You asked for a special episode with all the background to the Sean “Diddy” Combs story, and here it is.From starting Bad Boy Records in 1993 and signing the Notorious BIG, to becoming a billionaire business mogul, through to the recent federal charges. Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty traces Diddy’s history with Rolling Stone Senior Investigative Reporter Cheyenne Roundtree and Criminal Defence Attorney Shaun Kent.Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is currently behind bars in a notorious New York jail, awaiting trial on three federal charges, which he denies.The Diddy on Trial podcast is here to investigate the rumours, confront the theories, and give you the answers that you need.We also want YOU to be part of the conversation. Have you any burning questions about the cases or the upcoming trial? Heard a theory that doesn’t sit right with you? Send us your thoughts!Get in touch now via WhatsApp: 0330 123 555 1Presenter: Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty Producer: Laura Jones Sound Design: Richard Hannaford Production Coordinator: Hattie Valentine Editor: Clare FordhamCommissioning Editor: Rhian Roberts Assistant Commissioner: Will Drysdale Commissioning Producer: Adam Eland Commissioning Assistant Producer: Rechmial Miller
Chapter 1: What is the Diddy on Trial podcast about?
BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to Diddy on Trial from BBC Sounds with me, Anushka Matanda-Doughty. We are the place to come to find out everything you need to know about Diddy and his upcoming trial. We're unpacking the unfolding story, we're myth-busting, we're fact-checking, and we're answering your questions.
So technically, we only really launched less than two months ago, and it already feels like we've lived many lives in the Diddyverse. It's will he get bail or won't he get bail? It's old alleged victims and new alleged victims and bombshell balcony allegations and Busby and Spiro and PB&Js for Thanksgiving dinner and federal indictments and complainants and claimants.
Chapter 2: Who are the key figures in Diddy's story?
And then the internet's asking, is this music's Me Too movement? And does hip hop have a problem? And then we get questions from you guys that reminds us that maybe we need to do a bit of a refresher course. I mean, there's a lot of information here. We got this one, and I'll just read it now. It says, okay, so I've slipped in and I'm hooked, but I have no background.
You said that after the long-term girlfriend dropped charges during the first program, but I was never that hooked on celebs, so I have no history of who the long-term girlfriend is. Can you do a brief history of Diddyism and what we know so far? And so here's our brief history of so-called Diddyism and what we know so far.
And helping me unpack this, as always, is our resident senior investigative reporter from Rolling Stone magazine, Cheyenne Roundtree. Hi, Cheyenne. Hi. And our resident criminal defense attorney, Sean Kent. Hi, Sean.
Hey, how are you doing?
We're going to be hearing from Sean a bit later because he's prepping for a murder trial at the moment. So we'll let him off. So yeah, a lot of questions have been coming in, particularly from younger listeners who are aware of who P. Diddy is or Puff Daddy or Puffy, but couldn't necessarily name any of his hit songs or don't really know what he's been up to in the past decade.
So we're going to take it back because people have heard of Bad Boy and he is instrumental in the success of this record label. Cheyenne, what is Bad Boy and what's it got to do with P. Diddy?
Bad Boy is Diddy's kind of first label. territory he marked for himself. It is his founding production company, record label. It is the nexus of everything that came from Diddy.
There's founding a record label and then there's founding Bad Boy, which he did in 1993. And one thing that they had was talent. I mean, they had musicians who went on to make history. Wasn't one of the first artists that they signed Biggie Smalls?
The first artist he signed was Biggie. And so from the gate, you know, bad boy burst on the scene with two superstars. There was another artist by the name of Craig Mack who received a Grammy nomination and then you had Biggie. So it was in that first year or two, it was just a powerhouse, which is kind of unprecedented for him, a label that he started when he was 23 years old.
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Chapter 3: What is Bad Boy Records and its significance?
And he was also an artist at the time?
He was kind of playing around with being an artist. I think he was rolling out his new acts and he said, you know, I can do this as well. And then so we saw his first album came after Biggie's death and it was Puff and the Family. And that also had mainstream success with I'll Be Missing You.
I'm very focused. I'm very hardworking. I'm very serious about the opportunities that have been put upon me.
In the first album that Biggie releases with Bad Boy, it's Ready to Die, I think, and it's gone down in the history books. I mean, it is a legendary album and that helps set the scene for who these guys are going to be. But it also sets the scene for this whole generation of rap music that was coming. We've got the East Coast, West Coast beef.
So how does that start up and how is it influenced by Bad Boy?
It starts with, yeah, Bad Boy in New York and Death Row Records in LA. Biggie and Tupac, they saw each other as peers and they had this kind of friendship. And I spoke with people that remember that Tupac was helping Biggie out sometimes with just kind of mastering his flow. And you have to remember Tupac at the time was amazing. this massive star, and Biggie also was kind of rising to meet him.
But then there was a fallout, as there always is in beef, in hip-hop war. And the fallout came when Tupac was shot at a recording studio, and he thought the guys at Bad Boys set him up. And so from there, this legendary rivalry started, and it ends with the two biggest superstars of the 90s, both dead within, you know, a year of each other.
And we have a bit of Biggie's final radio interview just before he died in 1997.
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Chapter 4: How did Biggie Smalls influence Diddy's career?
How did it get to that day where you got to watch your back and have bodyguards and all that? I mean, it's not just with rappers, you know what I'm saying? People will attack anybody that's a large figure, you know what I'm saying? They're going to attack you if you're on top, you know what I'm saying? It's just your job to bob and weave, you know what I'm saying?
This week, Biggie Smalls came home to Brooklyn, not as he always dreamed in a blaze of glory, but in a coffin. On St. James's Place, the street where he'd grown up, the neighborhood turned out to say goodbye.
He can relate to a lot of these young black males out here, you understand, that want to make it just like him. And now this is the outcome. The person that did it, not only did he kill big, but he killed millions of fans that loved it. Notorious B.I.G.
at the time? I mean, are they all in their early 20s, including Diddy?
Yeah, everyone is under 25 years old or like right around the young 20s, mid 20s. And so these are young men who have, you know, the world at their fingertips are generational talents. and both kind of lost to this war. And so what we saw come of it was, you know, Diddy's kind of star started to emerge after Biggie had died.
Because we do see that quite a lot when people pass so young, they almost pass into myth and legend. In a way, many people have said gave him a sort of credibility that he was linked to that portion of history, that pure hip hop history, which a lot of people see as the golden age when it was kind of undiluted by huge commercial success. And it was all about lyricism and
flow and we had from that beef arguably I mean I'll say arguably some of the best diss records ever I mean I'm thinking there about Hit Em Up in particular I impartially say a favourite of mine but Biggie he credits vocally credits many, many times Diddy with supporting him, his rising star.
Diddy not only shaped the sound, he crafted the look. It's the whole tone, the whole character of Biggie. And they became friends and, you know, he took Biggie off the street and created him into a worldwide name that, you know, lives on forever in our legacy.
And it's interesting you say that sort of created the image of him because that's not, this isn't just a successful rapper. This is almost like he's fashioning a brand and he does it very successfully. He clearly is very skilled at doing that and then goes on to do that for himself. I mean, he creates his own brands. I mean, towards the end of the 90s, didn't he launch, is it Sean John Clothing?
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Chapter 5: What controversies surrounded Diddy in the 90s?
Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of hip hop only a year or so ago. And so Diddy at that time, he's 55 now, he was coming up as hip hop was being invented and he was hearing those sounds as they were being created, you know, up in the Bronx.
He and his predecessors actually created it for it to be this mammoth, you know, the radio stations that were devoted to playing hip hop. That was coming. at the same time that Diddy was coming up. So he was part of that wave of hip-hop that led us to the music that we hear today.
So we've got this bad boy growing and developing throughout the 90s and into the early 2000s. It's not without its own share of scandal. I mean, there's that very famous nightclub shooting. Can you just talk through a little bit of what that was and what happened?
So it's 1999. It's kind of this New Year's Eve party at this nightclub. And Diddy and his then-girlfriend J.Lo decide that they're going to go out. And so they go out to the club. They bring Diddy's new artist, Shine. And something happens. There's an altercation. Someone's bumped.
We don't really get to the bottom of what happened, but we do know that shots rang out and three people were injured. And we know that Diddy and J.Lo take off speeding in an SUV. Shine, the artist, is arrested. Diddy and J.Lo are promptly arrested as well. for being involved in the mix-up. J.Lo is quickly, her charges are dismissed, but Diddy and Shine go on trial for this nightclub shooting.
And Diddy is saying the gun's not his, he didn't fire any shots, and he is ultimately acquitted.
I give all glory to God. If it wasn't for God, I wouldn't be able to walk out here to talk to y'all today. I want to thank my mother for being by my side every day. He was wrongly accused. These last 14 months have been very, very tough.
He was found innocent of those charges in Shine. The artist says he's the fall guy, and he actually went to jail for, you know, almost 10 years, I believe, and then was deported back to Belize. So it's the first scandal, and we see where Diddy kind of changes afterward and kind of evolves now into this business mogul versus that being kind of this hip hop record label swaggy guy.
You mentioned this evolution, this change. Is this something that we see artists do a lot? Madonna famously, Nicki Minaj has about 75 different names that she goes by. Diddy does it and he does it pretty soon after the trial in 2001. He becomes P. Diddy and he leaves behind Puff Daddy.
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Chapter 6: How did Diddy transition from Puff Daddy to P. Diddy?
That just feels so bizarre that he was having these sort of family friendly Instagram lives where you dare not twerk, you dare not do any of these things. And that's the version of Diddy that lots of young people, people 15, 16 years old will know. Maybe not know him as brother love, but they'll know him as like a family man.
I came up in Diddy's Ciroc era where he's a good time guy. smooth, know-what's-cool tastemaker. And so, yes, when he had just gotten, you know, Keys to the City, he was just honored with Lifetime Excellence Awards. And then out of the blue, it seems like, you know, he's rocked by these really, really horrific allegations.
Okay. Thanks so much for stopping by again. See you soon, Sian. Bye. Thank you. Sean's just joined us again. He's very busy at the moment. Sean, are you allowed to say what you're doing at the moment?
I will say that I am working on a potential death penalty trial down in South Carolina.
Chapter 7: What business ventures contributed to Diddy's wealth?
So we're not going to take up too much of your time, but there are so many questions that I still have about the federal indictment that we've kind of missed because it's been bail hearings and then allegations about balcony incidents and then Jay-Z. So I just want to start by playing the actual press conference.
As part of this investigation, in March of this year, special agents from HSI executed search warrants at Combs' residences in Miami and Los Angeles. They also executed a warrant for Combs' electronic devices. During those searches, agents seized evidence of the crimes charged in this indictment.
They seized firearms and ammunition, including three defaced AR-15s and a large capacity drum magazine. They also seized evidence of the freak-offs, electronic devices that contain images and videos of the freak-offs with multiple victims.
And they seized cases and cases of the kinds of personal lubricant and baby oil that Combs' staff allegedly used to stock hotel rooms for the freak-offs, more than 1,000 bottles altogether.
OK, so first of all, we've spoken about this before. The federal indictment is just a lawsuit. It's just a story. As you've told us many times, it doesn't mean these things are facts. And he's charged with three counts, sex trafficking, transportation for prostitution and racketeering with conspiracy. We know Diddy denies everything. We don't know that he's done any of the things he's accused of.
And he says he's never sexually assaulted anyone. We all know this now, man or woman, adult or minor. So this is the district attorney of New York who's reading this out?
Correct. That's the correct way of saying it.
And he is going to be working on the side of the government to take away Diddy's freedom?
Correct. And probably the easiest way to say it is that position will be working on the side to take away his freedom because that person from that press conference is no longer going to be here because as soon as the new president takes office, they're going to replace that individual. And I think he's already announced that he will be retiring.
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Chapter 8: How does Diddy's story reflect on generational wealth in the Black community?
Correct. And don't forget, this is the government's position. They're like, we have this evidence. The easiest way to describe it is it's their opinion of what the evidence shows. They're saying this is our position of what we believe when we get in front of a jury, this is what the evidence is actually going to show. The defense will, of course, say we don't believe the evidence will show that.
Now, if we go a little further, and I've told everyone, specifically with the freak-offs, At the time of the indictment, the allegations were only dealing with adults. And so dealing with adults, it's on the government, it's incumbent on the government, no matter what is in the video, they must prove coercion. They must prove they forced them to do something they weren't likely to do already.
So the government can play the videos and the defense can come in and say, yeah, they're nasty and all of these people were voluntary participants.
Well, how do you prove coercion?
Hence the issue. And that's always the problem is going to be the coercion aspect. And so it's going to be a back and forth of were you actually coerced or were you a voluntary participant? So long as it stays this way with adults.
And they also reference, they talk about the other evidence they found. I mean, we've all heard about the baby oil. And like you said, they did that on purpose so that we talk about it. The guns with the serial number scratched off, they reference that as well. Is that a crime to scratch the serial number off? Why would you do that?
Here's why it's so scary. Because, of course, in America, I'm like, oh, we have guns everywhere. And our gun laws are pretty arcane and archaic. The problem with scratching serial numbers off on a gun is we cannot tell where the gun came from, where the gun was initiated, who owned the gun originally, what crime was a gun possibly used on. And that's what ends up happening.
Is that illegal to scratch the serial number off?
Absolutely. It's a federal crime. It's a state crime. Not only is it just illegal to scratch it off, it's illegal to possess a firearm with an obliterated serial number, again, for tracing purposes.
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