was now his “mission” following the deaths of his former partner Kim Porter and mentor Harrell, the record executive, and the rise of the #MeToo movement.

“The #MeToo movement, the truth, is that it inspired me,” Combs told the magazine.

As Combs ascended to the role of hip-hop elder statesmen, he seemed to extend an olive branch to some of the artists who felt he’d wronged them. In September 2023, Variety reported he had reassigned the publishing rights back to his artists and songwriters – a deal the publication called “possibly unprecedented in its scale.”

“It’s just doing the right thing,” Combs told Variety. He denied that it was a publicity stunt.

Joe Poindexter, an executive at Pulse Music Group and adjunct professor at the University of Southern California, says that given the sample-heavy nature of Bad Boy’s catalogue, the rights may not be worth much.

When divvying up publishing revenue, the artist who owns the rights on the original sampled track would take a substantial portion of the pie, Poindexter says.

“It looks great as a headline,” Poindexter said. But “it’s not making anybody rich.”

Meanwhile, Combs received a string of lifetime accolades, cementing his role as one of the genre’s most defining figures.

The Grammys honored him during a pre-awards show gala in 2020, saluting Combs as an “Industry Icon.”

He accepted the lifetime achievement award at the BET Awards in 2022.

At the end of his acceptance speech, Combs pledged to donate $1 million to Howard University and another $1 million to Jackson State University and its football program, presenting the checks to the historically Black universities the following year.

Whatever voices criticized Combs again seemed to fade into the background.

Two months before Cassie filed her explosive lawsuit, New York Mayor Eric Adams awarded Combs a key to the city.

So far, he has survived every controversy, but the events of the last six months far exceed mere “controversy.”

“The thing I love about Puff is that he comes back,” Combs’s assistant Norma Augenblick told the New Yorker in 2002. “After B.I.G. died, people thought he would go right down the toilet – then he put out a No. 1 album. During the [2001] trial, Jennifer dumped him, they said his music career was over, he would be going to prison – and even if he got off he would be through.”

Instead, she noted, Combs had a happy family and a thriving business.

“Puffy will always come back,” she added. “He’s like nature.”

Article content