Things are usually pretty loud on the set of It Is What It Is, a sports talk show hosted by Harlem rappers Cam’ron and Mase. But in late September, a long-unanswered question between the longtime friends put an end to all their mundane shenanigans.
“When you got your record deal,” Cam’ron said, turning to Mase, “why did you take me to Biggie Smalls and not Bad Boy?”
For context, in the mid-1990s Mase was an artist on Bad Boy Records, the label founded by hip-hop producer and mogul Sean “Puffy” Combs. This label was soon truly elevated by platinum star Christopher Wallace, known worldwide as “The Notorious BIG” or colloquially as “Biggie Smalls”. Mase’s friend Cam’ron had not yet released a studio album, but he was gaining attention as an underground artist and also seemed destined to become famous.
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All these years later, this was apparently the first time they had broached the subject. After a long pause, Mase tried to answer, “Man, it almost brings me to tears when I say that. Since I saw you as such a good friend, I wanted to set you up with someone I knew would be…”
“Don’t make me cry and shit here,” Cam’ron said.
Mase prevailed: “I knew Biggie would please you.”
The emotional moment was particularly notable because what remained unsaid between the friends was that Combs was someone who wouldn’t please his artists – that he should be avoided.
This story came to mind last week when it was announced that Combs was facing a federal lawsuit from former R&B singer Cassie, who accused him of rape and of abusing and harassing her and her associates over more than a decade .
In a 35-page filing that came with an unusual trigger warning, Cassie, whose real name is Casandra Ventura, claimed that Combs sold her to his label for a ten-dollar deal in February 2006, when he was 37 and she was 19. signed an album contract. According to Ventura’s lawsuit, Combs spent the next year exerting increasing control over her professional and personal life, eventually plying her with drugs and pressuring her for sex during a trip to Miami in the fall of 2007. “Within two years of meeting Mr. Combs “Ms. Ventura was lured into the immediate circle of her boss, the owner of her record label and one of the most powerful men in the entertainment industry,” the lawsuit says.
Combs clearly denied this, stating through his attorney that Ventura had “sustained demands for $30 million” over the past six months and “wanted to damage Mr. Combs’ reputation.”
A day later, Combs and Ventura announced they had reached an agreement. In a statement, Combs said: “We have decided to resolve this matter amicably. I wish Cassie and her family all the best. Love.” Neither side disclosed details of the terms of the deal, including the amount of money exchanged.
While Combs quickly concluded a potentially embarrassing and threatening legal proceeding, I don’t believe Ventura’s allegations will disappear from the public record any time soon. The lawsuit appeared to resurface a flood of information about Combs’ alleged misdeeds on gossip sites and social media. The founder of the Baby Phat clothing line accused him of threatening to hit her when she was pregnant (Combs is said to have apologized to her for this). to his former chef who sued him for sexual harassment and not paying her in full for overtime (this case was privately settled in 2019).
“He’s an idiot if he thinks this is all behind him. It’s just the beginning,” Dream Hampton, executive producer of the Lifetime Network docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly” and legendary hip-hop magazine writer, said on X, formerly Twitter.
Why was it such a floodgate moment? I suspect that’s because many of the allegations in Ventura’s stunning lawsuit echo previous allegations and complaints against Combs, now 54, during his nearly 35 years in the public spotlight.
Part of this lawsuit caught my attention as someone who has been covering the deadly rivalry between Combs and Marion “Suge” Knight, founder of rival Death Row Records, over the last few years. Knight, a 6-foot-3 former NFL defensive lineman who was associated with the Bloods street gang, took much of the blame for the ongoing tensions — and ultimately ended up in prison for his role in a dispute with a Compton gang member According to prosecutors, rap superstar Tupac Shakur was fatally shot in Nevada. Before that, he almost seemed to take pleasure in publicly challenging Combs and daring him to escalate their conflict.
But I’ve long felt that the Combs vs. Knight feud all too often portrays the overly concerned Combs as an unwilling foil to music’s biggest tyrant. Their deadly rivalry was never quite as one-sided as it seemed. And as the recent lawsuit may underscore, Combs also had a penchant for violence and bullying, which never seemed to slow his fame.
Ventura’s lawsuit against Combs asserted a number of unusual claims, all brought under a New York law that temporarily allowed people claiming to be victims of sexual abuse to file suit after the statute of limitations had expired. (The window extended by that law expired last week.) In a statement, Ventura said: “As the expiration of New York’s Adult Survivors Act grew ever closer, it became clear that this was an opportunity to speak about the trauma that I “I have experienced and.” from which I will recover for the rest of my life.”
Her allegations include that over several years Combs coerced her into having sex with male prostitutes while he watched, masturbated, took photos and made videos as part of a ritual he called “freak offs”; After learning that she called her grandfather “Pop Pop,” Combs insisted on calling him by that nickname. and that Combs once threatened to blow up the car of one of Ventura’s former partners, rapper Kid Cudi. Shortly after making this threat, Kid Cudi’s car exploded in his driveway. Cudi’s lawyer confirmed this story to The New York Times in 2012. (Before settling the lawsuit, Combs denied all allegations through his attorney.)
It’s disturbing to read through all of this. But the claim that really caught my attention was this: Ventura claims she and Combs were once using drugs at his Los Angeles home when a member of security burst in and said Knight had been seen at a nearby restaurant. According to the lawsuit, Combs hastily dressed, collected an array of weapons from his home and headed to Mel’s house, hoping to confront Knight.
Why did this pique my interest? Let’s go back to last month’s arrest of Duane Keith Davis, better known as Keffe D, on murder charges in connection with the death of Tupac Shakur. Davis is believed to be the only surviving member of the four Southside Crips who allegedly killed Shakur in a drive-by shooting just off the Vegas Strip in September 1996.
Shakur was on the Knight’s Death Row label and a rival to Combs and Wallace. In fact, Davis had long complicated the murder case by claiming that Combs had offered to pay $1 million for the deaths of Shakur and Knight. Davis claims that he had known Combs for several years at that point and had met him through a drug dealer named Eric “Von Zip” Martin in New York. Davis said Combs first asked him and the Crips to work security for bad boy artists in the mid-1990s.
“Puffy would give us tickets to their bad boy shows on the West Coast. We went everywhere with these fools. We would meet them at the hotel, get the tickets and go with them. I always rode in the van with the nigga. “There were Crips behind the scenes at most of these West Coast shows,” Davis wrote in his memoir “Compton Street Legend.” Combs has always denied hiring gang members as his security.
A year into the safety gig, Davis said Combs approached him with a much more daunting request: “I have a few problems I need to solve. “Big CEO and Pac,” Davis remembers Combs saying in his memoir. “It’s not a problem. We can do this,” Davis allegedly told Combs.
There was no contract, not even a handshake, nothing like that, Davis later told Los Angeles Police Department Detective Greg Kading. “It was more of a gentlemen’s agreement,” Kading wrote of these events in his book “Murder Rap.” Kading even extracted a confession from Davis in 2009 as part of a multi-agency investigation into the murders of Shakur and Wallace. But Davis wasn’t officially arrested until earlier this year.
That’s partly because Kading has long had doubts about Davis’ claims about Combs’ bounty on Death Row stars. “We were never able to substantiate the context of the conversation,” Kading told me last week, even though Davis confirmed the verbal exchange. “There could have been some nuanced interpretations of it.” In Davis’ version of events, he never explicitly says that Combs asked him to kill anyone, a plausible deniability for both.
In Davis’ memoir, he recalls meeting Martin, the New York associate he shared with Combs, three days after the Vegas shooting that killed Shakur. During the meal, Martin took a call from Combs, who asked both men, “Was that us?” Davis replied that it was. According to Kading’s book, Combs was “happy as hell” with that answer.
Davis said he tried to contact Martin for weeks about the money – the promise was, after all, a million dollars. But he could never concede. Not long after, Davis was caught up in an unrelated drug case and sent to federal prison for more than five years. He said he never spoke to Combs or Martin again.
“Meeting Puffy was like a bad dream that I’m still trying to wake up from,” Davis wrote in Compton Street Legend. “I hate that I ever met that son of a bitch – my life has gone backwards since then.”
Davis, now 60, pleaded not guilty to murder in the Shakur case on November 2 in Las Vegas. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. Prosecutors said Davis implicated himself in the murder in several interviews over the past few years and in his memoirs.
So that’s what’s happening to Davis. What happens to Combs given Davis’ claims about his role in Shakur’s murder? Kading said the LAPD questioned Combs about his alleged role in Shakur’s killing more than a decade ago, but ultimately it turned up nothing.
“It happened under very controlled circumstances. Puffy will be isolated by his lawyers who will protect him at all costs,” Kading said. “We all agree that justice should be blind and not influenced by money. But the reality is that it is.”
But prosecutors in Nevada have not indicated that Combs will be involved in the new murder case against Davis, and Kading doubts Combs will ever be implicated or face charges.
But even if Combs never goes to trial, there are still plenty of people waiting to see him face a long-overdue reckoning. One of those people is Mark Curry, who for years was one of the few people in the entertainment industry willing to publicly challenge Combs.
Curry, a former Bad Boy rapper, published a tell-all book in 2009 called “Dancing With the Devil: How Puff Burned the Bad Boys of Hiphop.” In 268 pages, Curry offers an unsparing look at the people and careers Combs trampled on during his own rise to fame and fortune. “Apart from Puff, no one else has had success with the label,” Curry wrote.
Curry began working with Combs and Bad Boy in early 1997 with the task of writing the song “Come With Me” for the Godzilla film soundtrack. It didn’t take long for him to realize that Combs was ruthless as a businessman. Curry wrote that Combs pressured him to sign a contract that would require him to give up half of his publishing rights, and that he even suggested that his career would be over if he didn’t agree to the deal.
“Puff was a rich cat with no musical talent, but also with a stable of mostly white advisors and lawyers who taught him how to voodoo his artists,” Curry wrote.
Curry quickly realized that he was trapped in the same exploitative business arrangement as most other Bad Boy artists, including Wallace. “I was in the same situation as Biggie when he signed with Bad Boy,” Curry wrote. “For example, after Biggie signed the contracts Puff forced on him, he walked away with just $25,000. To prevent people from finding out how broke Biggie was when he was killed, Puff announced he would give several million dollars to the fallen star’s family.”
Curry said he soon realized that most of Combs’ artists were struggling after they signed contracts and even sold a lot of records; Some of them returned to a life of crime and eventually died penniless. As an example, Curry pointed to his old friend, the late rapper Robert Ross, better known as Black Rob, who released a platinum album on Bad Boy in 2000 – but then went to prison for grand theft in connection with a hotel robbery in November 2004. He later fought He struggled with homelessness before dying of cardiac arrest in April 2021. He was 52 years old.
“They don’t free niggas,” Curry said of Combs. “You must still be criminals and know that you have money and that we mean nothing to you. Poof, how do you feel knowing that?”
Once one of the label’s most promising stars, Curry appeared on six songs on Combs’ third album The Saga Continues…, including the hit “Bad Boy for Life.” But Combs never released his solo album, and Curry became frustrated and eventually terminated his contract in 2005. In recent years, he has broadcast his crusade against Combs on his YouTube channel and social media accounts. When I spoke to him last weekend, Curry wanted to finally have an audience again.
“What I always called him was the master of dodging,” Curry said. Combs was “very careful, very clever, about dodging the question and sending you away with an answer that you thought was right.” It’s like walking into his office and talking about a million-dollar deal “You could talk that you deserve, and when you leave the office you leave thinking that all you have to do to make it happen is sell a cheesecake.”
Combs is certainly adept at evading critical scrutiny, partly by using his millions to make his problems go away, and partly by charming the media and fans with his benevolent silliness and talent for reinvention. Since becoming a celebrity in the 1990s, Combs has changed his stage name from Puff Daddy to P. Diddy, to Diddy to Love, then to Brother Love, and even went so far as to legally change his middle name from John to Love.
In a sensational September 2021 Vanity Fair profile of Combs (which, to give full disclosure, the publication approached me about writing but I declined), Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote that Combs “greets me and my assistant with a bear hug .” When I mention that it’s one of my first hugs since COVID-19 made human contact seem dangerous, he comes in again. Sean Combs loves to spread the love.” In this interview he was perfectly harmless, almost gentle-hearted. He even took the initiative to start the #MeToo movement, saying, “It inspired me. It showed me that you can achieve maximum change.” But in the interview, Combs also points to his ongoing, not-so-subtle image cultivation. “I was always a hustler, always.”
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That’s what Curry can’t forget. Today, Curry lives in Atlanta and works as a carpenter – “like Jesus,” he told me. He said he also wanted to sue Diddy, although he admitted to me that he was having a hard time coming up with a strong case to sue, although “it has stunted my growth and I kind of want him to pay for it,” he said.
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In his book, Curry also described a series of violent incidents he witnessed at Combs that are reminiscent of some of the abuse allegations made by Ventura. One alleged incident that occurred in 2000 involved Kim Porter, Combs’ ex-girlfriend and mother of three of his children. During a lull in their on-again, off-again relationship, Combs learned that Porter was dating an Atlanta-based music manager and flew into a rage. Combs is said to have tracked down the man and, flanked by a few bodyguards, attacked him with a chair.
“He’s a very possessive person,” Curry said. “And that applies to all areas of life. He’s just a strange person, a person who likes to be in control.”
Curry wasn’t with the Bad Boy label when Ventura performed, but he said he supported their efforts to finally hold Combs accountable.
“If Cassie is married and happy and has made these allegations, that means she needs to deal with it in order to move on,” Curry said. “Her husband holds her and is by her side. She wouldn’t lie and risk tearing down her own house.”
And because of Combs’ legendary temper and long list of assault allegations, Curry wanted to make one thing clear about the risk of speaking out publicly: “In the event something happens to me,” Curry said, “blame him .”