Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs may have bought the silence of his A-list friends by handing them back the lucrative rights to their music records in exchange for NDAs, a former rapper in his orbit claimed.
A month before Diddy was hit with a scathing lawsuit from his ex-girlfriend Cassie that ultimately resulted in criminal charges, Diddy surprised the music industry by giving back publishing rights under his Bad Boy label to a host of artists under his control.
While the decision was praised at the time, rapper Mark Curry joined the Daily Mail’s hit podcast The Trial of Diddy this week to offer his thoughts from the inside about what he believes really went down.
‘He gave all of the artists back their publishing rights in exchange for an NDA not to talk about him,’ he claimed. ‘Because I think he had some kind of idea that this was coming down the pipeline.
‘Tried to cover up his tracks real quick – it didn’t work.’
Curry appeared alongside host Marjorie Hernandez, Daily Mail’s West Coast News Editor, for the episode to delve into the legacy of Diddy following his arrest.
The rapper told us even years after leaving Bad Boy, he still has not recovered financially or emotionally.
After years of touring and writing hits for Diddy, the promise of his debut album never materialized. And the publishing rights to the songs he wrote under Bad Boy brought zero money to his own pocket since Diddy and the label owned the lion’s share of the publishing rights.
Disillusioned, Curry said he made the decision to step away from his rap career, and went back home to Georgia. To make ends meet, he became a carpenter.
But the ups and downs of his career with Bad Boy and dealing with the ‘devil’ – what he often calls Diddy – continue to haunt him.
In 2009, Curry wrote a book titled ‘Dancing with the Devil: How Puff Burned the Bad Boys of Hip-Hop’ detailing his oftentimes tumultuous experiences working under Combs.
He said the last time he spoke to Diddy was around September 2023 – a month before Cassie would file her bombshell lawsuit.
It was then that Diddy made his move that surprised the music industry, by returning the publishing rights that Bad Boy owned from its original artists, including Curry, rapper Ma$e, Cam’ron, Faith Evans, The Lox, 112 and others.
While many in the industry applauded Diddy’s decision, Curry said he believes the producer already knew the walls were closing in on him.
‘He gave all of the artists back they publishing rights in exchange for an NDA not to talk about him,’ he claimed. ‘Because I think he had some kind of idea that this was coming down the pipeline.
‘Tried to cover up his tracks real quick – it didn’t work.’
Curry equated getting his publishing rights back as ‘like giving you back a Nissan Sentra when it was brand new in 2024’ when it ‘was not even valued in the junkyard.’
‘They got smart cars now, battery operated Teslas and stuff,’ he added.
‘I felt like he gave me back a female that I used to love that he abused and raped, took advantage of her, then gave her back to me. I used to love her… That’s how I felt about it. I used to love her. Then he did that.’
Curry said that ‘as soon as I got it back, I got rid of it in the same stroke – I don’t want it.’
When asked by Hernandez if he signed an NDA, Curry responded: ‘(Diddy) can’t tell me not to do anything.
‘Because we had a contract when we first got into business and it said that you was going to help me further my career. That didn’t work. So now any other contract that you have for me, I’m avoiding it too.
‘So since we’re going to be disrespectful, we’re going to be disrespectful all the way around the table. It just ain’t going to be you telling me and me listening. So I’ll be like, cool. That ain’t gonna stop me from doing nothing.’
Curry’s appearance comes after Hernandez was joined last time by Greg Kading, one of the investigators who was assigned to the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur in 1996.
He explored Diddy’s alleged connection to the slaying, which was said to have been rooted in a beef between Diddy’s Bad Boy Records on the East Coast and Marion ‘Suge’ Knight’s Death Row Records on the West Coast.
Tupac’s murder came on September 13, 1996, when he was gunned down on the Las Vegas strip in a car driven by Suge Knight. Six months later, as he was leaving a party in LA after the 1997 Soul Train Awards, the Notorious B.I.G. was shot and killed.
Kading claimed Combs hired members from the notorious Crips street gang in 1995 during a stop of the Summer Jams tour in Anaheim, California to carry out the hit.
To hear how Kading explained the alleged connection, follow The Trial of Diddy wherever you get your podcasts now. New episodes are released every week.