The rise and fall of Sean ‚Diddy‘ Combs | Ents & Arts News

Sean „Diddy“ Combs leans out of the window of a sleek black SUV, holding aloft a large, wood-mounted key as the vehicle makes its way past the flashing screens of Times Square.

„New York, we f****** did it,“ he shouts. „Let’s go!“

It’s September 2023 and the hip-hop impresario has just been handed the key to the city by Mayor Eric Adams. This is a full-circle moment for the rapper and producer „from the Harlem streets“, just a few miles but also a world away from the life he has become accustomed to. This symbolic key is the latest marker of Combs‚ rise from ambitious young rap aficionado to one of the most influential hip-hop producers of the previous 30 years.

Fast-forward a year, and the key is gone. In September 2024, the rapper is locked in jail facing serious criminal charges – strenuously denied – of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking following allegations of abuse.

Combs rose to fame in the 1990s, through a music career that expanded into business enterprises that in 2022 took his net worth to a reported $1bn. Before the likes of Jay-Z, Pharrell and Kanye West were building their business empires, it was Diddy who ingrained hip-hop culture into fashion and lifestyle, and firmly into the mainstream.

But behind the glamour, prosecutors allege there was a man capable of sexual abuse and violence, and a serious abuse of power.

The early years

Combs, now 55, was born and raised in Harlem, New York, in 1969, to mother Janice and father Melvin. Melvin Combs, who had served in the US air force but was also involved in drug dealing, was shot dead when his son was just a toddler.

The rapper did not find out the truth about his father’s killing until he was older. In interviews, he has said it spurred him on to stay „off the streets“ and „try and be somebody“.

Combs also has a sister, Keisha, and the family moved 12 miles north to the suburb of Mount Vernon in Westchester County after his father’s death. He was raised Catholic and served as an altar boy, but „always had that hustle“ from an early age, saying in interviews that he worked as a paperboy and a busboy, clearing tables, in his younger years.

The nickname „Puffy“ – which led to Puff Daddy, the first of several artist names he chose for himself – apparently came from his tendency for tantrums. „Whenever I got mad as a kid, I used to always huff and puff,“ he reportedly told Jet magazine in 1998.

After leaving school, Combs enrolled to study business and hone his entrepreneurial skills at Howard University in Washington DC. But when a route into the music industry came through an internship at New York’s Uptown Records in 1990, taken on by the label’s founder Andre Harrell, he left higher education behind after his second year.

It was at Uptown he worked with artists including Mary J Blige and Jodeci and started to create a name for himself. However, tragedy struck when Combs helped to promote a celebrity charity basketball event featuring rapper Heavy D at New York’s City College in 1991 – a surging crowd led to a stampede that resulted in the deaths of nine people and injuries of 29 others.

While no criminal charges were filed, a state judge found the college, along with Combs and Heavy D, equally liable for the tragedy.

Bad Boy and Notorious BIG

In 1992, Combs signed a then unknown Christopher Wallace, aka the Notorious BIG or Biggie Smalls, to Uptown. The following year, Combs was fired from the label over differences with Harrell – but quickly decided to start over, and took his rap protege with him.

Bad Boy Records was founded in 1993 and Juicy, the first Notorious BIG single, was released in 1994. The tale of a fantasy of a better life becoming reality – „It was all a dream“, as the famous intro goes – it is consistently voted among the greatest hip-hop tracks of all time.

Combs was reportedly instrumental in the decision to make it lead single. „I wanted to release music that let people know he was more than just a gangster rapper,“ he said in one interview.

The debut album, Ready To Die, came shortly afterwards and the Notorious BIG quickly became a huge name. A simmering rivalry between the East Coast’s Bad Boy and the West Coast’s Death Row Records heightened, and Combs‘ flashy persona and apparent hunger for fame himself did not go unnoticed by his competitors.

Bad Boy went on to sign artists including Faith Evans (Wallace’s wife) and Mase, and in January 1997, Combs – as Puff Daddy – released his own debut single, Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down, featuring Mase.

Just two months later, in the early hours of 9 March 1997, Wallace was killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles, at the age of 24. The murder, which remains unsolved, came six months after the fatal shooting of West Coast rapper Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas.

Wallace’s second album, the prophetically titled Life After Death, was released just a few weeks later. Combs channelled his grief into music, sampling The Police’s Every Breath You Take in I’ll Be Missing You, featuring Evans and 112, which became one of the biggest-selling singles of the year in both the UK and the US. His debut album, No Way Out, was a hit after its release a few months later.

High-profile relationships – and brushes with the law

In his personal life, Combs became a father to his first son Justin, with designer Misa Hylton, in 1993, and was in an on-off relationship with model and actress Kim Porter for several years. They had a son, Christian, in 1998, and he also adopted her older son, Quincy.

By the late 1990s, he was a huge star in his own right thanks to hits including Come With Me, sampling Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir, and collaborations and production work for artists including Mariah Carey, Busta Rhymes and LL Cool J.

He also launched his own fashion line, Sean John, as well as his annual White Parties – once the hottest ticket in town, with celebrities including Carey, Paris Hilton, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ashton Kutcher pictured attending over the years.

Combs said he wanted to associate hip-hop with aspirational wealth and high society. „I wanted to strip away everyone’s image and put us all in the same colour, and on the same level,“ he told Oprah Winfrey in one interview.

His highest profile relationship began in 1999, when the rapper started dating Jennifer Lopez. He was among the producers who worked on her debut album, On The 6, released that year.

Read more:
Diddy – a timeline of allegations
Everything you need to know about the trial

But there were also legal troubles, too. In April 1999, he was accused of assaulting rival record executive Steve Stoute, but the charge was lowered to harassment.

Later that year, he was accused of criminal possession of a weapon after a shooting at a New York nightclub he had been at with Lopez. Witnesses told police they saw Combs with a firearm at the club and that rapper Shyne, real name Moses Barrow, fired into the crowd.

Combs was later acquitted of weapons and bribery charges, while Shyne was found guilty of the club shooting and went on to serve more than eight years in prison. Lopez was not charged with any offence.

In 2001, Combs and Lopez broke up – and Combs also changed his stage name from Puff Daddy to P Diddy that year. By this time, he was starring in films, including Monster’s Ball, for which Halle Berry won her Oscar in 2002. He also became a producer and talent scout on the US reality show Making The Band, putting together musical acts Da Band and Danity Kane.

Under the P Diddy name, he reached new heights of success. In 2004, he went from performing in the Super Bowl halftime show – the year that became overshadowed by Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson’s „wardrobe malfunction“ incident – to heading the Vote or Die! campaign for the US presidential election.

Relationship with Cassie – and Brand Diddy

In 2005, there was another name change – a simple shortening to Diddy. It was also this year that Combs met R’n’B singer Casandra Ventura, known as Cassie, when she was 19 and he was 37, and signed her to his label.

The following year, he became a father of daughters, having twins with Porter as well as another baby girl, with businesswoman Sarah Chapman, earlier that year.

His relationship with Cassie reportedly started in 2007 and the couple were together on and off until their break-up was confirmed in 2018.

During this period, Combs was continuing to build his empire, signing a deal to become the face of Ciroc vodka in 2007. It was this partnership, which ended in 2023, that at one point led to the bulk of his net worth. The following year, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In 2013, he co-founded the television network Revolt; another partnership that drew to an end in 2023.

Despite leaving Howard before he graduated, Combs received an honorary doctorate from the university in 2014. „You cannot achieve success without failure,“ he told students in the audience. „Some of my biggest successes come from some of my biggest failures.“

Just a year later, he was facing legal troubles, arrested on charges of assault with a weapon for an incident involving a kettlebell at the University of California, where his son Justin was on the football team. The charges were later dropped.

In 2017, Diddy became Brother Love. „I’m just not who I am before, I’m something different,“ he said. „So my new name is Love aka Brother Love.“

In 2022, he announced on social media the birth of a daughter, named Love, whose mother is cybersecurity professional and model Dana Tran.

Musical comeback – and Cassie allegations

While Combs continued to produce and collaborate with other artists, after the release of his fourth album, Press Play, in 2006, there was a 17-year gap before his return to the album charts. The Love Album: Off The Grid was released in September 2023, just days after a performance at the MTV Music Video Awards – at which he received the global icon award.

Two months later, Cassie filed a lawsuit against Combs. In court documents, she alleged she was trafficked, raped, drugged and beaten by the rapper on many occasions over the course of 10 years.

The lawsuit was settled the following day. Terms of the agreement were not made public but there was no admission of wrongdoing from Combs, and he issued a statement saying he „vehemently“ denied the „offensive and outrageous“ allegations.

In May 2024, footage showing Combs attacking Cassie in a hotel hallway in 2016 was published by CNN. By this point, federal agents were investigating Combs, and the following month, he was asked to hand back his key to New York City.

Then came his high-profile arrest at a hotel in Manhattan.

Now, he faces criminal charges of sex trafficking and racketeering, which he has pleaded not guilty to and strenuously denied, as well as further lawsuits which mounted in the wake of his arrest.

Jury selection for his trial is now under way – with opening statements set to begin next week.