New York’s party king sees his empire crumble

“I don’t want to make money. I want to make history,” says Sean (P Diddy) Combs in a video that appears on the website of his production company, “Bad Boy Records.” In recent months, Combs – one of the most recognizable voices in American entertainment and who built a seemingly insatiable business empire – has found himself in the eye of a legal storm that threatens to tarnish his legacy, after a series of civil lawsuits. Accusations piled up include extortion, sex-trafficking and solicitation of prostitution, so it’s very possible that Combs will soon become a permanent fixture in Hollywood.

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The headlines surrounding the affair are fatal and talk about Hollywood that “you will never see the same again”. Public relations people suggest that the incident could trigger a domino effect, and grandiose conspiracy theories are swelling, dragging more and more celebrities into the cauldron, names that reach as far as the British royal family. The story of the self-proclaimed “bad boy forever” may create a turning point in the discourse on power, privilege and exploitation in the entertainment industries. Until recently, a great deal of power was in Combs’ hands.

A serious charge used against leaders of organized crime

In recent months it was difficult to avoid the Didi saga. Every day a new shocking and twisted story pops up around her, involving some strange product or surprising name, and another lawsuit is added to the pile. What he didn’t make headlines – baby oil, drug rape and an American mansion with tunnels.

The affair began to gain momentum with the lawsuit of the singer Cassie (Casey Ventura), who was Dee Didi’s partner for a decade. In her lawsuit, filed in 2023, she claimed that she was the victim of physical, sexual and mental abuse on his part, including pimping and forced drug use throughout their relationship. Although the case was quickly settled out of court, it opened the door to a flood of new lawsuits, which presented instances of behavior that allegedly occurred between 1995 and 2021.

Since November 2023, over 120 additional claims have been filed, including allegations of assaults at private parties that Combs organized in the 1990s. One of the most notable cases involves Derrick Lee Cardello-Smith, who claimed that Combs drugged and sexually assaulted him during a private party held in Detroit in 1997. Cardello-Smith, who was serving time in prison in Michigan, even won a $100 million judgment in his favor due to Combs’ absence from the hearing. In the latest series of lawsuits, a man who was 16 at the time claimed the rapper ordered him to strip at a party in New York in 1998, and a woman who said Combs raped her claimed he was responsible for the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur.

After months of accusations of sexual misconduct and other charges — the indictment accuses him of participating in numerous crimes including arson, bribery, kidnapping and obstruction of justice — Combs was arrested on September 16 at a New York hotel. He was charged the next day with the aforementioned counts, according to legal documents. These days he is in federal custody at the Metropolitan Brooklyn Center (MDC), awaiting a trial scheduled for May 2025 after two denials of bail requests. Didi will face two types of cases: a criminal case filed by the federal government , and several civil cases brought by individuals, each with different allegations.

Federal prosecutors allege that Combs used his employees, resources and influence in the music industry to create a “criminal enterprise” in which he “abused, threatened and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, while requiring them to protect his reputation and keep his behavior secret.” It is alleged that Combs often drove sex workers to appear at the sessions and recorded the sessions to coerce silence from the participants. For all of this, prosecutors charged Coombs with conspiracy to commit racketeering: a serious charge that was originally used mostly against organized crime leaders and could carry a heavy sentence. But it was the civil cases that opened the floodgates and ultimately led to the indictment.

Combs denies all the allegations. If convicted, the rapper faces a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison, and a maximum of life in prison. In recent weeks, 7 lawsuits have been filed against him, including one by a girl who claims that she was raped by Combs when she was only 13 years old.

If convicted, Combs’ downfall will indeed be grandiose, but according to the rumors circulating in the media, a lot more than one person could be dragged down. The affair links, directly and indirectly, other figures from the entertainment industry, and Combs’ arrest has prompted a re-examination of the many celebrities he used to hang out with. Figures such as Justin Bieber, Paris Hilton and even Prince Harry have been mentioned around the affair – although there is no evidence of their direct involvement in any wrongdoing.

No person, celebrity or not, was prosecuted alongside Combs in the criminal case. Also, in the civil cases filed so far, no other celebrities are mentioned, only Combs and his employees. But dealing with the issue tends to breed misinformation, such as a viral song about “Diddy’s Party” attributed to Justin Bieber, which experts now say was created by AI.

Large sums of money, powerful friends and a well-known culture of silence make for a powerful combination that invites conspiracy theories. In the wake of the arrest, amateur Internet researchers have flooded videos and photos and reviewed interviews with Didi and his friends in search of answers. The sheer scale of the cases and the inclusion of defendants, plus allegations that Combs used his entertainment business to lure victims, could make Combs’ case one of the biggest “Me Too” moments the music industry has seen.

The king of New York wanted to team up with real princes

Harlem native Combs is many things: a shrewd businessman, a brilliant talent hunter, and one of the most successful music personalities in rap history. There is no doubt that he swept many people after him.

“When my friend winked at you and told you to come to the VIP area, you knew you were going to have a really good night,” said Rob Shoter, who worked as the rapper’s publicist at the height of his fame, in an exclusive interview with the BBC. Shoter said that when he first joined the rapper’s world, Combs He wanted to leverage his career, and produced parties as a tool to keep himself at the center of the entertainment industry. “He realized that he could get the most attention if he was the party king of New York,” he said in an interview with the BBC. Another police officer said that Combs was obsessed with power and publicity, and explained that the star liked to brag about his lifestyle.

Combs’ “white parties” in the Hamptons have become a household name in the celebrity world. These were grand events where guests were required to wear white, with Combs, the evening’s producer and star, seeing himself as a modern-day Jay Gatsby. The annual summer events, held throughout the 2000s, have attracted star-studded crowds, including Martha Stewart, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Jay-Z and Leonardo DiCaprio, who Combs said in a December 2017 Vogue interview was the “number one” person on the invite list.

To strengthen his persona, the party king sought to establish ties with real royalty. Combs had a keen interest in the British royal family. A police officer recalled being asked more than 10 times to contact Prince Harry and Prince William, invite them to parties and offer to pay for their travel, accommodation and security. In his luxurious apartment in New York, the rapper kept framed photos of the princes. “He saw himself as a king, so having two princes around was only logical,” said one of the officers who spoke about the affair. According to him, the two never received an invitation from Combs.

Weapons, baby oil and alleged fondness for drug rape

Until the current crash, it seems that as obsessively as Combs guarded his reputation, he also worked to protect his life. “There were always guns around Diddy,” a police officer said in the same interview, describing metal detectors in Combs’ apartment like those found at airports. The publicist told about the presence of weapons in all the rooms of the rapper’s house.

Not only weapons were found in Combs’ home in an unusual amount. Surrounded by accusations of sex trafficking, solicitation of prostitution and extortion, the rapper recently got involved with another charge. One of the plaintiffs claimed that the baby oil taken from Combs’ home was mixed with a rape drug containing GHB (a psychoactive drug, known as one of the common rape drugs). The October 14 lawsuit accuses Combs of using the drug “for the purpose of committing horrific non-consensual acts involving sexual violence and acts of rape against numerous victims.” According to media reports, as many as 1,000 bottles of baby oil were discovered by authorities during a police search of Combs’ homes in Miami and Los Angeles.

From the stories that emerge from the lawsuits, it seems that this is much more than frequent cases of violence – more like a huge criminal enterprise, an organized system for details of violence, including sexual. According to the prosecution, Combs used drugs, violence and his status to “seduce victims” to perform prolonged sexual acts that even earned a special name: “freak off”. These sexual marathons, or “freak offs”, mentioned in the documents about 16 times, are at the heart of the lawsuit, and were described as “sex shows that Combs organized, directed, dressed himself during and often recorded.”

These meetings were frequent and held in prestigious hotels throughout the country, coordinated and managed by an entire team. The prosecution alleged that Combs and his victims were so exhausted after these events – which sometimes lasted for days – that they “used to receive fluid infusions to recover from the physical exertion and drug use”. Combs, for his part, treated the forced encounter as an art project, adjusting the candlelight to the atmosphere of the videos he shot, according to the lawsuit.

According to sources in various media, it turns out that Combs required the participants in these parties to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), so that no details would be shared with the outside world. The documents are reportedly intended to ensure that the signatories are legally bound not to share information related to Combs with anyone, including their family, spouses, friends, business associates or colleagues. The signatories are also required not to share photos and/or take videos and record, or cause another person to do so, without written consent from Combs. The document also listed specific names of social media sites where the signatories could not post unsigned photos. In addition, the participants could not be interviewed, write books or distribute information or details in any other way about Combs without his written permission.

One of the first to combine luxury business and hip hop

Combs was an incredibly successful figure in the music industry and American culture in general. He was one of the first to combine the worlds of hip-hop, business and luxury. Combs founded Bad Boy Records in 1993, a label that represented some of the biggest names in hip-hop, including artists such as Usher and Biggie Smalls (Notorious B.I.G.). In 1998, he created the luxury clothing line Sean John, which later became a phenomenon and a sought-after commodity. He launched a perfume and vodka brand, Cîroc, and owned a $65 million yacht and a black private jet. He also founded a media company and became the host of several reality shows where he discovered new talents and turned anonymous into stars. He has won three Grammy Awards and is considered one of the most influential hip-hop producers of the last three decades.

According to Forbes, the rapper has almost reached billionaire status thanks to his extensive business empire. However, as a result of the accumulation of allegations against him, his net worth dropped dramatically from $740 million in 2019 to $400 million last June. Today his fortune is estimated at 600 million dollars.

In the weeks leading up to the publication of Ventura’s lawsuit last November, Combs made several media moves, including a $1 million donation to Harvard University, where Combs studied business administration, before dropping out. So much has crumbled since then. Combs resigned as chairman of the REVOLT cable channel he helped found in 2013 and sold his stake to an anonymous buyer for tens of millions, according to Billboard. Between the parties there has been since 2010.

Global beverage giant Diageo, which owns beverage brands such as Johnnie Walker and Guinness, also recently ended its 15-year partnership with the rapper, and no longer uses him as the face of its brands, such as DeLeon tequila and Cîroc vodka. At the end of September, Costco became another brand in a line of brands that stopped doing business with the disgraced rapper.

Capital Preparatory Schools, a New York chain of schools that Coombs supported, said on its website last fall that it was severing ties with him (though the statement was later removed).

Recently, New York City Mayor Eric Adams asked Combs to return the key to the city, which he received in a ceremony held in Times Square in September 2023, coinciding with the release of his album “The Love Album: Off The Grid”. Harvard returned the million dollar donation.

Coombs’ life of luxury and the connection to the affair

For many years, almost every rapper who wanted to succeed aspired to enter the gates of the Combs mansion, which are decorated with torches that burn day and night. The rapper lives on what is known as the most expensive street in Beverly Hills, and his mansion, which was purchased for about 40 million dollars in 2014, has become one of the clear symbols of his success. The mansion includes 11 bedrooms, private pools and a movie theater, and the many parties held there are cited as the scene of many of the crimes described in the lawsuits. Befitting a celebrity, she is surrounded by high fences that keep prying eyes away.

Several social media posts recently talked about the existence of a tunnel connecting the Combs mansion to another one, famous in its own right – Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion, which sits a few blocks down the street. A fact check by Reuters confirmed that the claims are fabricated and are just another piece of conspiratorial information tied into the scandal.

Combs’ list of assets does not stop there, and he owns luxury apartments in New York and a mansion in Miami. These houses, which until recently stood out as part of his glittering public myth, may become part of future in-depth investigations if it is proven that they were used as scenes for problematic events. Desperate to raise cash, Combs recently put his Beverly Hills home up for sale for $61.5 million — the same home that was raided by the Department of Homeland Security last March.

The current home of Combs, whose one of his most successful songs claims Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down, is the Brooklyn Detention Center, which is used for complex racketeering investigations. As part of it, lawsuits including accusations of sex trafficking were handled as well as the files of the singer R. Kelly and businessman Jeffrey Epstein, who also shook Hollywood badly.