Bad Rap: Invincible

Speaker 1 Hi there, 2020 listeners. It's Deborah Roberts here.
We're going to bring you the next installment of our six-part series on Sean Diddy Combs.

Speaker 1 Here's Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy, Episode 2: Invincible.

Speaker 2 Hi one one.

Speaker 3 What is the address to your emergency?

Speaker 6 This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland, Ohio, into a crime scene.

Speaker 7 We've got something big going on here.

Speaker 6 The first thing you hit my mind is a monster.

Speaker 4 A A new series from ABC Audio in 2020.

Speaker 6 The hand in the window.

Speaker 9 Out now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 9 And now, people all over the world.

Speaker 10 On an August night in 1995, The four corners of the hip-hop world gathered at the Paramount Theater in Midtown Manhattan.

Speaker 10 Artists from the South, the Midwest, and from the East and West Coast were all under the same roof.

Speaker 10 It's the Source Hip-Hop Music Award!

Speaker 10 They were all there for the second annual Source Awards. It was a celebration of hip-hop, a music genre that was rapidly moving from underground to mainstream.

Speaker 10 The event felt like a pretty standard award show. An eager crowd filled the auditorium, waiting to hear the results.

Speaker 8 And the winner is

Speaker 10 West Coast rapper Snoop Doggy Dog, also known as Snoop Dogg, won Artist of the Year. East Coast rapper the notorious BIG won album of the year for Ready to Die.

Speaker 10 And Outcast, a duo from Atlanta, won Best New Artist of the Year. The night was filled with performances and acceptance speeches.

Speaker 10 And one of those speeches turned the 1995 Source Awards into one of hip-hop's most infamous nights.

Speaker 10 Record executive Suge Knight and rapper Danny Boy won the award for best motion picture soundtrack for their work on the movie Above the Rin.

Speaker 10 Shuge climbed on stage in a bright red button-down shirt.

Speaker 10 Suge is not a small guy by any stretch of the imagination. He stands at maybe 6'2 ⁇ and is definitely over 260 pounds.

Speaker 10 Before he got into the music business, he spent a year in the NFL as a defensive end end for the Los Angeles Rams.

Speaker 10 In 1995, he was running one of hip-hop's two big record labels, Death Row Records, out of LA.

Speaker 10 Now, after thanking God, Shuge didn't go on to give a standard acceptance speech.

Speaker 11 Any artist out there who wants to be an artist and want to stay a star and don't want to

Speaker 11 have to worry about the executive producer trying to be all in the video,

Speaker 11 all on the record,

Speaker 11 dancing, come to Death Row.

Speaker 10 The crowd had an immediate reaction.

Speaker 10 Some applauded, but lots of people booed when Shuge said that any artist who didn't want their producer in their videos and songs should work with his company, Death Row.

Speaker 10 Everyone knew who he was talking about. Sean Diddy Combs.
Or, as he was known back then, Puff, Puffy, or Puff Daddy. the head of the other big hip-hop label, Bad Boy Records, based in New York City.

Speaker 10 Unlike most producers and record execs, Diddy wasn't happy just sitting in the crowd or getting on stage to accept an award. He was an aspiring rapper himself and craved the spotlight.

Speaker 10 In fact, when an artist from his label went up to perform a medley that night, he joined them. Well, he actually started the whole thing.

Speaker 12 And if I should die before I wait, far away, far away. I pray to God I die, bad boy, bad boy.

Speaker 10 Shuge Knight and Diddy were already rivals, businessmen vying for their record label to be king.

Speaker 10 But Justin Tinsley, a reporter at ESPN's sports, race, and culture outlet Andscape, says Suge's speech at the Source Awards was a turning point.

Speaker 10 Their rivalry became much darker. About a month after the awards, they were both in Atlanta for the birthday party of a rapper and producer Jermaine Dupree.

Speaker 10 Tinsley says tensions between Suge and Diddy and their entourages were high.

Speaker 13 Sides get to barking with each other, things spill out in the parking lot, and one of Shuge's closest friends is murdered in the parking lot.

Speaker 10 Atlanta police said Diddy's bodyguard, Anthony Wolf Jones, was their prime suspect. Jones' attorney said he had absolutely nothing to do with the shooting, and no one was ever charged.

Speaker 10 But the shooting made the friction between Diddy and Shuge worse. And that's partly because their beef was part of something much bigger.

Speaker 10 The East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry, which people have obsessed over for decades, and we could probably write a whole other podcast about.

Speaker 10 But here's what you need to know to understand what happened next.

Speaker 10 Diddy represented one of the East Coast's biggest rap stars, the notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls.

Speaker 10 Shug Knight represented one of the biggest West Coast rappers with his own unique approach to music, Tupac Shakur or Tupac.

Speaker 10 And both rappers and their styles were vying to be the biggest in the country.

Speaker 10 So the beef between Diddy and Shug was also connected to a rivalry between Biggie and Tupac. And I'm not just talking about a couple of diss tracks like Kendrick and Drake today.

Speaker 10 Tupac was shot and killed in 1996. Biggie was shot and killed in 1997.
The two stars, only in their 20s and at the start of promising careers, were suddenly dead.

Speaker 10 Their murders captured international attention and really marked this era of hip-hop music. Their deaths also generated tons of unsubstantiated theories.

Speaker 10 In particular, there were theories that each rapper was killed by someone tied to their rival's label. No one has been convicted for either Tupac or Biggie's deaths.

Speaker 10 But this is the bottom line. A feud heated up after Suge Knight publicly called out Diddy's need for attention.

Speaker 13 The only two people left were the label heads. Shuge's career was never truly the same after Tupac's murder.
Death Row pretty much crumbled in the months after that. But Diddy?

Speaker 13 Diddy became an even bigger star.

Speaker 10 Just like at the Source Awards, Diddy took center stage. He put out his first album as Puff Daddy in 1997, the same year Biggie died.

Speaker 10 It was called No Way Out and included the hit song I'll Be Missing You, a tribute to Biggie featuring his widow Faith Evans, who was also an artist on the Bad Boy label.

Speaker 10 That song was the first hip-hop song ever to debut at the top of the Billboard 100. And that year, Diddy received seven Grammy nominations, including including for best new artist.

Speaker 13 And now Diddy is an established artist on top of an already established executive. So his star power really began to rise.

Speaker 10 Shuge had made fun of him for wanting to be in the spotlight. But lo and behold, there he was, basking in it.

Speaker 10 In an interview later that year, Diddy was asked about the perception that he was exploiting Biggie's death. It wasn't just that one of his album singles was a tribute to the late rapper.

Speaker 10 He also used some of Biggie's lyrics for the album. Because you know how people think.

Speaker 6 They'll say, well, you know, you took some time.

Speaker 12 I can't move on how people think. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 12 I can only be judged by God. You know what I'm saying? And I got to constantly be living with myself.
I got to live with myself at the end of the day.

Speaker 12 I got to close my eyes and know what's right.

Speaker 6 You said that

Speaker 6 after Biggie's death, you took some time off to reflect.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I mean, after Biggie's death, I was like, that was my heart. So my heart wasn't beating.
So I was dead too. And it was just a situation where

Speaker 10 I didn't want to be there. 1997, the year Biggie died, was a wildly successful year for Diddy.

Speaker 10 Vibe magazine reported that his Bad Boy label sold 200 million dollars worth of records and had the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for 22 straight weeks.

Speaker 10 Rolling Stone approached Bad Boy Records about putting someone associated with the label on the magazine cover. Kirk Burroughs was the president of Bad Boy at the time.

Speaker 10 In 2024, he told Rolling Stone that he urged Diddy to put Biggie on the cover. His posthumous album, Life After Death, had been at the top of the charts all year and he was still on people's minds.

Speaker 13 So Burroughs is allegedly telling Diddy, you'll have your chance to get another cover, but Biggie will never come out with another album. Give him that moment.

Speaker 13 And according to Burroughs, Diddy basically says, No, he's dead. This is my time now.

Speaker 10 In response to the Rolling Stone piece that included this story from Burroughs, one of Diddy's attorneys said he cannot address every allegation picked up by the press.

Speaker 10 Diddy ended up on that 97 Rolling Stone cover. And Kirk Burroughs lost his job later that year.
He unsuccessfully sued Diddy in 2003, alleging he was wrongfully fired.

Speaker 10 In the cover shot, Diddy is shirtless with BIG written on his chest. He's wearing white Versace shorts and an oversized brown overcoat.

Speaker 10 There's water dripping down him, and he has black paint under his eyes like a football player. The title of the story: The New King of Hip Hop, Puff Daddy.

Speaker 10 I'm Brian Buckmeyer. From ABC Audio, this is Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy.

Speaker 10 Episode 2, Invincible.

Speaker 10 Sean Diddy Combs knew how to put himself at the center of things. That started with music and lavish A-list parties, but eventually it became much bigger.
He ventured into fashion, alcohol, and TV.

Speaker 10 The whole time, he proved himself to be an expert at branding and reinvention. cultivating this cool guy image and protecting it fiercely.

Speaker 10 In this episode, we'll trace Diddy's rise from musician to mogul, from the center of hip-hop to the center of American culture. But that rise wasn't always a smooth ascent.

Speaker 10 Long before he was charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, he was associated with moments of violence and brushes with the law.

Speaker 10 Were they just lapses in judgment or warnings that signaled a much darker side to his success?

Speaker 10 That's after the break.

Speaker 10 Give it up for Chicago.

Speaker 15 Sebastian Maniscalco's new stand-up special, It Ain't Right, is coming to Hulu on November 21st.

Speaker 3 30 years ago, Jeff Bezos, complete nerd. Bezos now ripped to shreds on his super yacht and the boxes keep coming.

Speaker 15 Sebastian Maniscalco, It Ain't Right, premieres November 21st, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

Speaker 16 Audiences and top critics are celebrating. Rental Family is the perfect feel-good movie of the year.

Speaker 3 What do you need me for? We need a talking-a white guy.

Speaker 16 Academy Award winner Brendan Fraser delivers a masterful performance.

Speaker 17 This girl needs a father.

Speaker 3 I hate you.

Speaker 7 She hates me. It's worth being apparent.
Yes.

Speaker 16 In this tender and funny film about the importance of connection.

Speaker 3 This is amazing. It's cool, but it's fake.

Speaker 16 Sometimes it's okay to pretend. Rental family, only in theaters Friday.
Ready PG13. Maybe inappropriate for children under 13.

Speaker 17 An all-new season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is now streaming on Hulu.

Speaker 19 Mom Talk started as a sisterhood, and that's gone to flames. New secrets lies are coming out.
This is going to be catastrophic.

Speaker 2 We're biting for our marriages, and the girls are just putting us through hell. They make everything about themselves.

Speaker 3 I can't.

Speaker 20 Hopefully, this doesn't end in a bloodbath.

Speaker 17 Watch the Hulu original, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, now streaming on Hulu, and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers.

Speaker 3 Terms apply.

Speaker 10 Before Sean Diddy Combs was crowned the new king of hip-hop by Rolling Stone, he was a kid with a temper. In fact, that's why he says he got the name Puffy.
He'd huff and puff whenever he got angry.

Speaker 10 Combs was born in Harlem, but grew up about 10 miles north in Mount Vernon, New York. Writer and music journalist Torre interviewed Diddy many times.

Speaker 14 His father was from the streets of Harlem, and he was very proud of the heights that his father rose to in that culture. But he's really a suburban guy.

Speaker 10 Diddy's father, Melvin Combs, was believed to be part of a heroin selling operation, and he was killed in what some think was a drug deal gone bad.

Speaker 14 His father died when he was three, and so his mother, Janice, became the center of his world.

Speaker 14 She clearly, or at least she from the stories was like, you know, whatever you want, you know, I worship the ground you walk on and would take on a second job to be able to get him something expensive that he wanted.

Speaker 14 And so the idea that Sean should have, you know, is starting to be inculcated there.

Speaker 10 His single mom sent him to private Catholic high school. He then went on to attend the prestigious historically black college, Howard University, in Washington, D.C., in 1987.

Speaker 10 But he knew he wanted to be in the music industry. So he started working on convincing Andrew Hurrell, who at least I consider him to be a godfather of hip-hop and RB, to hire him as an intern.

Speaker 10 Hurrell was a former rapper, but is better known for founding and running Uptown Records in New York City.

Speaker 10 In a 2017 Vanny Fair interview, Diddy talked about why working with Hurrell was so important to him.

Speaker 12 I said, I'll clean your car, I'll wash whatever, I'll do whatever, because where he's at, that was the pulse of the music.

Speaker 3 You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 10 Diddy wanted to be at the pulse of music too, and his determination to get the internship paid off.

Speaker 10 He dropped out of Howard his sophomore year and started promoting rappers in New York City, really starting to build his music network while interning at Uptown Records.

Speaker 10 In 1991, he and rapper Heavy D organized a charity basketball game at the City College of New York.

Speaker 10 It was advertised as a chance to see New York City rap stars like Run DMC and Boys to Men compete on the court, and people flocked to the game.

Speaker 10 It was clear, even then, that Diddy understood how to create and market an event everyone wanted to go to.

Speaker 10 But he was young and inexperienced. The gym had a 2,700-person capacity, but almost 5,000 people showed up.

Speaker 10 As the crowd rushed to get in, 29 people were injured and 9 died in a stampede one headline from that day read the carnage at city college

Speaker 10 days later a 22 year old diddy gave a press conference at the plaza hotel in manhattan he looked so young so defeated at one point he put his hand over his eyes and nose as if he were overwhelmed and exhausted i would like to let the families of the victims know how deeply hurt we all are.

Speaker 10 That incident followed Diddy for years. In that same 1997 interview when Diddy was asked about capitalizing on Biggie's death, he was also asked to reflect on the city college stampede.

Speaker 12 I've gone through a lot. I've seen a lot of tragedies.
I've

Speaker 12 seen a lot of death, you know, in my short time. And I don't know why.
Believe me, I asked myself the same question.

Speaker 12 Like, you know, why have I been chosen to see all of this, you know, death at such a young age? At the end of the day, I have to also live with the fact that

Speaker 12 I was throwing a vent trying to do something good and something bad happened.

Speaker 10 No criminal charges were ever filed for the stampede, but civil lawsuits from victims and their families went on for years, directed at Diddy, Heavy D, and the City College of New York.

Speaker 10 A judge-in-one lawsuit filed by four victims found that Diddy, Heavy D, and the college were equally responsible for the injuries and deaths.

Speaker 10 Here's what really stands out to me about the City College Stampede. When it happened in 1991, Diddy was, as the New York Times put it, a largely unknown rap promoter.

Speaker 10 Writer and music journalist Doray says Diddy was buried in bad press.

Speaker 14 It seemed that this young guy had been too reckless and building whatever promotion career that he was trying to build. And surely this would be the end of his career.

Speaker 10 But by 1999, some eight years later, when many of the lawsuits from the stampede were coming to an end, Diddy was a millionaire with a couple Grammys. His career hadn't been stunted at all.

Speaker 14 This is the beginning of this sense of invincibility that he seems to take on.

Speaker 10 Some of that perceived invincibility came from his earlier success at Uptown Records. He moved up pretty quickly from intern to executive.

Speaker 10 Torres says Diddy thrived because he was tapped into hip-hop at the street level.

Speaker 14 At the time, there was this thing going on in

Speaker 14 Harlem that we called blend tapes. And

Speaker 14 if you were into hip-hop, listening to R ⁇ B could be a bit of a stretch, right? It didn't really hit the same, but you love those singers.

Speaker 14 And so DJ started making tapes where they took the vocals from the singers we liked and putting them over hip-hop hip-hop beats.

Speaker 14 He takes this idea that's already going on in the street and cleans it up and puts it with Mary J. Blige.
And it is a revolutionary moment.

Speaker 10 Diddy helped turn Mary J. Blige and R ⁇ B group Jodic into stars.
But that success led to a power struggle between him and his boss, Andre Hurrell.

Speaker 10 So in 1993, Harrell fired his eager young protégé.

Speaker 14 Andre says to him, you know, there can only be one lion in the jungle. And he fires him.
But he let him take

Speaker 14 two rappers that Andre didn't know what to do with.

Speaker 10 Those rappers were Craig Mac and Biggie Smalls. And Diddy knew what to do with their talent.

Speaker 10 Justin Tinsley, the reporter from ESPN's Andscape, says in particular, Diddy had a strong vision for Biggie.

Speaker 13 Diddy and Biggie were one of the biggest tag teams.

Speaker 13 Biggie came roaring out the gates with a single called Juicy, which, if you know Biggie's story, he didn't necessarily want to record that song at first.

Speaker 13 And it was Diddy's insistence that basically forced him to record that song. And obviously, the song became a hip-hop classic.

Speaker 10 It was all a dream. I used to read Word Up magazine.
Something pepper and heavy D up in the limousine.

Speaker 10 As Biggie became one of the most famous rappers in the world, Diddy signed more artists to Bad Boy.

Speaker 10 By 1997, the year Biggie died, Bad Boy had an impressive roster of talent, including the Locke's, Mace, Faith Evans, and 112.

Speaker 14 There was a time when it was ubiquitous, his records. I remember multiple nights of being in a club.
They're playing a string of bad boy records. You get in a cab to go to another club.

Speaker 14 The radio is playing bad boy records in the cab. You get in the next club and they're playing bad boy as soon as you walk in.
It was just everywhere.

Speaker 10 And it wasn't just about the music. Bad Boy's artists had an era-defining style.

Speaker 3 A look.

Speaker 10 Baggy, bold, flashy clothes.

Speaker 14 They

Speaker 14 were really smart in that they followed the Motown playbook. There's a charismatic CEO who creates the brand brand and creates the image.

Speaker 14 There's a brand image that links them all together and they're part of the culture.

Speaker 10 But after an incredible rapid rise to the top of the charts and cultural power, Bad Boy hit somewhat of a sophomore slump.

Speaker 14 There really wasn't much of an ability to create

Speaker 14 or recruit new superstars after that.

Speaker 10 In 1998 and 99, Bad Boy put out new albums by Faith Evans, Total, and 112.

Speaker 10 But initially, only 112's album was meeting the high expectations for the Bad Boy label. What were those high expectations? The albums going platinum, selling more than 1 million copies quickly.

Speaker 10 Diddy's second album, Forever, was also not as successful as his first. Forever debuted at number two on the charts in 1999, but fell to number 13 within three weeks.

Speaker 10 He was nominated for a Grammy for the single Satisfy You featuring R. Kelly.

Speaker 10 But they lost to the roots and Erica Badu's You Got Me.

Speaker 10 The label's revenue dropped significantly. Bad Boy Records was mostly riding on the clout and running off the royalties of his legendary earlier albums.

Speaker 10 Still very well known and cool, but kind of stalled. A cover story in the December 1999 edition of Vibe magazine wrote wrote that Sean Combs was fighting to prove he still got it.

Speaker 10 This was just two years after Rolling Stone had called him the new king of hip-hop. And in 1999, Diddy faced setbacks beyond bad boys dropping sales.
He got into more legal trouble.

Speaker 10 And I can kind of see Sug Knight's comment about Diddy wanting to be in music videos hanging over it. Because this legal trouble started with Diddy trying to control his image in a music video.

Speaker 10 Diddy was featured on the rapper Nas's song, Hate Me Now.

Speaker 14 Which was so the puff vibe. You can hate me, but I'm going to make you love me, and I'm never going to stop.

Speaker 10 They were producing a music video to air on MTV, just as more people than ever were watching the network.

Speaker 10 So a lot of time and money was put into music videos, and the expectation was that millions of people would end up watching them.

Speaker 10 Nas and Diddy's music video was meant meant to be flashy, edgy, and attention-grabbing. It depicted both rappers being crucified like Jesus Christ.
But after filming, Diddy had second thoughts.

Speaker 14 And he called Nas and was like, can you kill the video? Let's have a whole new concept. And Nas was like, we could just snip you out of the part in the desert.

Speaker 8 Like, let's just do that.

Speaker 14 And he called his manager, Steve Stout, who was like, no, we spent a million dollars on the video. We're not changing it.
And also, it's already at MTV. They're about to play it.

Speaker 14 They played the video. The original cut of the video with Puff in the desert as Jesus.
He sees it in his office at Bad Boy. He freaks out.

Speaker 14 He and some number of bodyguards, goons, went to Steve's office. Steve's in the middle of a meeting.
They barge in and they start beating him up.

Speaker 10 Steve Stout alleges that Diddy punched him in the face and bashed his head with a phone.

Speaker 10 Diddy was charged with the crime of assault, but he ended up pleading guilty to a lesser non-criminal charge of harassment, a violation, and was sentenced to a one-day anger management course.

Speaker 10 He and Stout reached a separate civil settlement out of court.

Speaker 10 It was all bad press for Diddy. But culture critic Jamila Lemieux says besides his reputation as a hitmaker, he had another source of perceived invincibility.

Speaker 10 He knew how to redirect attention and put his cool guy image back in the spotlight.

Speaker 10 In 1999, when Diddy was turning 30, that meant getting headlines for a new relationship with it girl, actor, and singer Jennifer Lopez.

Speaker 10 She had recently had her breakout role as a star of the Selena movie, played a glamorous queen in the music video for Diddy's song, Been Around the World, and now she was making her connection to Diddy and his music world official.

Speaker 20 It gave her some street credibility. She's doing records with rappers after this relationship.

Speaker 20 They definitely heightened each other's celebrity quite a bit. They were a big couple.
They were

Speaker 20 a very influential couple.

Speaker 10 The cover of Jet magazine read Puffy Combs and Jennifer Lopez, Choppiz's most talked about couple. Other headlines said, Call It Chemistry, Jennifer Lopez and Puff Daddy.

Speaker 10 And Bright and Hot, superstar couple riding roller coaster romance.

Speaker 10 A couple days before New Year's Eve in 1999, the influential couple went to a club near Times Square. While they're in the club, there was a dispute with a guy named Scar, who's deceased now.

Speaker 10 Derek Parker is a retired NYPD detective who responded to the scene at the club. I think money was thrown in his face or money was thrown at Diddy or something like that.

Speaker 10 A shooting broke out and three people were injured. Diddy and Jennifer Lopez fled the scene and got into a car.
When they were pulled over, police say they found a gun in the front seat.

Speaker 10 It was a lot of chaos back then. When we went to the precinct, there were over 300 reporters outside.

Speaker 21 Two of Entertainment's biggest stars spent much of this Monday after Christmas in a New York City police station.

Speaker 21 Jennifer Lopez and the rap mogul Sean Puffy Combs were held for possessing a stolen gun.

Speaker 10 Prosecutors ultimately dropped the charges against Jennifer Lopez, but Diddy and his bodyguard were charged.

Speaker 18 Today's indictment on two counts of criminal possession of a weapon carry a possible 15-year prison sentence if Combs is found guilty.

Speaker 10 As the criminal case moved forward, news reports pointed back to the city college stampede of 91 and the attack on Steve Stout earlier in 99.

Speaker 10 And they began to ask whether Diddy had a pattern of causing violence.

Speaker 18 Many are asking, does trouble find him or does he go looking for it?

Speaker 18 You can't be the great gatsby in the hamptons and john gottie in manhattan columnist jack newfield writes for the new york post he says the latest incident is merely the most recent event in a string of brushes with the law there are those who say he's a target he's a rich black man he's an easy prey i think it's the opposite i think he's gotten away with almost murder

Speaker 10 Diddy and his bodyguard pleaded not guilty to the weapons charges and were ultimately acquitted at trial. But someone was convicted for the shooting.

Speaker 10 A young rapper from Belize named Shine, who Diddy had signed to his bad boy label.

Speaker 10 Shine had run out of the club that night with a gun in his waistband, and some officers caught him while others chased after Diddy and Jennifer Lopez.

Speaker 10 Shine was convicted of multiple assault charges, gun possession, and reckless endangerment. He went to prison for nearly nine years and was deported back to Belize after his his release.

Speaker 10 He spoke to ABC News about the shooting and his relationship with Diddy last year.

Speaker 22 Was Diddy a good coach?

Speaker 23 He was an extraordinary coach. He was able to bring the best out of me.

Speaker 10 Shine admits he had a gun and used it as the fight broke out, but he says that he shot it into the air, not at anyone. He thinks that Diddy should have stood up for him in court.

Speaker 10 Even now, he calls himself the fall guy.

Speaker 23 Taking the fall means not snitching,

Speaker 23 not getting your friends in trouble. Even today,

Speaker 23 I wouldn't want to do anything to get anyone in trouble.

Speaker 10 So did anyone come to you and say, hey man, we need you to take this hit for Diddy?

Speaker 23 No, I did that out of honor and integrity.

Speaker 10 Do you regret that night?

Speaker 23 I

Speaker 23 am always remorseful that anyone got hurt. even if it wasn't for my gun, because according to the victims, it was Diddy that shot them.

Speaker 23 But

Speaker 23 I don't regret defending myself because I wouldn't be here. Did you see any behavior then that indicated some of the allegations we hear about now? I never saw anything that's being alleged.

Speaker 23 I was incarcerated, so

Speaker 23 I don't know what this gentleman was doing. I don't know.

Speaker 23 his lifestyle, but I could say someone that was prepared to sacrifice his friend, friend, his brother, his protege, someone that was prepared to have me sit in jail to totally destroy my career, destroy my life, rob me of my freedom to be a participant in that.

Speaker 23 Of course, it doesn't surprise me that he would be accused of the atrocious things that he is because

Speaker 23 what he did to me and my family, you know, was to me demonic.

Speaker 10 Diddy's Diddy's representatives told ABC News he categorically denies Shine's allegations, including any suggestion that he orchestrated Shine taking the fall for him.

Speaker 10 Shine became a politician in police, but his music career, well, that ended that night in 1999. But once again, Diddy's did not.

Speaker 10 Jamila Lemieux, the culture critic, says the assault on Steve Stout and the shooting just didn't stick in most people's minds.

Speaker 20 He did a really good job of of branding himself to Middle America as the cool hip-hop guy.

Speaker 10 His relationship with Jennifer Lopez was much more compelling, more tantalizing.

Speaker 10 The couple was a mainstay on red carpets and eventually, Jennifer Lopez's fashion headlines drowned out the more negative press.

Speaker 10 There were two outfits in particular that really defined her tying with Diddy.

Speaker 20 One where she wears this all-white outfit with this rhinestone bandana. You know, she's supposed to look like a hood girl, and he's by her side in a coordinating outfit.

Speaker 20 And then there's, of course, the famous Versace dress.

Speaker 10 That's a green and blue sheer dress she wore to the Grammys in 2000. It was so low-cut, you could see her belly button.

Speaker 20 Diddy was by her side when she wore that, you know. So

Speaker 20 he was really there for the moment in which J-Lo becomes J-Lo. This is when she becomes J-Lo as opposed to Jennifer Lopez.

Speaker 10 And this is when Sean Puff Daddy Combs became Tiddy.

Speaker 20 Something Diddy's really good at doing is rebranding himself, right? So those name changes often came on the heels of a scandal or something unscrupulous about him being reported.

Speaker 20 You know, then he comes back, new name, new album, new era, new image.

Speaker 10 After the break, His new image was all about being more than a rapper and record executive. It was focused on being an all-around mogul.
Someone even more powerful and unavoidable.

Speaker 10 Even more invincible.

Speaker 17 Coming to Disney Plus in Hulu. Cassidy, get us home.
Jonas brother, you got it. It'll be the best Jonas Christmas ever.

Speaker 7 Can't wait to see you guys. We love you.

Speaker 17 If they can only make it home.

Speaker 14 What's going on? Our tour plane burned? No.

Speaker 13 We cannot miss Christmas.

Speaker 2 Nothing can stop us from getting off now.

Speaker 3 Only

Speaker 3 be alone this trip.

Speaker 19 You lost all three of your passports?

Speaker 10 It's Christmas. Anything can happen, right?

Speaker 17 A very Jonas Christmas movie, now streaming on Disney Plus and Mulu, reading TVPGDL.

Speaker 17 Two rings, surrounded by a steel cage.

Speaker 17 You wanna play games?

Speaker 17 We're gonna play games!

Speaker 17 Oh my god, are you kidding me? This is gonna be a war!

Speaker 9 Stream Survivor Series War Games, November 29th at 7 Eastern on the ESPN app.

Speaker 10 By 2010, when Diddy was in his 40s, it was hard to believe he had ever floundered as a businessman. Sure, his Bad Boy record label wasn't as hot as it was when it first started.

Speaker 10 But he still had a popular catalog of artists he helped make famous. And in the 2000s, Bad Boy put out new music by Boys in the Hood, Mace, and Young Jock.

Speaker 10 Diddy also released an album of remixes of Bad Boy's songs that showed his deep connections in the music world. It included hit artists like Usher, Ludacris, and Misty Elliott.

Speaker 10 But Diddy knew the way to get really, really rich and stay powerful was to diversify his brand. It's what other rappers like Jay-Z were doing too.
So by 2010, he wasn't just a music guy anymore.

Speaker 10 He had influence and money in fashion, TV, and alcohol. His wealth skyrocketed.

Speaker 24 His bad boy business empire with Diddy at the center is now worth an estimated $345 million.

Speaker 10 He seemed to encapsulate the word mogul. And that's why in 2010, ABC's Nightline profiled him for a segment called Modern Mogul.

Speaker 12 I was going to make the clothes that you would get dressed in, the fragrance you would put on, and listen to the music that I produced, to buy the vodka that was in the club.

Speaker 24 Some people might think that's a form of megalomania.

Speaker 3 That you would think that.

Speaker 24 A form of megalomania.

Speaker 12 Oh,

Speaker 12 it could be.

Speaker 24 Is there anything you would not promote?

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 24 how about diddy dog food?

Speaker 12 No, I wouldn't do diddy dog food.

Speaker 24 I don't know, make your dog yap to a rap or something.

Speaker 2 I wouldn't do diddy dog food food food food food

Speaker 2 food.

Speaker 12 I mean, I would do what's organic for me. Like, I love candles.
I would do candles. I love jewelry.
I would do jewelry

Speaker 12 that fits. I would do hotels.

Speaker 12 You know, whatever was in the realm of entertainment or lifestyle, a curator of cool. That's what I do.

Speaker 10 Diddy was an early adopter of the idea that a celebrity should extend their reach beyond just one industry. And he proved to be really good at building a sprawling business empire.

Speaker 10 One of his first steps in becoming the curator of cool was launching his Sean John clothing line. The idea behind the brand was to introduce hip-hop fashion to a global audience.

Speaker 10 Music writer Ture says Sean John was really successful. Diddy even won the Council of Fashion Designers of America Menswear Designer of the Year Award in 2004.

Speaker 14 And it was a really interesting way to put him in Macy's, later Walmart with a t-shirt, but also in a boutique on Fifth Avenue, right?

Speaker 14 So that he's able to sort of mass market and look upscale at the same time.

Speaker 10 Diddy got into another popular celebrity investment, the alcohol business, by partnering with Siroc. He showed up in many of their ads.

Speaker 12 The newest addition to the Siroq family, Summer Colot.

Speaker 12 Limited edition.

Speaker 10 Jamila Lemieux, the culture critic, says Sirock was huge in building his wealth.

Speaker 20 That relationship made him more money than he made in the music industry.

Speaker 10 As reality TV became more popular, Diddy realized he could jump on the trend early and use it as an opportunity to reach an even wider audience.

Speaker 10 From 2002 to 2009, he produced and started the MTV show Making the Band. This was when MTV had a huge cultural influence, especially among young people.

Speaker 10 And at the time, MTV was starting to make the move from music videos to reality TV shows. In making the band, he was looking for the next big hip-hop group, and artists competed to be selected.

Speaker 10 Once they were selected, they'd get contracts to work with Diddy and release their music exclusively under the bad boy label.

Speaker 10 He'd own and control their music and in exchange, they'd get his mentorship and his connections. On the show, Diddy presented himself as a tough boss with high standards.

Speaker 10 He famously made competitors walk from Manhattan to Brooklyn to get him cheesecake from juniors. Singer and producer Donny Klang was on Making the Band.

Speaker 25 Making the band was Diddy would show up unannounced, it could be 3 o'clock in the morning, which happened a couple times, wake us up out of our beds, we'd have to sing, and somebody was getting cut right then and there.

Speaker 25 In that moment, you're going back up, packing your suitcase, and you're walking out after being in a deep sleep in the middle of the night.

Speaker 10 That That sounds like the kind of stuff you'd expect from 2000s reality TV. On reality TV, people put on a persona.
They played a character. He seemed to be playing the cutthroat boss,

Speaker 10 can't stop, won't stop, bad boy for life, to quote some of his music, who seemed to be insisting on high standards.

Speaker 10 But all these years later, with so many allegations against Diddy, you look back at that persona and you think, was that TV or something darker?

Speaker 10 Singer and actress Dee Woods competed on making the band three in 2005, and she was ultimately selected to be part of the winning group, Danny Decane.

Speaker 26 The day we were chosen, it actually fell on my sister's birthday.

Speaker 26 And so

Speaker 26 I immediately called her.

Speaker 26 And the first thing I said when she answered the phone, I was like, it's bad boy for life, baby.

Speaker 10 But in a 2025 interview with ABC news wood says diddy was more than another reality tv tough boss she says he was a bully there's a clip where he starts critiquing her body and asking is she's feeling thick he goes on to warn her you're like a burger away presumably what he's saying is you're like a burger away from weighing too much

Speaker 10 although they weren't shown on air Woods says that he kept going and going with the insults.

Speaker 26 And I just had to bite my tongue and let somebody disrespect me in ways that I

Speaker 26 never

Speaker 26 imagined. Like totally disgusting, totally

Speaker 26 just grotesque, like about the different parts of my body, you know, telling me to turn around. It was even to the point where one of the female camera operators told her crew to stand down,

Speaker 26 to power down, because she didn't feel comfortable airing or or filming that to be aired.

Speaker 10 Woods and four other women made up Danny King. She says they all were treated like pieces of meat by Diddy.

Speaker 26 Only seeing, only

Speaker 26 valuing you for your sex appeal.

Speaker 26 And

Speaker 26 in some of the environments, you know, it was even scary to be by yourself. You know, we'd walk with each other to the bathroom, stand in front of the door for each other.

Speaker 27 Did you ever see or hear of Diddy doing anything sexually inappropriate?

Speaker 26 The inappropriate things that I witnessed were that of the

Speaker 26 messages that my group member received from him.

Speaker 26 She was being propositioned,

Speaker 26 and it was things that

Speaker 26 no

Speaker 26 figure of authority or employer

Speaker 26 or a man of his age

Speaker 3 should be saying

Speaker 26 to a young woman who also works for him.

Speaker 27 Did she turn down his advances? Yeah.

Speaker 10 Dee Wood says her bandmate, Aubrey O'Day, is the one who got those messages. Woods says it felt like Diddy had too much power for them to complain.

Speaker 26 He threatened us all the time about holding us in our contracts. He threatened us all the time about shelving us.

Speaker 10 Shelving them meant not releasing their music, but also not letting them release it elsewhere. The music could just die on a shelf somewhere.
She says Diddy also had the power to fire them.

Speaker 10 One day, Diddy called Dee Woods and Aubrey O'Day into a meeting. Dee Woods says he fired Aubrey and then turned to her.

Speaker 26 And he's like, and you

Speaker 26 heard you're not happy here either. I don't want you here that you can get out.

Speaker 10 Knowing his power in the industry, she tried to be polite and leave on good terms.

Speaker 26 A lot of people were living in fear, living with scarcity mentality, and just trying to survive in their own way.

Speaker 10 Don Richard, another member of Dandy Kane, filed a civil lawsuit against Diddy in 2024 and amended it in March of 2025.

Speaker 10 The lawsuit alleges that he withheld over a million dollars of her rightful wages and royalties, made threatening statements, threw objects at her, and spoke to female contestants on making the band in a hostile manner, calling them bitches and hoes.

Speaker 10 She alleges that she witnessed Diddy arranging for dozens of young women and girls to be transported to his parties, where they were sexually violated by him and his guests.

Speaker 10 She also alleges witnessing his physical abuse against his then-girlfriend, Cassie Fentura.

Speaker 10 In a letter to the court, Diddy's attorneys said they will move to dismiss this suit, calling it full of outrageous accusations.

Speaker 10 They're also arguing that Don Richard's claims are invalid because the statute limitations on most of them has expired and she already released her claims against Sean Combs through a waiver she signed in 2021.

Speaker 10 For Diddy, making the band served a couple of purposes. It gave him more artists assigned to his label and it introduced him to a wider mainstream audience.

Speaker 10 Dave Chappelle even made fun of Diddy's MTV persona. And And in my opinion, when Chappelle turns you into a skid, it's a sign you've become famous beyond your world.

Speaker 2 First y'all gotta walk to Queens and get me a sugar cookie.

Speaker 10 When Diddy was making all of his big business plays in the 2000s, he saw a chance to use his showmanship and MTV fame to break into politics too.

Speaker 10 Just as rapper Andre3000 and record executive Russell Simmons started get out the vote initiatives, in 2004, he started his own, Vote or Die.

Speaker 12 God has blessed me with a talent to be able to communicate to young people,

Speaker 12 young people and minorities.

Speaker 10 And we

Speaker 10 have a lot of the same thing.

Speaker 10 This was the same year he took a helicopter to his white party holding an original copy of the Declaration of Independence. His branding was in full force.

Speaker 10 To promote vote or die, Diddy interviewed Barack Obama on MTV when he was running for the U.S. Senate.
Obama seemed to recognize that Diddy had real influence. Absolutely.

Speaker 5 Listen, you know, you're a motivating force for young people all across the country. Your music moves people.

Speaker 5 You are a trendsetter. But part of what we want to do is to make sure that we're setting a trend in terms of political participation.

Speaker 12 When you wanna be the president of the United States, you call your man, call him TV.

Speaker 3 We're gonna give you a plan.

Speaker 10 Even when it came to politics, Diddy seemed to see where things were going.

Speaker 10 It's like he was always one step ahead, always able to outmaneuver a scandal, always able to find the next thing to keep him and his brand relevant.

Speaker 10 And culture critic Jamila Lemuse says Diddy managed to create the perception that he was still a kingmaker in music. He always made a point of connecting with new, young talent.

Speaker 20 Diddy was an early mentor of Usher's. Usher lived with him when he was a young teenager, which people have a lot of questions about now.
And he's talked openly about being exposed to too much.

Speaker 10 In 2016, Usher talked to Howard Stern about living with Diddy. There were very curious things taking place

Speaker 10 and I didn't necessarily understand it.

Speaker 4 You're a dad now. Would you ever send your kid to Puffy Camp?

Speaker 3 Hell no.

Speaker 10 Usher ended up mentoring another young artist, Justin Bieber. And in 2009, Bieber also hung out with Diddy.
Bieber shared a video of it on his YouTube channel.

Speaker 12 You know, where we hanging out and what we doing,

Speaker 12 we can't really disclose.

Speaker 12 But it's definitely a 15-year-old's dream.

Speaker 10 Today, those clips might make you ask, what were the curious things that Usher saw?

Speaker 10 And what did Diddy think was a 15-year-old's dream?

Speaker 10 But back then, most people weren't asking whether there was a darkness to Diddy's mentorship of young artists.

Speaker 10 Diddy was just wealthy, fashionable Mr. Cool.

Speaker 10 Being connected to him, someone who seemed so central to music and culture, had to be a helpful thing.

Speaker 20 People are really

Speaker 20 overly impressed by men.

Speaker 20 We do not hold men to rigorous standards of behavior, particularly famous men, right?

Speaker 20 We don't take into consideration their relationship to women when we're judging their character. We don't take into consideration acts of violence that they may have committed.

Speaker 20 You know, we look past those things when we like someone, when we like a man.

Speaker 10 Diddy had also spent years cultivating the idea that he was a representation of black excellence. Here's the writer Touré on what that meant.

Speaker 14 Black excellence was about pride.

Speaker 14 It was about being extraordinary. It was about standing on the shoulders of the civil rights movement and the stuff our parents talked about.
Like, let's be even better.

Speaker 14 You know, it's like saying, I'm rooting for everybody black, you know, and,

Speaker 14 you know, I mean, he, he was,

Speaker 14 at least as far as the marketing, Puff was very much like,

Speaker 14 let's dress up, let's be stylish, let's be our best selves, let's be excellent.

Speaker 10 That idea of black excellence, of class, of prominence was part of his brand. It's what made his success something to aspire to.
He wasn't just a person. He was the idea of success itself.

Speaker 10 I mean, he was interviewing Barack Obama just four years before he would be elected as a nation's first Black president.

Speaker 10 Jamila Lemuse says that Black excellence, that reputation, gave Diddy some real protection.

Speaker 20 There are a lot of Black people who are resentful of years of discrimination and stereotyping and mythology that suggests that all black men are predators and all black men are violent and they're you know wanting to go against those stereotypes and go against those images

Speaker 20 so much so that they're willing to sacrifice actual people, actual victims and their experiences to protect these men and to protect the image of black excellence that they may represent.

Speaker 10 It was yet another layer of perceived invincibility that started with music and his celebrity status and seemed to stack as Diddy branded himself as an all-around mogul.

Speaker 10 And this meant that anyone who crossed his path knew his power, especially a young singer hoping to make it in a cutthroat world like Cassie Ventura.

Speaker 20 We began to see her more in the public as Diddy's girlfriend and less as the artist Cassie.

Speaker 19 And yeah, he was just like yelling at us, cussing us out because she doesn't want to have sex with him. And then he whisked her away again.

Speaker 10 Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy, is a production of ABC Audio. I'm Brian Buckmeyer.
This podcast was written and produced by Camille Peterson, Vika Aronson, and Nancy Rosenbaum.

Speaker 10 Tracy Samuelson is our story editor. Associate Producer, Amira Williams.
Production help from Shane McKeon.

Speaker 10 Fact-checker, Audrey Mosttek.

Speaker 10 Story Consultant, Sweeney St. Phil.

Speaker 10 Supervising Producer, Sasha Aslanian.

Speaker 10 Original music by Evan Viola. Mixing by Rick Kwan.

Speaker 10 Ariella Chester is our social media producer. This podcast was powered by the journalists at Impact by Nightline, 2020, GMA, and the ABC News Investigative Unit.
Thanks to those teams.

Speaker 10 And special thanks to Stephanie Maurice, Liz Alessi, and Katie Dendas.

Speaker 10 Josh Cohan is ABC Audio's Director of Podcast Programming. Laura Mayer is our executive producer.

Speaker 28 It's one of Britain's most notorious crimes, the killing of a wealthy family at at Whitehouse Farm. But I got a tip that the story of this famous case might be all wrong.

Speaker 2 I know there's going to be a twist, wouldn't they? A massive twist.

Speaker 7 At every level of the criminal justice system, there's been a cover-up in this case.

Speaker 28 I'm Heidi Blake. Blood Relatives is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker.
Find it now in the In the Dark podcast feed.