Original subtitles

The rap world has been shaken again,

this time by the violent death of the performer

known as Notorious B.I.G.

He went down in a hail of gunfire

on a public street.

His death comes just six months after his rival,

West Coast rapper, Tupac Shakur, was assassinated.

Last six months, hip-hop probably lost its two biggest stars.

It's just a tragedy.

After B.I.G passed, I got this call from Puff.

I remember he sounded so depressed.

He said that he hadn't left the house in days.

He was one of the only people besides my mother

that really cared about me.

And he said, "People have been knocking on my door.

I've just been here by myself. I ain't eat nothing."

And he was almost sounding suicidal.

I just tried to talk some light

into what I could hear was a time of a lot of darkness.

And just tell him that, you know, you have a lot to live for.

Then, I remember days later, him calling me back,

"Yo, G, come by the studio after work."

And he played Every Breath You Take.

And he was playing it loud.

He was just into it and just played it,

and kept playing and dancing to it.

And I remember him asking me,

"What do you think? What do you think?

Do you think people would rock to this?"

I didn't know what to say.

Because, you know, Every Breath You Take was so white pop.

I couldn't hear it or couldn't envision it at the time.

But I'm glad to see that his creative juices were flowing again.

And then I'll Be Missing You was huge.

It was a runaway hit,

it captured the emotions and the grief at the time

that was happening to the African American community.

We just knew this was helping us remember Biggie in some way.

On a Sunday morning...

headed to church, and I'll Be Missing You came on.

It made it to the gospel station,

and that's when I knew who he was.

It was like an amazing grace

for the hip-hop generation.

When people hear that, it still touches people.

He could see things

for the culture that other people just couldn't see.

And I remember just thinking, like, "This man is a genius."

But while this genius man was developing his talent,

what else was not developed

that he became somebody

who could create a lot of pain?

One of my big motivations

of wanting to be a part of this,

it's one of those situations

where you just have no idea in real time

that you're working with somebody

that ends up changing the world.

It is hard to overstate how important

Bad Boy and the Puff sound was to the '90s.

I remember a time where you could listen

to the radio for an hour

and hear nothing but Bad Boy artists for that entire hour.

Diddy knew how to create

what Black culture wanted to see,

what mainstream culture wanted to see,

what American culture wanted to see.

Puffy started to work with producers

that.. that were using samples lifted from records

and then taking some of the vocals, and interpolating them.

Puffy took that to yet another level,

to sing hooks on top of the... the rhymes.

I feel like Combs and crew were just throwing things

against the wall, and everything was sticking.

He was having a relationship

with product and audiences from the beginning.

But nobody really could see that

until the empire got so big,

they was like, "this is what he's been trying to do all this time."

It was interesting to see Puffy

move into other areas other than music.

It was just inevitable for the clothing to be next.

We call it urban high fashion.

We combined the look of the European clothes

to... to the urban style,

which is a little bit loose, a little bit baggy, a little bit more,

has a better fit, too.

Sean John was incredibly successful.

You saw it go from it's just worn on artists,

to it's worn by influential people

in the cultural scene...

to, like, a dad in Missouri

who's got a Sean John shirt.

Could he name any Puff Daddy record?

No. But he knows who Puff is,

and he's rocking the Sean John.

The clothing brand,

now, at this point, transcends the music,

and it becomes part of this mythology...

that Sean Combs begins to build.

I remember going with him to Macy's,

and we were up in... in the boardroom with all the executives,

and they treated him like he was Ralph Lauren.

He was a king.

There was nobody in New York City

that Diddy could not get in touch with.

We used to call him Puff the Magic Dragon,

and we said that with love.

He was so much fun.

He threw the best parties.

I remember seeing celebrities just let their hair down.

I remember seeing Mary J. Blige,

Ashton.

I mean, it was Gatsbyesque.

It was like in the movies.

They were huge.

And part of Sean's move with the parties is not just a party for party's sake,

but really to embellish who he is in the culture.

Who can come to Sean Combs' White Party,

in the Hamptons.

It speaks more to a new Black money.

It carried a different kind of cachet.

What we heard, even at the time that they were taking place,

was that there was a lot of debauchery.

Puffy would have women laid out

and have food on their bodies.

These are things that were photographed and publicized,

and just viewed as kind of grand and opulent.

I started blogging in the early 2000s.

I started getting reports about the type of things

that would happen at these parties.

I was hearing about illicit drugs.

I was hearing about sexual escapades.

I always have decisions to make about stories.

And for a long time,

when it came to things pertaining to Diddy,

I wouldn't run certain things because I feared retribution.

He felt and seemed like he was invincible.

I mean, I work, like, 20 hours a day,

and I feel as a young Black man,

about anything I put my mind to, I could do.

Whatever I put into it, I'm gonna get out of it.

And I put 150%, 200% into anything I do, always.

Diddy really personified

Black excellence and authenticity.

He was succeeding,

and he was doing it in an authentically Black way.

So, he was really someone that a lot of us looked up to.

But with money, he got more gangster,

he got meaner.

He got more no nonsense.

He couldn't let the foot off nobody's neck.

His foot got harder on necks.

Because he knew, "Yo, if I slip one inch,

if I show one inch of weakness...

they gonna take it from me."

I definitely think there's a huge

reflection of his childhood to who he is today.

Sean started breathing rarefied air

before he even realized it.

Janice wanted a prince,

and the last thing she wants to do

is to have her prince making her look bad.

And one thing about anybody from Harlem,

if you're soft, you're done.

That's just the mentality.

'Cause, mind you, she lost her husband.

Now, she's got this kid that looks just like him.

That's emotions.

Someday, she'll wake up, she might be mad when she sees him

because she sees what used to be Melvin.

So, Sean's mom had to fill the shoes

of Sean's dad and mom.

And I'm sure everything from Janice's way of raising him was coming from love.

But there were times that I would see

Janice's personality go from hot to cold.

And he had to be on the receiving end

of a hot night or a cold night.

Janice didn't take no shit. None at all.

She ruled with her iron fist.

Better get right.

And, you know, a lot of times, Sean couldn't get it right.

Couldn't get nothing right.

And she didn't let him get away with nothing.

Nothing.

And that's how it was in Sean's house.

If he did something wrong, he'd get his ass beat,

simple as that.

She knew that he wasn't hard enough.

In those days, that was the order.

You know, you didn't spare the rod.

I remember that real vivid.

Especially if you don't know if the punishment..

Really fits the crime.

Wasn't my place to say whether it was or not, but to me,

it didn't seem necessary at times.

So, he's learning how to be a wolf the hard way.

For him, it wasn't as easy.

It took a while for him to become his wolf.

Goddamn, when he became a wolf,

it was no turning back.

As part of our investigation, we looked at the history

of Diddy's behavior and relationships.

We have found that there has been a clear pattern of abuse

since the beginning, since he was a teenager.

I noticed how he interacted with his girls,

and it was way different than I interacted with my girls.

It was more physical.

It was more self-esteem lowering.

It was a lot of insecurity.

It was a lot of "who you're dealing with.

I heard you was here. I don't like that."

You know, a lot of girls got thrown out of the car.

Sometimes, I would drive his girlfriends' home

to wherever they live

because they... they had a fight.

So, you know, I was the go-to.

I was the "Timmy, what's wrong with him?"

It just never seemed to get better

with him and relationships.

One of Combs' first public relationships was with Misa Hylton,

who also grew up in the Mount Vernon area

and was a teenager when they started dating.

Any girl that's with Sean has to be fixed.

To his specs.

Sean looked at Misa as his blank canvas,

like, "my God.

Yo, dawg, I could fix her. Ooh!."

It was his project.

So, Misa became somebody in the game.

When you think of the most classic, iconic '90s looks,

Misa Hylton was behind them.

She was a visionary in her own right,

creating some of the best-known looks for Lil' Kim.

She really created the mold

of what an artist at that time looked like.

My sister, Sonya, and Misa were close friends.

I heard that Puff was putting his hands on Mis

in '89, '88,'89.

So, at that time, I heard a few occasions,

he was physical with Misa.

They fight all the time.

They argue like cats and dogs.

And yeah, I've definitely seen them put hands on each other.

I remember when Misa was pregnant,

Sean was in his early 20s.

This dude is a millionaire now,

he's not even 25 years old,

he's got millions of dollars.

They might have broke up 15 times in a week.

They'd just break up, back together,

break up, back together.

And here's Sean, fear is kicking in him,

"I'm about to be a father. I gotta hustle harder now.

I gotta hustle so hard, I got this kid on the way."

One night, Puffy decided that he didn't want Misa Hylton to go out.

He got into this rage,

and she screamed, and her parents came out.

He just grabbed the baby.

And he said, 'You're not... you're not getting this baby.

You're not having it."

The father tried to talk to him

and he didn't like being talked to.

The... the grandmother tried to talk to him and everything.

Eventually, they had to call the police.

Misa Hylton may have felt

that something was really happening

that she had no control over.

This is her life.

He was using the baby to control her.

That, I think, scared her a lot.

He was just angry and upset.

He made threats. You know,

he was arrested.

She endured a whole lot,

his mercurial temper.

She was one of the few people

who got to understand that type of rage,

who he was.

There was a monster that came out of him

that nobody knew about.

But then, after Misa,

it was Kim.

Kim Porter was a model, sometime actor.

Great smile.

One of those girls that's just, like, so pretty.

She was Andre Harrell's assistant at Uptown Records.

Puff told me how they first met.

He was working as A&R

at Uptown Records, and that she was the first face

that he would see when he got out the elevator.

And he had fell in love with her.

And he said, "By all means necessary, I'm gonna get her."

And that was his mission.

Puff's a little older now when he met Kim.

And Kim was starting to, slowly but surely,

teach Sean what love looked like.

It's not fighting all the time. It's this.

And he started to receive it.

He started changing his ways a little bit.

He softened up for a minute.

He wasn't so triggered.

He wasn't so reactive.

He was trying to become a good man.

His relationship with Kim Porter,

I knew that it was an on again, off again relationship.

They would, you know, break up, get back together.

But then, there's the infidelity.

Kim Porter, a woman he described as the love of his life

and the mother of four of his children,

witnesses his relationship with Jennifer Lopez

just flood the media.

I was there in the beginning of the Jennifer days.

Just like all the other girls,

Sean goes all the way to get you.

Sean Wanted J.Lo.

And he got her.

When we talk about Kim and Sean, I don't see them

the way I saw Sean and J.Lo.

They would be at the same function,

but not together type thing.

Not like him and Jennifer Lopez,

you publicly see him at red carpet events.

So, what we see is a man who claim to love this woman

more than any other woman,

but was not necessarily treated that way.

I've seen him act around Kim in ways that were just awful and very mean.

I knew her well enough

to occasionally socialize with her.

It was a last-minute girls' night,

Kim Porter and some other girlfriends.

And then I see Puffy come into the club.

I really thought he was coming in to kick it.

I thought he was about to squeeze into the booth.

And it was about to be... really about to turn up, you know?

But everything just turned on a dime.

It was not a cool situation at all.

He just started hollering at her

that she should be at home and not out.

And then he grabbed her handbag

and literally turned it upside down.

He just emptied it out

in front of everybody.

I was so in shock.

The reason people do things like that

is just to shame you and make you feel small.

To scare you.

I never saw him put a hand on her.

But as we all know,

that's... that's not the only kind of abuse.

It was a controlling situation.

Puff felt like he could do whatever he wanted to do.

Puff was definitely abusive toward Kim.

I remember one time telling him...

"I can understand you having a problem with one person.

But when you have a problem with every woman you're dealing with,

then you've gotta look into yourself."

So certainly, now we know that there were signs

of some of the abuse he would be accused of later.

It seemed that because there were never

any real consequences for him, his behavior escalated.

I was a producer and an engineer

for Bad Boy Records for about 12 years,

and Puffy, over time,

became more aggressive

about what the company could do

and what the vision for the company was.

Bump somebody.

There's a clip of him. He hangs up the phone

and he jumps up, and he's exclaiming,

"Whatever I want, I have to get."

I'm a savage!

Whatever I want, I'm going to get!

Whatever I want, I'm have to get!

It was a really raw moment,

and it was just a clear window

into how he thought and how he operated.

The case involving Steve Stoute,

you know, helped to expose him

for who he was and the kind of mafia way he went about,

you know, trying to...

to bring people in line.

Steve Stoute is a pretty important executive,

a marketing genius.

In the music business,

he was working with Nas at the time.

And Puff had done a song with Nas called "Hate Me Now."

And just like any other event, this thing was being built up.

"You heard the Nas joint with Puff? It's crazy."

In retrospect, it almost sounds ridiculous

if Nas and Diddy would be on a song together.

But, of course, Diddy gives Nas a visibility

that Nas doesn't have quite yet.

In the video, they ended by being crucified like Jesus

in an obvious visual Jesus analogy,

Nas and Puff together.

But then Diddy doesn't like the way that he's depicted in the music video

and wanted to be changed.

But the version of the video with Puff and Nas

being crucified in the desert, was serviced to MTV

and the puff was extraordinarily upset.

And he went to Steve's office.

Puffy went in with his people

and assaulted him.

When he did that to Steve Stoute,

it became one of the biggest stories.

The Steve Stoute incident is incredibly telling.

I mean, this was over a music video.

So what we're learning is that

there are almost no lengths that Puffy won't go to

if he feels that his ego has been hurt,

if his pride has been hurt,

if his demands haven't been complied with.

He goes into court and the prosecution to him said,

"Judge, we reached an agreement

that Mr. Combs would plead to a misdemeanor."

Puff walks out of the courtroom.

One day of Anger Management.

In the courtroom, the judge actually said,

"Mr. Combs, do you remember me?"

And, um, Puff says, "I can't say that I do."

So the judge said, "You have quite a history."

Because he's always getting away.

There are so many cases that the public doesn't know about.

A source actually pulled these records.

He had this knack for actually getting the system

to like him and to go easy on him,

where he kept avoiding going to jail.

A lot of this really worked to Puffy's advantage in the hip-hop world.

You don't want to be seen as someone

that the streets can't respect,

where everybody can run all over you.

There ended up being a lot of violence.

I think it's just...

was something that was always a part of his emotional...

DNA, in a way.

Diddy, as a child, believed his father, Melvin,

died in a car accident.

But as he grew older,

he came to find out that that wasn't really the case.

So Diddy learned that his dad was part

of a drug organization up in Harlem.

Puff's father, Melvin, was connected to Frank Lucas,

one of the biggest drug dealers in Harlem.

And he was connected to the Mafia.

There is a video Diddy posted on Father's Day,

where he talks about his dad,

and there's a real sense of loss

and kind of an admiration as well for him.

And the things that people have long said

about Combs, that he is really determined,

that he's like a world conqueror,

he credits those traits to his dad.

Even if we don't know our parents,

we still have their DNA in us.

I have his hustler's mentality,

his hustler's spirit, his drive, his determination.

So I think it's just...

was something that he's had to grapple with

that his father had been a drug dealer

had been killed in the game.

Sometimes I wonder if that was something he was proud of

or something that he was ashamed of

or something that he may have...

you know, I mean, emulated.

I mean, the record company was called Bad Boy Records.

It wasn't called Good Man.

It was called Bad Boy.

You know?

I worked with Puffy in 2023.

Puffy mentioned once that he shot a person...

um...

in the club when J.Lo was with him.

He said he's done a lot of things before

and sometimes he could be a person to overexaggerate.

It's like, "Okay, he's talking that stuff.

He's got... he's been sipping juice or whatever it is"

But when I told somebody that,

they said, "No, he...

There was a situation happen in the club with J.Lo

where Sean went to jail for the shooting."

I'm spelling. I'm trying to google

S-H-I-N-E,

only to realize, no, it's S-H-Y-N-E.

Shyne was known around the Flatbush area

as a young guy who could spit.

And Puffy played on young people's desire

to want to be in the spotlight.

Sean "Puffy" Combs says, "Look, hang with me."

He's now being considered the next big thing in hip-hop.

He was growing, he was going to be big.

No one pictured it to turn out the way it turned out.

I will never forget the first time I heard about the 1999 club shooting.

It was shocking.

I've spent a quarter of a century

with my integrity and my name

in doubt.

In light of the current atmosphere,

with the lawsuits

and all of the stories that have come out,

I knew it was time for me to speak up.

This is something that was in my past,

and it belongs in the past.

But I can no longer just remain silent.

This is the first time I've shared my story on camera.

I started driving for Mr. Combs in 1999.

On December 26th, I was informed

that Mr. Combs would be requiring my services.

I drove down to his studio to pick up Mr. Combs

and Jennifer.

Mr. Combs got in the vehicle

and I happened at one point to glance over my shoulder,

and I noticed him holding a black handgun.

No words were exchanged. We made eye contact.

He said nothing. I said nothing.

And I proceeded en route to Club New York.

I hadn't been in the club scene or anything

for the better part of a month.

Honestly, I really wasn't going out,

but one of my good friends was a party promoter.

She wanted me to come out

and I wanted to support her endeavors.

Puff arrives with his entourage

and they go to the VIP section.

There started to be a crowd walking through

coming from the dance floor.

People are gravitating towards the VIP section.

And there were some people who just...

say, "This guy is showing off."

People were telling Puffy, you know, "You ain't shit.

You ain't this. You ain't that."

The next thing you know, we see pushing and shoving.

The crowd is swaying. You hear...

like, angered voices.

And he bumped into Puffy

and Shyne just uttered,

"I'm tired of this shit."

I start to see Puffy and Shyne backing up,

backing away from the area of the melee towards the door.

And I see them reach in their waists.

I turned to tell my friends, "my God, Let's go!

Let's go!

Watch out! Something's getting ready to go down."

And just as I turn back and I look at them,

I see them both holding guns, and God said to me,

"Be still. You're about to get hit."

And I just see the muzzle flash.

Pow, pow.

I grabbed my face because I instantly feel this hot...

torching flame on my face.

And I turned my head and I'm like, "my God...

I got shot in my face."

I felt myself separated

and the cold air rushed towards my chest

and passed through me.

I could feel it pass through me.

I was certain that I was going to be dead

at that moment,

because I didn't think a human could lose that much blood

and still be alive.

And I just...

I knew my life was never going to be the same again.

At that moment,

Puffy is trying to make the great escape.

It's just chaos.

Shyne was in custody of the police.

Mr. Combs, his security guy, Wolf,

and Jennifer Lopez comes out.

I'm instructed to, "Let's go. Let's get out of here."

I was driving through the red light,

evading the police.

I'd noticed the rear passenger window

over my right shoulder had been opened.

I later found out that was when Mr. Combs

apparently tossed his weapon out of the vehicle.

Mr. Combs and Wolf were screaming,

"Don't stop! Don't stop! Don't stop!"

Seated next to me,

I noticed another gun in Wolf's waistband.

And then a cruiser had come out,

blocking Eighth Avenue.

And I said, "Chase is over."

We are all escorted into the police precinct.

That's when out of the side of his mouth,

Mr. Combs says,

"Yo, I'll give you $50,000 to take the gun."

And he was saying this under his breath, of course,

because we were right in front of the desk sergeant.

Puffy reaches onto his pinky and says,

"I will give you this diamond ring,

which is worth $300,000, to hold as collateral

if you don't think I'm good for the money."

I did not want to take the bribe,

but the phrase on the street is...

snitches get stitches.

Go, go, go, go, go!

- There go Puff. - Puff!

Before it even began,

the trial of Sean "Puffy" Combs

had turned into a tabloid torrent.

A high-profile case

that's attracted overwhelming support

from Combs' diehard fans.

Not guilty!

Puffy's future is in the hands of 12 jurors

and faces up to 15 years in prison

on charges of weapons possession and bribery.

Sean Combs, in the early 2000s

is about selling a lifestyle, selling a brand.

So he really had to protect his reputation

and his freedom at all costs in this moment.

His high-powered defense team,

including Johnnie Cochran...

Johnnie Cochran, he's known as the O.J. Simpson lawyer.

If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.

There was another attorney by the name of Benjamin Brafman,

one of the top criminal defense attorneys in the city,

defending Puffy.

Shyne, Wolf and Puffy,

they all have separate lawyers.

It was really two trials.

It was this great celebrity, "Puffy" Combs

and his bodyguard,

and Shyne, really just a New York City teenager

that had just signed the deal of his life.

From the notoriety of the people on trial

to the notoriety of the attorneys,

it was a circus.

While he's not accused of gunning anyone down,

prosecutors say someone at the club taunted Combs

and he and fellow rapper Jamaal "Shyne" Barrow

pulled out guns and fired.

Barrow's shots allegedly injured three people.

Puffy denied from the beginning

that he ever fired a gun,

that he ever had any guns in his possession.

I want to make this 100% clear.

I had nothing to do with a shooting in this club.

During the trial, Puffy is looking around,

he's very confident.

"Hey, I allegedly paid off people,

so I have nothing to worry about."

But then...

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

I decided to testify.

I was the prosecution's main witness.

The most damaging testimony so far from his former driver.

Yes, I was nervous about cooperating,

but I had to.

You have to stand up for what's right in this world.

Fenderson testified Combs had a gun.

I was recanting my statement and no longer going along

with their scheme to take ownership of the gun.

But Fenderson wasn't the only witness

to put a gun in Combs' hand.

When I had to testify,

I said, "I saw without a doubt who shot me.

I was shot by Sean 'Puffy' Combs."

I've said that ever since that day.

I never once ever changed that,

modified it, modulated it in any way.

And I never expected to be a part...

of such a reckless act of violence.

Natania, she had the kind of resilience

and defiance...

My heart was with her.

The defense described a two-prong approach.

First, calling their own witnesses,

who say he didn't have a gun at the nightclub.

Most of the witnesses who came up

said, "Shyne had a gun

and we did not see a gun in Puffy's hand."

And, second, discrediting the prosecution witnesses

who put a gun in Puffy's hand.

The lead defense attorney,

his cross-examination was getting a bit aggressive.

I says, "I'm not the one on trial here today, Your Honor.

He is."

And I pointed and glared right over at Diddy.

Some people said this was a conspiracy.

People cursed me out,

accusing me of trying to take down a good Black man

and destroy hip-hop.

My heart really, truly breaks for Natania

and what she has been through.

Natania deserved nothing but compassion

and protection,

and the culture failed her.

They were ridiculing me on the air,

saying, "Does anybody know this one-eyed ho?

Call us up and give us some dirt on her,"

playing rapid succession gunfire soundtrack

in the background.

I was devastated.

Why were they doing this to me?

After the shooting, Natania, she was appearing on the radio

and trying to tell her story.

She was actually getting death threats.

I would look out the windows

and there'd be blacked-out SUVs

parked on the corners by my house.

Those SUVs were watching me.

And for my own safety, I had to be moved.

I will never forget that day when the verdicts were read.

A gasp went up in the courtroom.

I'm just really right now... I'm just very emotional.

Um, I'm at really a loss.

I'm very emotional.

I'm just... I feel blessed.

It was like Mardi Gras.

They all went out to celebrate.

And not only was it Sean Combs acquitted,

but Anthony "Wolf" Jones was also acquitted.

And, of course, "Shyne" Barrow was convicted.

Yeah, I spoke to Shyne.

Shyne says, "Look, he lied on the stand.

He got people to lie for him.

Puffy betrayed me."

Those were his words.

He went in there

and he lied about the fact that he didn't have a gun.

Everybody knew pretty much that Combs had a gun.

When I found out the verdict,

I was shocked and disappointed

at our legal system.

But I was relieved

because I did not want to be the guy that sent him to jail.

I didn't want that for my own safety.

I was a child of hip-hop.

I didn't deserve this. I was a victim.

I wanted justice.

You know, went to try and console

Shyne's mother, grandmother.

And...

as we left that day,

there were still supporters outside.

But no one really cared about him at that point.

He was yesterday's news.

When he was convicted, I got angry

because there are families

that are giving young people to you, Puffy,

and you have a responsibility to these young people

on your record label.

I think it was an attempt to take down another rap star.

And I think that, clearly, we proved his innocence.

He was, in fact, a victim that night.

And I think you're going to see great things from him

for the future.

I think it was pretty clear to most people

that at the very least, he hung him out to dry.

And at the very worst, Shyne took the fall.

There was the City College incident,

Steve Stoute incident,

and the nightclub shooting.

He's getting this reputation of being a Teflon Don.

And that is a pattern that we continue to see,

is that even when things are really, really bad

for other people,

for Puffy, just a blip.

He was getting away with things for so long.

But I believe...

the truth will always find its way,

even in the dark.

Thanksgiving break in November 2023,

I got a call.

"Your rape was caught on tape."

I said, "What do you mean my rape was caught on tape?"