We often say, out of cliché or convenience, that a film or series does not leave you unscathed. We can’t say it any other way this time: after four hours of watching “Sean Combs, Time of Reckoning”, a documentary in four episodes put online this Tuesday on Netflix, you are no longer quite the same. Drained, washed out, soiled, disgusted, sometimes almost destroyed in your convictions, marked and disoriented by this torrent of revelations, of raw documents which, brought together end to end, paint the portrait of a star rapper who considers himself “the equal of the Son of God” and behaves like the devil. And since the first years of his career.
P.Diddy, 55, was sentenced to 50 months in prison last October in Manhattan federal court for “transporting people for the purposes of prostitution.” A lesser evil for the US rap superstar, who risked life imprisonment. A popular jury acquitted him of two other charges of “criminal conspiracy” and “sex trafficking”. This totally incriminating documentary even opens the door to other accusations.
This Tuesday, the producer, discoverer of Notorious Big or Marie J. Blige, reacted from his prison cell, through the voice of his representative, by expressing his fury at the Netflix documentary, “a shameful and flashy production”. Two adjectives that make you smile yellow in view of the past and the past of P. Diddy, pope of bling-bling and gangsta rap. In his sights, too, and this is more understandable, the producer of the documentary for Netflix, the rapper 50 Cent, his worst enemy for ages.
“Hydroalcoholic gel” urgently requested to “wash” after a crowd bath in Harlem
However, the images and testimonies speak for themselves. Like these videos – “stolen”, his council said on December 2 – ordered by the artist himself in 2024, six days before his arrest: he wanted to be filmed to document his life and one day write its legend. We see him seeking to mobilize the black community in his favor. And in other hideous images, after an impromptu crowd bath in Harlem, he gets into his sedan and urgently asks for “hydroalcoholic gel” and his need to “wash up” after this contact with the plebs. Scenes not intended to be made public…
Director Alexandria Stapelton first focuses on the childhood of Sean Combs, his real name, not spoiled by fate. He did not know his father whom he worships, a Harlem gangster shot dead when he was still a toddler. Fascinated, the rapper discovered as an adult a document showing his mother at the funeral, “in a chinchilla coat”. The detail that marks it. Death and luxury. The story of his life. A childhood friend, his neighbor, tells of this mother who gives him rant after rant, to scare the hell out of him. And who teaches him to strike himself, to move forward.
At 19, the man who first chose the name Puff Daddy, recruited as an intern by the Bad Boy Records label which recruited the first or second great generation of American East Coast rap, quickly became its artistic director through his marketing genius. “The kids in the neighborhood thought he would make them stars,” says a person close to him at the time. And that’s often true. “Puff,” as his clan calls him, has a vision, more than a natural talent as an artist.
His life is littered with terrifying gray areas
He also has his dark side, already. Twenty years old and a first accusation of rape. The first drama too. Young Sean Combs manages to stage a charity match in a New York gymnasium bringing together the elite of New York rappers and NBA basketball players. He has given too much publicity and does not know how to manage the flow of the audience: a trampling at the entrance causes nine deaths. He absolves himself of all responsibility. But what marks him is that the news item made him famous.
His entire life is littered with terrifying gray areas, accusations of fraud, rape and even homicide. He often dares to say that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Several witnesses accuse him of having been involved in the spiral which led in 1996 to the assassination of Tupac Shakur, icon of “West Coast” rap made in LA, in open war with the “East Coast”.
The following year, it was his protégé, The Notorious BIG, who fell under bullets in retaliation in Los Angeles, right in enemy territory. His former friends suspect him of having thrown the champion of his musical stable into the den of the wolf, on purpose. Just after, P. Diddy, recognized more as a producer than an artist until then, finally enters the real light: the only star will henceforth be him, only him.
Those who confide on screen are all former relatives
The people who spoke to Netflix are all former relatives, including musicians, performers or producers who have never received a dollar, or barely, for their work in the service of the master. P. Diddy loves to use and humiliate. The private, sentimental and sexual side opens up to an absolute abyss. Cassie Ventura, his last companion, was at the origin of the rapper’s downfall by testifying to his domestic violence and “rapes”, she claims, for ten years.
The images from hotel surveillance cameras of the star coming out of his shower almost naked with just a towel on his hips to pick up the young woman who was trying to run away from him at the foot of the elevator, hitting her and making her come back by dragging her on the floor, went around the world. A male escort testifies here that he was the couple’s sexual partner for eight years, for voyeurism and sadomasochism sessions. Cassie Ventura, who does not speak on the show, said her partner forced her to do so.
Other women testify to violence and repeated sexual abuse. But how could P. Diddy be the beloved guest on so many talk shows for so long, he who claims to be “on his way to the billion” and claims to represent “the first wave of black economic power,” and slip through the cracks of the legal system until this relatively lenient sentence? Two jurors from the September 2024 trial testify openly: for them, Cassie Ventura weakened her testimony by resuming life together with P. Diddy the day after her filmed assault. As if we were blaming battered women for not having managed to leave their partner, at the risk of femicide.
Yes, it makes you have a strong heart to endure these four hours. We sometimes have the feeling of being faced with absolute Evil, this omnipotence of money, megalomania and misguided success in the absence of any limits. As if certain beings escape all frustration, without any control of impulses, that of raping, humiliating, stealing. Or even worse? P. Diddy talks about God all the time. If he exists and watches Netflix, the latter must not have escaped unscathed either.