Me & U

Speaker 1 I am so excited for this spa day.

Speaker 2 Candles lit.

Speaker 1 Music on.

Speaker 4 Hot tub warm and ready.

Speaker 1 And then my chronic hives come back. Again, in the middle of my spa day.
What a wet blanket. Looks like another spell of itchy red skin.

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Speaker 5 This was the era of flip phones and DVDs. So people glanced at paper handouts inside their folders as they scribbled down notes in actual notebooks.

Speaker 5 Sean Diddy Combs had gathered everyone to tell them about a new artist he'd signed to his Bad Boy Records label.

Speaker 5 Diddy was in the middle of a successful run with Danny Kane on his MTV show Making the Band, and he was getting ready to release the debut album of Atlanta rapper Young Jock.

Speaker 5 But Diddy wasn't happy with the label's recent performance. He said publicly that he was trying to get things back on track.

Speaker 5 So now he had another up-and-coming artist he wanted everyone in the room to meet. Cassie Ventura.
That day, she wore her long dark hair tucked behind her ears and big gold hoop earrings.

Speaker 5 She dressed casually with little to no makeup. Combs was in his late 30s.
He sat at the head of the conference table while 19-year-old Cassie was at the other end.

Speaker 5 She was there with a producer she'd been working with. They'd release a song you've probably heard of called Me and You.

Speaker 5 you've been waiting waiting to this day me and you is the track Cassie is best known for a song that would go on to peak at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 a song that stayed on the charts for about six months in other words back in 2006 Cassie's song was one of the country's most popular singles it's an infectious song that has a weird creepy vibe but at the same time it's like fun to sing along to and it's just simple.

Speaker 5 For me, this song brings back memories of being 18 years old and driving around with my friends in my mom's car.

Speaker 5 It was the kind of song where if you heard it on the radio you'd tell your friends, yo turn that up.

Speaker 5 It was this song that caught Diddy's attention.

Speaker 5 He told everyone gathered at the conference table that the song had been haunting him in nightclubs and that he thought Cassie had a personality that, quote, the whole world could fall in love with.

Speaker 5 Before Before Bad Boy released a remix, Me and You was already an underground hit, even without the backing of a big record label. Cassie Ventura had built up a fan base DIY style.

Speaker 5 The secret ingredient was early social media. Remember MySpace?

Speaker 5 MySpace was only about three years old at the time. It was the beginning of social media for millennials like me who grew up in the 90s and early 2000s.

Speaker 5 My profile had posts about soccer players I liked, like Ronaldinho, Zizu, and Henri, and some of my favorite music. I probably posted a picture of me working my after-school retail job at Hollister.

Speaker 5 I hope to God that picture doesn't still exist.

Speaker 5 Today it's pretty common for artists and influencers to get famous off of social media alone.

Speaker 5 But when Cassie was starting out, it was pretty new to release music without a label, to build connections directly with fans without going through a gatekeeper.

Speaker 5 Here's Cassie and the producer she'd been working with named Ryan Leslie talking about this in a video blog.

Speaker 7 If you're a kid on the internet and you're looking to find new music, you go on the internet, you go on MySpace.

Speaker 7 People find me.

Speaker 5 Within three weeks, this record propelled Cassie to the top 10 artists on MySpace. And that's when the major labels came knocking, including Bad Boy Records, Sean Combs' company.

Speaker 5 As an attorney, I can tell you that the terms of any deal like this are usually private. We later find out that Bad Boy reportedly offered Cassie a contract to make 10 albums.

Speaker 5 That was huge and also pretty unusual for a new artist without a proven track record.

Speaker 5 I could only find a couple of examples like this, including the 10 album deal a teenage LL Cool J reportedly got in the 1980s with Def Jam Records. Just think about it.

Speaker 5 Here's Cassie. She's at the very beginning of her career, only a couple years out of high school.

Speaker 5 And one of the biggest record labels in hip-hop and R ⁇ B offers her a chance to make not just one, but 10 albums? That's crazy.

Speaker 5 Cassie was pumped and talked about it in an interview with Fun Radio France.

Speaker 9 Well, I was really excited because Bad Boy itself is just a very legendary label. I mean, to be a part of that, where you think of Biggie and Faith Evans, Mary J.
Blige, people like that.

Speaker 9 It's just exciting to be at such a legendary place.

Speaker 5 But those 10 albums, they never happened.

Speaker 5 It's hard to watch some of these early videos of Cassie before everything changed, because now we know her dreams got derailed.

Speaker 5 And this legendary label she was so excited to join, she alleges the person who ran it became her tormentor and abuser.

Speaker 5 That's according to a lawsuit Cassie filed against Combs and his company in 2023.

Speaker 5 The lawsuit describes in excruciating detail how she allegedly got trapped in a toxic relationship with Combs that lasted for more than a decade.

Speaker 5 Cassie's allegations include disturbing accounts of abuse that lasted for years. That Combs forced her to use drugs and have sex with male sex workers.

Speaker 5 That he was controlling, even at times, having her medical record sent directly to him, and that he was prone to rage and frequently beat her.

Speaker 5 When Cassie filed her lawsuit, Combs's attorneys issued a statement saying he vehemently denied these offensive and outrageous allegations, and that Cassie's lawsuit was riddled with baseless and outrageous lies, aiming to tarnish Mr.

Speaker 5 Combs's reputation and seeking a payday.

Speaker 5 But within a day of filing her suit, Cassie Ventura and Sean Combs reached an undisclosed settlement agreement with no admission of guilt.

Speaker 5 Combs issued a statement saying, We have decided to resolve this matter amicably. I wish Cassie and her family all the best.

Speaker 5 I think it's fair to say that Cassie's lawsuit was the first domino to fall in the complicated web of civil and criminal allegations that Combs is now facing.

Speaker 5 And if he's convicted, some of those charges could put him behind bars for the rest of his life.

Speaker 5 For his part, Combs denies all allegations and has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges he's about to be tried for.

Speaker 5 But if we go back 20 years to when Cassie and Combs first met, what can we learn about how we got here? In this episode, we're going to focus on Cassie.

Speaker 5 We'll retrace the steps of her relationship with Combs and how some people we spoke with say dating him seemed to hurt her career more than it helped it.

Speaker 5 We'll speak to a friend who claims she witnessed Combs abusing Cassie and will ask: what are the mechanisms and forces that fuel the kind of abuse that's been alleged and allow it to stay hidden for so long?

Speaker 5 Because to be clear, the abuse Cassie alleged in her lawsuit, it's much bigger than one powerful person.

Speaker 5 I'm Brian Buckmeyer, and you're listening to Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy.

Speaker 5 Episode 3: Me and You.

Speaker 5 Cassie Ventura grew up in a small city in Connecticut that sits about halfway between New York City and Boston. Her family is a mix of cultures.

Speaker 5 She's described her mom as having Mexican, Black, and West Indian roots. Her dad's side of the family is Filipino.
Cassie started modeling when she was 12.

Speaker 5 As a teenager, she attended a performing arts school where she studied ballet and jazz.

Speaker 5 Cassie moved to New York City in the the fall of 2004 with her best friend. At first, she found work as a model, but Cassie wanted to be something more.
She looked up to artists like Sade,

Speaker 5 Janet Jackson, and Aaliyah. She wanted to be an artist too.
And not just that, she wanted to be famous. She said as much in a 2006 documentary on YouTube called Cassie Ventura, The Beginning.

Speaker 7 And I remember telling people my entire life, I'm going to be famous.

Speaker 7 Like, that's just how I was i didn't even know what that meant i just didn't know what i was gonna do or what

Speaker 5 once her deal with bad boy was finalized in 2006 cassie started working on her debut album the album cover is a close-up of cassie's face she's staring straight at the camera with a serious and mysterious expression her hair is parted on the side and falls in loose waves over one eye

Speaker 5 The day of the launch, Cassie and her producer Ryan Leslie drove to Virgin Records, a big music store in Times Times Square, to celebrate.

Speaker 5 They were greeted by a crowd of fans holding up CDs they had just bought.

Speaker 10 I've been following you since you're on MySpace, yo. I got, I was here.

Speaker 11 I gotta work early to get this, yo.

Speaker 5 Now that she was a bad boy artist with a hit single, Cassie was becoming more visible on a national stage.

Speaker 5 She had a big moment in the spotlight in 2006 when she performed in front of a live audience for the popular TV show 106 in Park on Black Entertainment Television, or BET.

Speaker 5 Both the cable network and the show were a really big deal at the time. Here's DJ and ABC News contributor Megan Wright.

Speaker 12 106 and Park was in the early 2000s the platform for hip-hop.

Speaker 12 Anybody who was promoting something in black and in hip-hop culture, you stopped by 106 and Park, you know, and it was really important, especially for those new artists, because a lot of the time it was when, you know, the fans would see these artists perform for the first time.

Speaker 12 And that was exactly what happened with Cassie.

Speaker 5 As a teenager in the late 90s and early 2000s, 106 in Park was the place to see my favorite performers and check out up-and-coming artists.

Speaker 5 The show brought hip-hop to the forefront in a way that was mainstream, big,

Speaker 5 and just cool. Everyone watched it.
So if you missed it and showed up to school the next day, you'd be lost in the conversation.

Speaker 5 Cassie appearing on 106 in Park meant she had made it onto one of the biggest and coolest stages there was.

Speaker 5 The day of Cassie's big debut on 106 and Park, she looked nervous.

Speaker 5 Her voice sounded shaky, tentative.

Speaker 5 You could see her eyes dart across the audience.

Speaker 10 Put your hands together for the princess of next selection.

Speaker 10 Make some noise.

Speaker 10 Cassie, come on.

Speaker 10 What's up, BT?

Speaker 5 At one point, the camera pulls back to show the crowd, and there's only a few people dancing.

Speaker 5 The whole thing feels very low energy.

Speaker 13 Cassie had one of the most disastrous performances we've seen on live television on 106 and Park.

Speaker 5 Jamila Lemieux is a writer and cultural critic. She remembers Cassie's BET debut.

Speaker 13 And this was very early into her career, just within months of her debuted single, Me and You coming out.

Speaker 13 And Diddy takes to the internet to defend her very passionately, you know, in a way that didn't seem to line up with who he had been,

Speaker 13 say, on making the band and having these very high, rigorous standards for performance.

Speaker 5 Some fans didn't think Cassie met those high standards for Bad Boy. I found an online petition to get Cassie kicked off the label that referenced both this BET performance and another one on MTV.

Speaker 5 The petition got over 3,000 signatures, so not tons considering she had hundreds of thousands of followers on Myspace, but still, it was pretty vicious.

Speaker 5 The petition was titled, We Prefer Lassie over Cassie, and whoever started it complained of Cassie's penguin moaning vocals.

Speaker 5 But after the BET performance, Diddy seemed to stand by Cassie.

Speaker 5 He told MTV, it just made me appreciate that she got nervous and it was kind of cute to me, to be honest. He said he told her, it's like riding a bike.
You're gonna fall down.

Speaker 5 You gotta keep on getting on it.

Speaker 5 At the time, That might have seemed like a label exec defending his artist, standing by her, maybe even a bit of fatherly advice.

Speaker 5 But those comments to MTV, where he described Cassie as cute, actually showed up in Cassie's 2023 lawsuit against Combs.

Speaker 5 The suit said that by pointing out how young and naive Cassie was, Combs was actually laying the groundwork for his, quote, manipulative and coercive romantic relationship with a woman nearly two decades his junior.

Speaker 5 A lot of what we've learned about Cassie's experience of her relationship with Sean Combs comes from this lawsuit, allegations that he, again, vehemently denies.

Speaker 5 But because the lawsuit was settled quickly and the details of the settlement were sealed, all we have is her 35-page complaint to share her side of the story, her account of how their relationship started, what the alleged abuse was like for her, and how she says it impacted her life and her career.

Speaker 5 Cassie hasn't spoken about the alleged abuse since the the settlement. It's common in settlements like this for the two sides to agree not to say bad things about each other.

Speaker 5 So all we've heard from Cassie is an Instagram post where she thanked fans for their support but didn't mention Diddy by name.

Speaker 5 So what happens if we take the accounts of hidden abuse Cassie alleges in her lawsuit and compare them with the parts of her life that were visible to the public these last 20 years?

Speaker 5 What picture emerges?

Speaker 5 That's coming up after the break.

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Speaker 5 In September of 2007, Cassie threw a party to celebrate her 21st birthday. The party was at a hotel in Las Vegas.
In photos, you can see her wearing shimmery pants and a white tank top.

Speaker 5 She's smiling, holding a glass of bubbly.

Speaker 5 According to Cassie's lawsuit, Combs showed up to the party uninvited. He brought some of his celebrity friends along too, including Britney Spears.

Speaker 5 Combs and his longtime girlfriend Kim Porter had reportedly broken up. They were together on and off for about 13 years and raised four children together.

Speaker 5 In her lawsuit, Cassie alleged that Combs forcibly kissed her in a bathroom that night of her birthday party and that she did not consent to his unwanted contact.

Speaker 5 That fall, according to Cassie's lawsuit, Combs invited her to come to Miami by herself under the pretense of a work obligation.

Speaker 5 She says he hired a party promoter to make fake flyers for an event that she was supposed to host. But Cassie's lawsuit claims there was no party.
It was all a sham.

Speaker 5 The suit says Cassie was, quote, stunned at how easily Mr. Combs was able to recruit others to lie for him.

Speaker 5 Alone with Combs at his Miami home, Cassie alleged he pressured her to take drugs. She felt she couldn't say no because it might hurt her career.

Speaker 5 And after she took the drugs, the lawsuit says, she became more intoxicated than she ever had been before.

Speaker 5 And that's when she alleges Combs had sex with her.

Speaker 5 Then, Cassie alleges, Combs used his wealth, power, and influence to take control of different parts of her life.

Speaker 5 First, renting her an apartment apartment in New York within walking distance of his, then doing the same in L.A.

Speaker 5 He paid for her car, and when she went to events, he paid for her clothes and makeup too. She alleged he used drugs to keep her complacent and compliant.

Speaker 5 Cassie alleges that she became increasingly isolated and frightened as her relationship with Combs escalated into sexual and physical violence.

Speaker 5 As the years ticked by, she says she was, quote, unable to see a pathway out of Mr. Combs' abusive hold on her life.

Speaker 5 Sean Combs categorically denies these allegations.

Speaker 5 In 2008, Cassie released a new single with Bad Boy called Official Girl, featuring Lil Wayne.

Speaker 5 As Cassie promoted the track on radio stations across the country, she kept getting asked, when are we going to see your next album?

Speaker 14 So tell me more about the album. What are we going to expect? I'm still actually working on it, which is kind of crazy because I've been working on it for a while, but I'm so like adamant about it.

Speaker 14 Like second chances are so rare and being able to do another album is big for me. So I'm really making sure that it's perfect.
It's perfect as it can possibly be.

Speaker 7 So it's coming out early 2009.

Speaker 5 Now it's 2009. A few years have passed since Cassie's first album came out.
That summer, Cassie does an interview on a hip-hop station near Albany, New York.

Speaker 15 Cassie, and the belly cost jam 96.3. So it's been a couple years since we've read some music from you.
So what you've been up to over the past couple years?

Speaker 8 Um, I started recording and then I took a little break to shoot a movie, then went back to recording and been recording, working on that album ever since.

Speaker 5 Cassie says the album was pretty much done,

Speaker 5 that it was being mixed, and that she even had a title for it.

Speaker 15 That's awesome. So what's the album gonna be called?

Speaker 8 Electro Love.

Speaker 15 Alright, you got an idea of when we can expect it?

Speaker 8 Later this year. I would say fall of this year.

Speaker 5 But by the fall, Cassie's sophomore album was still MIA.

Speaker 5 About a month after that radio interview, Cassie made an appearance at Diddy's White Party for the first time.

Speaker 5 It's the same party that we told you about in episode one, where Ashton Kutcher swung across the pool, Tarzan style.

Speaker 5 Cassie wasn't officially Diddy's girlfriend at this point, but the young artist caught the attention of the cameras.

Speaker 7 Oh, well, I've never been to the white party before. I don't know.
I'm excited to see what's inside.

Speaker 3 I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm excited.

Speaker 5 Cassie looked radiant in a white mini dress and gold strappy heels. Her image had changed from the Me and You debut single days.
Now, she was in her early 20s.

Speaker 5 She'd recently shaved one side of her head. giving her an edgy look that made her seem older and kind of punk rock.
This was a daring hairstyle that got Cassie a lot of attention.

Speaker 5 But years later, stories start emerging to suggest that bold look wasn't Cassie's choice.

Speaker 5 In 2022, rapper Young Jock told YouTuber and music journalist DJ Fladd about the time he says he was hanging out with Cassie and Diddy in Miami.

Speaker 5 He says they were partying at a club when Diddy saw a woman with one side of her head shaved. The way young Jock recalled it, Diddy rushed over to Cassie.

Speaker 5 Came over and said, yo, yo, Cassie, tomorrow, I want you to shave the side of your head. I was like, what the f ⁇ kind of request is that? So I was looking at Cassie.

Speaker 5 I was like, well, I was like, you're not about to do that, are you? She said, well, I mean, whatever Sean wants, I'm going to do.

Speaker 5 We searched, but it doesn't appear Diddy or Cassie responded publicly to young Jock's account. But back in 2009, Cassie said in interviews that she'd been thinking about shaving her head for a while.

Speaker 5 It would be several more years before Cassie and Combs hard-launched their relationship in a public way. In 2012, they started appearing together at glitzy events like Paris Fashion Week.

Speaker 5 They were both always dressed in the nines, but it was clear who the bigger star was.

Speaker 5 At the 2017 Met Gala, the couple was photographed wearing couture. Diddy talked to Vogue's André Leon Talley about what he was wearing.

Speaker 5 fearlessness. Cassie waited a few steps behind until Andre motioned her to come over.

Speaker 3 Wait a minute. Come up here, Darling.

Speaker 5 Here's ABC News entertainment contributor Kelly Carter talking about Cassie's shift from musician to girlfriend.

Speaker 1 She was his artist, and everyone was obviously aware of that.

Speaker 4 But I don't know that all of us also thought about how that power dynamic played out as being his lover and also,

Speaker 12 you know, him being her boss too.

Speaker 1 I don't think we thought about that at the time.

Speaker 5 Cassie's new role as Combs' official girlfriend starts to redefine how she was treated and also perceived. And Combs had a hand in shaping that perception.

Speaker 5 Like in 2015, he came out with a new fragrance called 3 AM.

Speaker 5 He produced a risque video starring him and Cassie to promote it. The scenes of them embracing and kissing are intercut with the suggestion of violence.
Cassie slaps and shoves.

Speaker 5 Combs' hands encircle her neck. The minute-long ad was so explicit that some television networks reportedly refused to air it.

Speaker 5 This was the same year the movie version of 50 Shades of Gray came out, and this ad was compared to that.

Speaker 5 Combs went on Andy Cohn's Bravo talk show, Watch What Happens Live, to show him the video.

Speaker 5 Now that's your real real girlfriend yeah

Speaker 5 oh she is fully naked in the video Cassie is straddling Combs her body naked and exposed Combs doesn't say anything in this interview with Andy Cohen about Cassie being a recording artist on his label for the purposes of this conversation she's his girlfriend and a model remember Cassie had been modeling on and off since she was 12.

Speaker 5 Now, let me ask you this. Did Did Cassie object at all to any of the nudity or she was totally cool with it? Cassie, she's from Europe.
Yeah, so she's open. No, no, it's not that.

Speaker 5 It's just like when you've been a model and, you know, you're doing it for the art. It really wasn't done for the commerce.
It was done more for the art side of it.

Speaker 5 Side note.

Speaker 5 Cassie's not from Europe. She grew up in Connecticut.
Anyways.

Speaker 5 What stands out to me here is that Cassie, the recording artist, she's no longer in the frame.

Speaker 5 It's like she's become more of an accessory, an extension of Combs and his brand.

Speaker 5 In 2015, Bad Boy Records celebrated its 20th anniversary. The next year, Diddy organized a 24-city family reunion tour to celebrate.

Speaker 5 He was the headliner, and he invited legacy Bad Boy artists like Lil Kim, Mace, and Faith Evans to share the stage.

Speaker 5 Some of the shows included special special guest appearances from artists like Jay-Z, Usher, Snoop Dogg, and Mary J. Blige.

Speaker 5 Cassie performed at some of these concerts, but she wasn't a headliner. And she doesn't show up in the press release.
And if you look for her, you can find her.

Speaker 5 She's there, at least at some of the shows. but she's not out front and she's not being promoted.
She's clearly part of the supporting

Speaker 5 So maybe that makes sense. After all, she hasn't had another hit song in 10 years.

Speaker 5 She's sort of a one-hit wonder at this point. At least that's one interpretation.

Speaker 5 But maybe she's not out front because she's being stifled.

Speaker 5 People like DJ and culture critic Megan Wright began to wonder if Cassie's career was being held back intentionally.

Speaker 12 I think being in the music industry, you would hear these rumors and then you have these questions about whether or not Diddy was controlling Cassie and whether or not he was controlling her music.

Speaker 12 Because you look at her debut in 2006 and then her music career after that, you know, nothing that she did really hit the same marks as they do in 2006, which is common and can happen to other artists.

Speaker 12 But we began to see her more in the public as Diddy's girlfriend and less as the artist Cassie.

Speaker 5 But she was still recording music. Back in 2012, an anonymous fan posted 66 unreleased Cassie tracks on a social media site called Tumblr that was popular at the time.

Speaker 5 It isn't clear how the fan got these songs or why some of them had never been released by Bad Boy. The collection was titled The Cassie Trilogy.

Speaker 5 And if you search around the internet, you can still find a link with all of the leaked recordings, including this track titled sound of love

Speaker 5 we don't know if this collection of leaked songs put pressure on bad boy but a year later in 2013 the label released a cassie mixtape called rock-a-bye baby a mixtape isn't the same as a commercial studio album It might be less formally produced with songs meant to please the fans or offer tracks that that don't make the cut for an album.

Speaker 5 A lot of times you can download it for free, and that was the case for Cassie's mixtape.

Speaker 5 Even so, the online music magazine Pitchfork gave Cassie's mixtape a glowing review, saying that now Cassie is more than a singer. Now she's got flow and a remarkable range.

Speaker 5 Here's one of the singles from Cassie's mixtape: it's called Numb.

Speaker 5 When Cassie's mixtape dropped, she did interviews on television and local radio shows to promote it. And she was asked the same question people have been asking her for years.

Speaker 5 When is her actual album coming out? Here's Cassie in an interview with a radio host named DJ Ski in May of 2013.

Speaker 5 How long has it been since the

Speaker 4 last album? Was it like six years now?

Speaker 5 seven years seven years seven years why the long break for you in your in your mind how would you break it down for the fans are like oh cassie

Speaker 7 i think the most real thing that i can say and i actually have i've never said in an interview before it has a lot to do with your presence at a label you know how well you're respected with the people that you're working with

Speaker 5 Cassie explains that over the years she put out some songs here and there, but they didn't really take off.

Speaker 5 And the reason she never released a new album was because she needed to prove herself more.

Speaker 5 She needs to earn the respect of her label.

Speaker 5 Remember, this label she needs to prove herself to,

Speaker 5 it was controlled by her boyfriend, Sean Combs.

Speaker 5 Coming up, Cassie starts working with a new and talented producer who tells us what she glimpsed of Cassie's troubled relationship with Diddy.

Speaker 5 Coming to Disney Plus in Hulu, Cassidy, get us home.

Speaker 13 Jonas, brother, you got it.

Speaker 5 It'll be the best Jonas Christmas ever.

Speaker 5 Can't wait to see you guys. We love you.
If they can only make it home. What's going on? Our tour plane burned? No.
We cannot miss Christmas.

Speaker 6 Nothing can stop us from getting home now.

Speaker 3 Moonlink.

Speaker 16 You lost all three of your passports?

Speaker 5 It's Christmas. Anything can happen, right? A very Jonas Christmas movie now streaming on Disney Plus in Hulu with a TVPGDL.

Speaker 5 An all-new season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is now streaming on Hulu.

Speaker 7 Mom Talk started as a sisterhood and that's gone to flames.

Speaker 1 New secrets and lies are coming out. This is going to be catastrophic.

Speaker 6 We're fighting for our marriages and the girls are just putting us through hell.

Speaker 1 They make everything about themselves.

Speaker 5 I can't.

Speaker 13 Hopefully this doesn't end in a bloodbath.

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Speaker 5 It started with a phone call in the early hours of the morning.

Speaker 12 911, what is the address to your emergency?

Speaker 5 A terrified woman tells the operator she's been kidnapped, assaulted, and that she's trapped in a room with her attacker. He's fallen asleep.

Speaker 5 So she quietly and ever so carefully finds his phone and calls for help.

Speaker 3 Is there any way you can get out of the building? I don't know. It's not we can count me.
I'm scared.

Speaker 5 This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland into a crime scene. We've got something big going on here.
The first thing to hit my mind is a monster.

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Speaker 5 In 2015, Cassie started working with a Grammy Award-winning producer and songwriter songwriter named Tiffany Redd. She and Cassie are around the same age.

Speaker 5 As they collaborate in the studio, they became friends.

Speaker 5 Tiffany was one of the first people with access to Cassie and Diddy's world who spoke out publicly about the alleged abuse after Cassie settled her lawsuit.

Speaker 5 Tiffany remembers this one night she was out with Cassie in Miami.

Speaker 5 They were celebrating Cassie's birthday at a club, and then they decided to go to McDonald's. As they were driving, she says Cassie's phone lit up.
It was Diddy.

Speaker 16 I remember her being like, you want to see something crazy? And I was like, what? And she answered the phone. And as soon as she answered,

Speaker 16 where the f are you? Like, just, I had never heard, like, he was so upset that she was out. He was just like, I remember him screaming and saying, is somebody in the car with you?

Speaker 16 I know someone's in the car with you. And I'm just sitting there like, you know, and he just is scolding her for going out for her birthday, us being out, you know, y'all know what time it is.

Speaker 16 Like we was kids, you know.

Speaker 5 Tiffany says it was the first time she witnessed this kind of dynamic firsthand.

Speaker 5 She found it shocking and disturbing.

Speaker 16 When we got back to her house from McDonald's, he called her again, called her on FaceTime and he made her show him the house, like who all was there. It was so weird.

Speaker 16 That was like my first time where I was like, with my own eyes. And that was before she had even told me anything.
So that was like my first time being like, something is wrong.

Speaker 5 When asked to comment on Tiffany Redd's account, Combs's attorney in a statement to ABC News said, Mr.

Speaker 5 Combs cannot comment on settled litigation, will not comment on pending litigation, and cannot address every allegation picked up by the press from any source, no matter how unreliable.

Speaker 5 Tiffany says there was one night, actually another of Cassie's birthdays, where she saw a particularly menacing and controlling side of Combs that alarmed her.

Speaker 5 Cassie also described this incident in her lawsuit. It was her 29th birthday, and Diddy was throwing her a surprise party.

Speaker 5 As the party was winding down, Cassie told Tiffany and some other friends that she wanted to leave to go do karaoke.

Speaker 5 Soon, Tiffany says, people from Diddy's team circled around them.

Speaker 16 And there were people from Puff's team that were trying to discourage her from leaving. And I thought that was weird.
Like, why are these people like hovering around us?

Speaker 5 Despite the pressure to stay, Cassie and Tiffany made their way to the karaoke club. Later, Diddy showed up with his security detail and Tiffany says they zeroed in on Cassie again.

Speaker 5 She says all of a sudden, things got really tense when Diddy showed up.

Speaker 16 His security is around him. They have her in the corner and he's in her face and he's cussing her out.
And I couldn't really like hear what he was saying, but you know, he was really mad.

Speaker 16 He was really close to her face and she just had her head down. And when I was like standing over to the side, she just was kind of like looking up at me.
So then it was decided Cassie's leaving.

Speaker 16 She's leaving with Puff.

Speaker 5 At around three or four in the morning, Tiffany says Cassie and Diddy returned to Cassie's house. Tiffany was sleeping over that night and she says Cassie seemed sluggish and sedated.

Speaker 16 She didn't look the way she looked when she left, you know, and she didn't look like she was able to say, yes, I would like this or no, I would not like that.

Speaker 16 And so I said to him, I was just like, Puff, she doesn't have to have sex with you. She doesn't want to.
You know, and he's like, I flew all the way from Miami. She's going to get this birthday D.

Speaker 16 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 5 Cassie's lawsuit includes allegations that Combs supplied her with excessive amounts of drugs and coerced her into sexual encounters that he orchestrated, directed, and also allegedly filmed.

Speaker 5 These encounters are described in the lawsuit as freak-offs or FOs, and they often involved one or more male sex workers. Sex workers he allegedly instructed Cassie to hire.

Speaker 5 The lawsuit describes how Combs treated these forced encounters as a kind of personal art project. He controlled the lighting and the camera shots and the videos he took.

Speaker 5 He allegedly told Cassie what to say and what to wear, even down to the shade of her nail polish. Sometimes these events allegedly lasted for multiple days at a time.

Speaker 5 Cassie allegedly often got IV fluids afterwards so she could recover.

Speaker 5 Combs' defense attorneys claim in a court filing that videos depicting sexual activity between the rapper, Cassie, and male sex workers confirm Mr.

Speaker 5 Combs' innocence because they show sexual activity among consenting adults. To Cassie, the videos had another purpose.
She alleges that Combs used them to remind her that he was the one in control.

Speaker 5 According to the lawsuit, there was one time when they were on a flight and he showed her a video of a freak off she thought had been deleted. Seeing that video, it underscored how trapped she was.

Speaker 5 He had this collateral, something that he could use to enforce his power and keep her compliant. Here's Tiffany Redd again.

Speaker 16 The night of the party was a freak off.

Speaker 16 The night when he was saying, tell your girl she wants some birthday.

Speaker 2 That was a freak off.

Speaker 16 That night, that's where he was taking her. When he was cussing her out and she didn't want to go, that was what was going on.

Speaker 5 For Tiffany, allegedly being a witness to all of this was upsetting and confusing. She says it was like she was in this alternate reality.

Speaker 5 a kind of twilight zone where something that seemed so weird and wrong to her was being treated by everyone else like it was normal.

Speaker 16 It's so crazy because it's like

Speaker 16 that moment happened and it was like no one talked about it. I feel like everyone was used to it but me.

Speaker 5 Tiffany says as she witnessed things that concerned her, she started asking Cassie questions and Cassie confided in her up to a point.

Speaker 16 She would tell me like small stuff. She would never say like everything that was going on, but it didn't take long because I witnessed stuff because I started asking questions like, are you okay?

Speaker 16 Like, what the hell was that? You know, and then, you know, she's sitting there trying to explain it away and it doesn't make sense.

Speaker 5 Tiffany told ABC News that Cassie tried to leave Combs, but it was hard to escape his hold.

Speaker 3 There's been so many times that girl tried to leave. and try to get out of there.
And it is a well-oiled machine.

Speaker 11 It's not just him doing all the things that he's doing.

Speaker 16 It's other people. It's, you know, he wants to talk to you or, you know, your record won't come out if you da-da-da-da-da.
You know, it was like, it wasn't that simple.

Speaker 5 We asked Tiffany Redd the question so many people had been asking Cassie for over a decade. Why didn't Cassie ever come out with a second album?

Speaker 16 Because he was using the music to control Cassie.

Speaker 3 Because it was never,

Speaker 16 at least from what it seems like, it was never

Speaker 16 gonna come out.

Speaker 3 It was never supposed to come out.

Speaker 16 And the only, she told me the only time he was willing to like really talk about the plans for her music was during the freak offs.

Speaker 1 So he tied that to that.

Speaker 5 So now, if we zoom all the way out and look at Cassie's career trajectory through the lens of a relationship that was allegedly coercive and abusive, a new picture comes into focus.

Speaker 5 Here's journalist Toray. He's been covering hip-hop culture since the 1990s.

Speaker 5 She was working on an album for 10 years.

Speaker 5 There were singles in 2012 and then in 2017.

Speaker 5 This is not really an album. This was never intended to come out.
This was a pacifier just to keep her happy in between

Speaker 5 what we do at night. And it's a method of control.
This is how he controls people.

Speaker 5 want to be in to be a singer, a rapper, producer, in my circle, whatever, a songwriter, then you got to participate in this when I want you to. If you don't, then you're out.

Speaker 5 So Combs wielded power, including the power to catapult someone's career or shut them down.

Speaker 5 Tiffany says that everyone around him seemed to be afraid of him. And according to Cassie's lawsuit, people had legitimate reasons to feel that way.

Speaker 5 For example, the lawsuit states that Combs once threatened to blow up the car of a musician named Kid Cuddy. Cassie briefly dated him in 2011 when she and Diddy were going through a rough patch.

Speaker 5 According to Cassie's lawsuit, Diddy was using her phone when he discovered emails from Kid Cuddy.

Speaker 5 Cassie alleges Diddy erupted into a rage when he saw the messages and then lunged at her with a corkscrew. She managed to get away and went to Kid Cuddy's home to escape.

Speaker 5 But someone who worked for Combs told Cassie that Combs wanted to talk.

Speaker 5 And so she went back, only to be attacked by Combs a second time, according to her lawsuit.

Speaker 5 After this incident, Cassie claims she went back to her parents' house in Connecticut, where her mom photographed her bruises.

Speaker 5 Fast forward to 2012, Cassie and Combs were attending Fashion Week in Paris. This was the trip when they first went public as a couple.

Speaker 5 It was on this trip Combs allegedly told Cassie that he was going to blow up Kid Cuddy's car and that he wanted to make sure that Kid Cuddy was home when it happened and that his friends were there too.

Speaker 5 And then Kid Cuddy's car reportedly did blow up in his driveway around this time. He confirmed it to the New York Times.

Speaker 5 After Cassie's lawsuit came out, here's how Charlemagne the God and his co-host from the Breakfast Club radio show reacted to the news of Diddy's alleged involvement.

Speaker 4 Kid Cuddy confirmed it? That the car blew up.

Speaker 4 That really happens in in real life. You'll be blowing up cars.
I don't, I mean, Kid Cuddy never said he did it.

Speaker 16 He just said it blew up.

Speaker 5 Yeah, he said the car blew up in his driveway.

Speaker 4 Well, that's a hell of a coincidence. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 16 That's definitely coincidental.

Speaker 5 Cassie's lawsuit says she was terrified after this incident because now she claims she could see what Combs was capable of and the systems he allegedly had in place to make good on his threats.

Speaker 5 Local authorities never charged Combs for anything related to Kid Cuddy's car explosion, and his lawyers have stood firm in response to these claims, denying Combs had any involvement.

Speaker 5 The public didn't know about Diddy's alleged involvement with this Kid Cuddy incident at the time, but there was a moment during his relationship with Cassie when Diddy was publicly violent, not towards her, but a coach who was working with one of his sons.

Speaker 5 This was in 2015, when Combs allegedly assaulted his son's UCLA football coach with a kettlebell.

Speaker 5 Combs reportedly didn't like how this coach was treating his son Justin during football practice. He is said to have confronted the coach in his office and things escalated.
UCLA called the police.

Speaker 6 But the 45-year-old rapper, known to fans as Diddy, seen here in the back of a police car and then in handcuffs, being walked into the jail, now facing three counts of assault with a deadly weapon, one count of making terrorist threats, and one count of battery.

Speaker 5 The footage of Combs being handcuffed and taken to jail, it definitely made headlines. But soon, Combs was released on bail.
No charges were ever filed, and everyone seemed to move on.

Speaker 5 Here's author and journalist Justin Tinsley again.

Speaker 18 It was a big news story when it first happened because this is Diddy and a big-time college football program, and he's fighting people on behalf of his son. That was a big case.

Speaker 18 And that was one where I thought would lead to more legal ramifications than it did, but

Speaker 18 it was a headline for a moment, but then it eventually, you know, like most everything else, eventually just faded away.

Speaker 5 Writer and cultural critic Jamila Lemuse says, being a strong dad who takes pride in his children is an image Diddy has cultivated for a long time. Diddy has seven children with four different women.

Speaker 5 His youngest is a toddler named Love, born in 2022, who has her own Instagram.

Speaker 13 And I think that helps to sanitize him. I think that helped to, you know, further detract from some of the negative things that have been said about him over the years.

Speaker 13 I think that Diddy's family man image did a lot for him in terms of, you know, perhaps protecting him from scrutiny over certain things.

Speaker 5 In 2016, less than a year after the UCLA kettlebell incident, Diddy walked the red carpet at a Hollywood movie premiere with Cassie. She was co-starring in a rom-com called The Perfect Match.

Speaker 5 That day, Cassie was dressed apart in a fitted, glittery dress. Diddy looked sharp in a three-piece suit with diamond studs shining in both ears.
He clutched her hand as they posed for photos.

Speaker 5 Lots of people have re-examined this red carpet footage, looking for signs of bruises that might have been covered up with makeup.

Speaker 5 Because now we know the premiere was just two days after Combs attacked Cassie in a hotel in Los Angeles.

Speaker 5 Hotel surveillance cameras caught Diddy shoving and kicking Cassie. But as cameras flashed on the red carpet in 2016, that abusive attack was still a secret.
And for years, it stayed that way.

Speaker 5 Here's Jamela Lemieux again.

Speaker 13 You know,

Speaker 13 it's really tough to think about what may have been going through Cassie's mind and some of those, you know, somewhat famous pictures we've seen of her and Diddy, you know, walking red carpets together, hugged up in bars and restaurants.

Speaker 13 You know, she very well may have felt that she was trying to keep him pleased, keep him calm, keep him, you know, steady so he doesn't attack her.

Speaker 5 It would be two more years before Cassie extracted herself from her relationship with Combs. In 2018, her lawsuit alleges that Combs raped her in her home after she tried to break up with him.

Speaker 5 This marked a turning point. Cassie took deliberate steps to cut Combs out of her life, including moving out of her home that he paid for and taking legal action to end her record deal.

Speaker 5 A deal that never led to the breakout success she'd hoped for all those years ago when she was just 19 years old.

Speaker 5 By the time she ended her relationship with Combs, Cassie was in her early 30s. Her lawsuit says she sought inpatient rehabilitation treatment for trauma and struggled with drug and alcohol addiction.

Speaker 5 By 2019, Cassie was in a new relationship. She married a fitness coach and the couple has two young daughters.
She recently announced on Instagram they're expecting expecting a third child, a boy.

Speaker 5 She seems to have moved on with her life, although her lawsuit says that she, quote, continues to suffer from intense emotional distress and that she will forever live with the physical and psychological repercussions of the over a decade of violence, fear, and exploitation she endured.

Speaker 5 Cassie's story could have stayed shrouded in silence. That appeared to be the playbook from the beginning.
Combs was the big celebrity. She was the protégé.
The sidekick. The girlfriend.

Speaker 5 The plus one for fancy events and red carpets. He was at the center of the story.
She was the accessory.

Speaker 5 But four years after she cut Combs out of her life, something happened that made Cassie take action. Most people didn't see it coming.

Speaker 5 Now, instead of being silent in the background, Cassie decided to speak up, and she used her lawsuit as a megaphone.

Speaker 11 Ventura, speaking up now, with the expiration of New York's Adult Survivors Act fast approaching, saying in a statement, After years in silence and darkness, I am finally ready to tell my story and to speak up on behalf of myself and for the benefit of other women who face violence and abuse in their relationships.

Speaker 5 And Cassie coming forward? That inspired lots of other people to come forward too.

Speaker 5 That's next time.

Speaker 5 If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, please call the domestic violence hotline at 1-800-942-6906

Speaker 5 or go to www.thehotline.org.

Speaker 5 Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy, is a production of ABC Audio. I'm Brian Buckmeyer.
This podcast was written and produced by Nancy Rosenbaum, Vika Aronson, and Camille Peterson.

Speaker 5 Tracy Samuelson is our story editor. Associate Producer, Amira Williams.
Production help from Shane McKeon and Meg Fierro. Fact checker, Audrey Mostek.

Speaker 5 Story consultant, Sweeney St. Phil.

Speaker 5 Supervising producer, Sasha Aslanian.

Speaker 5 Original music by Eben Viola. Mixing by Rick Kwan.
Ariel Chester is our social media producer.

Speaker 5 This podcast was powered by the journalists at Impact by Nightline, 2020, GMA, and the ABC News Investigative Unit. Thanks to those teams.

Speaker 5 And special thanks to Stephanie Maurice, Liz Alessi, and Katie Dendas.

Speaker 5 Josh Cohan is ABC Audio's Director of Podcast Programming. Laura Mayer is the executive producer.

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