Love is something that I live for,’ declared the hip-hop mogul P Diddy when I plucked up the courage to ask about his unconventional private life.
‘Love is something that I need. But I haven’t been able to be successful at it.’
The mood inside the luxury caravan where I was attempting to interview the 41-year-old father of six (by three different women) was in the process of becoming very chilly indeed.
‘Is that why,’ I continued, ‘you’ve never decided to settle down and get married?’
Before meeting Diddy (real name Sean Combs), I’d been told three things. First: he’ll arrive late. Second: there will be an enormous entourage. Third: despite being a household name, Diddy hates – absolutely hates! – talking about anything involving his domestic arrangements. All three turned out to be 100 per cent true.
P Diddy (real name Sean Combs) is facing a tidal wave of criminal allegations, from rape and sex trafficking to assault and even child abuse
‘Look’, Diddy replied, leaning forward from a white leather sofa. ‘In a perfect world, sure, things would have worked out that way. I would have married one of the women that I’ve had children with.
‘But it didn’t work out that way. Right now, I don’t have a desire to get married, or a desire not to get married. So far, it just didn’t happen for me. For some people it does happen. For others it just doesn’t happen. It’s something I leave in God’s hands. OK?’
With that, the line of conversation was politely, but firmly, closed down: an American PR handler said it was time for me to ask a few questions about one of his recently launched line of fragrances.
The year was 2011. I was working in Hollywood as a correspondent for a national newspaper. Diddy (‘call me Sean’) was midway through an extraordinary transformation from streetwise rap artist to billionaire founder of global lifestyle brands.
My audience with this titan of the entertainment industry, which took place on the set of a music video in the Mojave Desert, several hours drive north of Los Angeles would last for about 45 minutes.
But that tiny exchange above marked the closest I came to breaking down the impenetrable facade that P Diddy maintained throughout our encounter.
Thirteen years on, I’m starting to understand why. For Diddy’s closely protected private life is today at the centre of a grotesque scandal threatening to rock the US entertainment industry to its core.
Today, the 54-year-old former rap artist is banged up at the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn, New York, facing a tidal wave of criminal allegations, from rape and sex trafficking to assault and even child abuse.
Diddy with rapper Jay-Z, and singers Usher and Mariah Carey at an event in New York in 2004
Dozens of women have claimed they were drugged and raped by Diddy after meeting him in exclusive bars and nightclubs that he frequented throughout his music career
Police have raided his homes in Florida and LA, searching for evidence to corroborate claims aired in a string of lawsuits that accuse the musician of using his wealth and celebrity to cover up depraved sexual behaviour over several decades.
Combs’s lawyer says the rapper ’emphatically and categorically denies as false and defamatory any claim that he sexually abused anyone, including minors’.
Last week, a lawyer named Tony Buzbee, who is acting for 120 alleged victims, held an extraordinary press conference in which he promised to file lawsuits in multiple states that will name ‘many powerful people’ with ‘many dirty secrets’ related to their friendship with Diddy.
Dozens of women have claimed they were drugged and raped by Combs after meeting him in exclusive bars and nightclubs that he frequented throughout his music career. A male employee, music producer Rodney Jones, has portrayed him as an Epstein-like figure, saying he was forced by Diddy to have sex with prostitutes, while the star videoed the encounters.
Their testimony suggests that Diddy’s carefully cultivated public image concealed some very dark secrets.
There was certainly something highly unusual about the man I met all those years ago. Despite being a high-rolling multi-millionaire, with the sort of lifestyle others dream of, he was strangely melancholy. As I noted then, he never once cracked a smile in the time I spent in his company. But the oddball behaviour seemed to be very much part of a brand.
Our first scheduled meeting was supposed to take place in one of the Beverly Hills Hotel’s famous ‘bungalows,’ where Old Hollywood stars such as Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe held court. But it was cancelled some three hours after our 10am rendezvous time, on the grounds that Diddy had overslept after a late-night party.
When we did eventually catch up, on the aforementioned music set, I was made to hang around, watching Diddy being trailed by an entourage that included two personal assistants, a personal chef, a butler, a manservant employed entirely to hold his toothpicks, and a stylist called Dave, who kindly lent me one of the artist’s cashmere cardigans to guard against the cold.
A price tag, still attached, revealed that it had cost $2,500. Diddy’s caravan was fitted with white leather sofas and fur rugs, and lit by dozens of expensive smelling Diptyque candles that cost upwards of £50 a pop.
The man himself was wearing diamonds, fur, dark glasses and a set of entirely gold teeth. It was part of an image that allowed him to sell clothes (under the label Sean John), fragrances (‘Unforgivable’ and ‘I Am King’), and a popular brand of vodka (Ciroc).
Singer Jennifer Lopez pictured with P Diddy at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in 2000. The pair dated from 1999 to 2001
‘What I sell, to be honest, I sell lifestyle. I sell entertainment. It all falls under one umbrella, one mindset,’ was how he explained the business to me.
His life story was, on paper, extraordinary: the son of a Harlem street dealer who’d been shot dead when he was a toddler, Diddy first achieved fame via the drug and crime-fuelled New York gangster rap scene of the early 1990s. When I asked how he’d first achieved success, he put it down to an uncanny ability to identify hit songs.
‘From the age of 12, I would be able to hear records on the radio, and the first time I would hear them, I would say, ‘I like that record.’ Each time, it would go on to become a top-ten hit,’ he recalled. ‘The first time I heard a record, if I liked it a lot, I just knew it would be a hit. So I felt like I had an ear.’
In 1997, Diddy first hit the mainstream news pages via the murder of his best friend and creative partner Christopher Wallace – known by the stage name ‘Biggie Smalls’ – during a dispute between rival rap gangs.
The aftermath of the tragedy saw him release a tribute to his late friend: I’ll Be Missing You, sampling the Police song Every Breath You Take. It hit No 1 in 15 countries. That success convinced Diddy that a considerable fortune could be made producing a brand of hip-hop that could be sold to America’s middle classes.
By the time we’d met, the one-time gang member had become a fully paid-up member of the celebrity class, starring in movies such as Get Me To The Greek (in which he rubbed shoulders with another fallen star, Russell Brand), and reality TV shows, including I Want To Work For Diddy, an Apprentice knock-off in which he tests would-be employees by making them complete important tasks, such as sourcing him a slice of cheesecake, in Manhattan, at 2am.
By 2010, Forbes put his annual earnings at $30 million (£19 million) and estimated his net worth at ten times that amount. He was designated a billionaire in 2022.
When we met, he was happiest boasting about his commercial success (‘Look, I’m one of the greatest that ever did it,’ was how he described his career), and prickly when it came to almost everything else.
Throughout this period, he’d kept his various children and ex-girlfriends in a collection of luxury homes in Florida, jetting in from time to time to take them on holidays in superyachts. Yet the somewhat unorthodox arrangement is alleged to have concealed some ugly secrets.
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They first became public last November, when ex-girlfriend Casandra Ventura filed a lawsuit accusing him of rape, violence and sex trafficking, saying he was ‘prone to uncontrollable rage’, with claims including he ‘blew up a man’s car after he learned that he was romantically interested in Ms Ventura’.
She accused him of plying her with drugs, beating her and forcing her to have sex with a succession of male prostitutes while he filmed the encounters. Towards the end of their 13-year relationship in 2018, the lawsuit said Diddy forced his way into her home and raped her.
A day after the legal complaint was filed, Diddy – who denied wrongdoing – nonetheless settled the case.
Yet the ensuing publicity had within days prompted two more women to file similar lawsuits claiming that he’d also abused them several years earlier. By March, five accusers had gone public, and the Department for Homeland Security had opened an investigation.
Then, in May, CNN obtained a security video from a LA hotel showing Diddy, in only a towel and socks, kicking, punching and dragging a woman, identified as Ventura, some time in 2016.
‘He’s a flawed person, but he’s not a criminal,’ said his lawyers. But detectives disagreed: on September 16, with the number of complainants ticking up into the dozens, he was finally arrested.
Diddy’s future is now in the hands of the US justice system. A sad fate for a man who, when we met, seemed preoccupied with his legacy as role-model for aspirational black Americans. ‘To whom much is given, much is expected,’ he said, when I asked how he wanted to be remembered.
‘I have to step up to that responsibility. To be a shining example of a real person, striving to be the best I can be, the best person, and father.’
That ship has now well and truly sailed.