Original subtitles

Millions of people dream that they can live like we do.

The least we can do is enjoy it.

Otherwise, it's offensive.

- I - don't know what I expected,

but I'm starting to feel like

something good's gonna come out of this.

I'm a romantic.

Romantics end up broke and brokenhearted.

- Or worse. - What's worse?

Back in 2010, it was Grammy weekend,

Here we go.

And we were doing a photo shoot with Cas during the day.

Puff and Cassie were dating.

There was a party.

Diddy, I love you, Diddy!

And she was staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

The Beverly Hills Hotel is like a one bedroom suite.

I fall asleep on the couch because I don't go out.

And he storms in, "Where the is she?"

I like, wake up all of a sudden

like a... like what the? Who? Who let...

"Who are you talking about?"

And then they go into the room.

Shuts the door.

All I hear is, "Get the out of here.

Get the out of here."

He's like, on a rage.

He's being Puff.

And at this point

I'm just thinking of her safety.

And so I'm packing her stuff up.

Once he leaves, I see the aftermath on Cassie.

She shows knots on her head, bruised eye, busted lip.

It was horrific.

And so all I can think of was,

"We need to get back to my house.

You need to get the out of here."

We can't call the police. We can't go to the hospital.

We're scared of Puff.

We're always scared of him.

If we call the police what would happen?

He's a very powerful person in the business,

and he can do things that will to make you go away.

And many people are afraid of him 'til this day.

So what were we supposed to do?

We just had to, like, fix whatever was happening at that moment.

And that's kind of like how the business is.

I called my friend who's a doctor,

and I'm like, "You have to take care of Cas

'cause this is not okay."

You have to be a witness to this

because we can't call anyone.

But I felt like this has happened before

because she was so nonchalant about it.

Cassie and I never spoke about that incident after.

It's like family business.

We just don't talk about it.

What I witnessed was in 2010s,

and then in 2024, I watched the CNN video

and I was completely triggered

because I did not know

that this was going on for all these years.

Tonight, music mogul Sean Diddy Combs...

Sean Diddy Combs...

Sean Diddy Combs facing a slew of allegations,

including rape and sex trafficking,

in a stunning new civil lawsuit

filed by his longtime partner, singer Cassie.

Sean Diddy Combs is now the subject

of a federal criminal investigation.

FBI agents raided his homes in Los Angeles and Miami.

Sean Diddy Combs,

has been arrested after a grand jury

indicted the music mogul.

Cassie, coming forward was the tipping point.

Several new accusers coming forward

against Sean Diddy Combs.

Very serious allegations,

rape, physical abuse and sex trafficking.

He was very good at standing in the limelight

without us actually taking a look deeper

and seeing who he is and what he is about.

Thing about hip hop, it's not just the music, it's a lifestyle.

Combs has built an empire.

There's his Sean John's fashion line,

his Ciroc vodka and the TV network he founded.

He didn't change to adapt to the world.

He changed the world to adapt to him.

Here he is a shining example

of what he likes to term black excellence.

Meanwhile, there's all this violence

and trauma happening in the background.

I realized I wasn't the only one.

I have a one of one story that no one else has.

That reckoning, it's coming.

Everybody is demanding to know.

How far did this go?

Time is up.

Sean "Puffy" Combs' power

has led to one of the most successful careers

in the history of American pop.

And it has led to some

really, really, really awful other things.

I've been knowing Combs for just about

the entirety of my career

as a journalist and as an editor.

I was the first woman editor in chief of Vibe magazine.

A large reason for me sharing my story

with everyone today,

It's because it's my duty.

And I'm also sharing it because of my unique position

in music history.

This is where I'm supposed to be.

It was very difficult

to work in the music media,

without having to deal with

or work with or hang out with

or negotiate with Sean "Puffy" Combs, was impossible.

The first time I had a real conversation with him

was a cover shoot for a vibe.

And that would have been right around September 1997.

It was to be the December-January

double issue of Vibe magazine.

Everybody was at the photo shoot,

a bunch of people from Vibe,

a bunch of people from the Bad Boy universe.

The idea was to get Mr. Combs

into some angel wings.

After the shoot,

Mr. Combs wanted to see the covers

before they were published.

It was policy for us not to show covers

to anyone before they were published.

He called me at my office.

I told him again,

We don't show the covers, we don't share the story.

I told him that I wouldn't be making an exception.

And he said that he would see me dead in the trunk

if I did not show it to him.

I said to him, "You need to take that back."

And he said something to the effect

because, you know, he wasn't taking shit back.

So then I said, I'm calling my attorney.

And my attorney called him to say that

if he didn't immediately fax over an apology,

My attorney was going to reach out to law enforcement.

And I think it took about 90 minutes to two hours

and I received that faxed apology.

What I've only recently come to realize

through members of the staff.

At that time was that he had, actually,

in the days before come up to the Vibe offices,

with two tough guys looking for me.

In order for my safety

and in order for the magazine pages to remain intact,

I was shuttled from office to office

until the coast was clear.

And waited outside.

Standing on the corner,

with the proofs,

the pages of the magazine

that were being prepared to go to print.

And then my managing editor came down

and got the pages from me

and put me in a cab to Brooklyn.

But the thing is,

I'm sitting right here right now.

I have no memory of any of that happening.

When our research chief

was telling me this story.

I was just like...

literally like...

I like... I don't remember I was telling her.

And she said, "Of course you don't.

You blocked it out. You were terrified."

Because I don't remember it right now.

It's hard to look back.

I continued to work with him.

I continued to be cordial with him

to be invited to parties and go.

Sometimes it's very hard not to feel complicit.

I wish that thing's were different.

Is he an angel? Is he a devil?

It's a question that I've had

since we put him on the cover, in the wings.

I didn't know, but we might know now.

And you hate to see it.

As a reporter, Danyel's story really resonated with me.

What's really unusual

is the extent that Diddy went to.

He was determined to try to bully her,

and this was relatively early in his career.

And so it definitely appears

that Diddy continued to get more brazen

We now know behind the curtain

there were demons.

But you can't escape your demons that easily.

When I think of Puffy, I think of New York.

Puffy is the Horatio Alger,

you know, up from nothing to something.

The rags to riches story.

Diddy was born in Harlem

to his mother, Janice, and his father, Melvin.

Pump's mother, Janice Combs Baby,

could dance, could dress sharp as a attack.

Fly, hustler, go get it, ambitious.

I think of her as the queen of that energy.

Unfortunately, his father, Melvin, passed.

Sean didn't have any memories of Melvin.

He might have had one or two.

Melvin died when he was a toddler.

Diddy has often spoke about the loss

of a father figure in his life.

Just this desire to know who Melvin was.

When Combs talks about his father,

you can tell in his voice in his face

that he really mourns the loss

of not having his father in his life.

You know, I'm saying, I always wanted to hear,

like the sound of his voice.

From the beginning, I've always had,

like, tragedy around me.

Janice was a single mother

and had to make it work.

Janis said, "Okay, we're moving out to Mount Vernon."

That suburban area that black people

with some money, middle class,

are able to move to.

I met Sean when I was six years old.

And we live 13 steps from each other. One staircase.

I didn't have a sibling.

So that's where we became.

First impression of meeting him.

This kid is different.

He was a young boy dressed like an older man,

tailor made,

and I didn't know kids this small

could really like beat his fly.

So when he stepped outside,

other kids looked at him like, "What's that?

He got everything we don't have.

And people don't like that.

So now he's a product of bullying.

He had a presence of somebody you could just roll over,

and that's what people tried to do.

Simple as that.

At an early age it was instilled in him

that he can't be seen as weak

and the only way to respond to weakness

or this idea that you're being perceived as weak

is to respond with force.

My mother was I guess raising me for the real world.

She's always told me if somebody hit me,

make sure I hit them back harder.

Make sure they never hit me again

and make sure I them up.

Your mom's made sure. "Listen, don't come here talking about you got beat up.

Don't come here talking about somebody who took something from you.

I don't want to hear none of that.

Go get it back.

You can't come in my house until it's right."

So he had to make a choice.

He had to man up.

So I'm gonna make more than you.

I'm gonna do more than you.

I'm gonna be more successful than you.

So I could call the shots.

He was groomed for success.

I was really inspired by him growing up.

You see this guy? He comes from Harlem.

He puts hip hop on the global map.

Then he grows into a business mogul.

And so before all of these issues came to light,

there's not a negative thing

that I would have said about Diddy.

This version of Sean Combs that we're seeing today,

is a complete departure from this image

that he curated and built himself up.

I first began covering Sean "Puffy" Combs

right after Cassie filed her lawsuit back in 2023.

The biggest question for me was,

"Has this happened before?"

And as we began investigating and speaking with more people,

we uncovered a history of abusive behavior.

That dates back to Diddy's days

at Howard University.

There just seems so much more to the story.

Take one mark.

I was a student at Howard University in the late 80s,

and I am here today to share what I know.

Sean "Puffy" Combs was well known on campus.

He would ride on the back of cars,

throwing out fliers for parties.

If he wanted to go to the hottest party,

then you saw and heard Sean "Puffy" Combs.

I am absolutely nervous

about sharing what I've seen him do

to another human being.

He's powerful, and he's scary.

This event honestly is so vivid to me.

The night began with me in my dorm room.

We heard someone yelling and screaming,

So we pushed up the window just enough

to get a little idea of what was going on.

We saw that it was Sean "Puffy" Combs,

a fellow student,

and he was screaming.

Get your ass downstairs.

Come downstairs, right now!

And he had taken his belt off and he was whipping the wall.

Mad, angry.

They were connected somehow, romantically,

and when she came downstairs, timidly and scared

and really not knowing what to do,

he started beating on her,

whipping her with that belt,

and she's taking it.

Now we're involved because now he's abusing her.

So we're yelling. "Get off of her!

Stop hitting on her!

Leave her alone!"

And he's yelling back.

"Mind your business! Mind your business."

But we're yelling back!

"Get off of her! Leave her the alone!"

He pushes her back into the doorway of the dorm.

We don't know what's going on in that space.

We can't see.

Whatever he's doing, takes a few minutes before he actually

stops whatever he's doing,

and then he leaves alone.

And she follows out a little bit behind that.

Our 18-year-old selves yelled for her,

Maybe could have stopped it.

Maybe we should have called the police

called our dorm mother.

Got somebody else involved.

The front desk was downstairs.

They didn't do anything.

Nobody really actually came to her rescue

like we probably should have.

It's very important to tell that young woman's story

because he was never held accountable.

Instead of becoming tarnished in any way,

his time at Howard becomes a key part of his mythology.

Howard didn't just change my life.

It entered my soul and entered my heart

and entered my being my spirit.

When he got an honorary doctorate, no less.

I was a little bit hot about that.

How would you honor someone like that?

And even though I only completed

two years here at Howard,

It was the greatest two years of my life.

Howard is where Combs saw firsthand

how much sway he had with people.

So despite what people saw on campus,

he's still able to succeed.

Like it or not,

rap is here to stay.

In the late 80s,

when hip hop was growing,

That's the exact same time

that Sean "Puffy" Combs

was figuring out who he was going to be.

I was working with some artists

at a company called Uptown Records.

I heard that there was a young guy

helping some of the artists to define themselves.

His name was Sean "Puffy" Combs.

Uptown Records was one of the early black labels.

And Andre Harrell was at the helm.

I can understand why Puffy wanted to work with them

because they were the it back then.

And Puffy dropped out of school

to follow his dream.

When he did his internship at Uptown,

he clearly had a ton of ideas.

And so they gave him an A and R job.

Mary J. Blige, who had been at uptown

and had not been catching on.

They did not know what to do with her.

Here comes Puff,

and he's putting all these pieces in place around her.

Also shaping the image he gives Mary J. Blige

hip hop beats to sing under "Real Love."

Was this massive hit?

And they called her the queen of hip hop soul.

But as much as we loved Mary, it was clear right away.

Puff is at the forefront

of sonically making that happen.

Puff Daddy, A and R Director from Uptown.

- Let's go! What's up? - My brother. Let 'em know...

Let 'em know how... how easy or how difficult

or how flat or how complicated

it was to put this jam together?

Really, it was no problem because all my black brothers and sisters came together.

You start to see the rise of Puff

in the sort of hip hop world,

and he's also doing party promotion.

Sean says, "Shoot.

I'm gonna have a celebrity basketball game

with all the famous people playing

I'm gonna go convince Heavy D to be my partner in it,

and we're gonna do it at City College."

My brother was at City College.

And so the reason I came to tell my story today

is because the incident

was simply tucked under the rug.

I've been trying to make sense

of such a tragic event

for years.

All right, 98.7 Kiss FM.

Did you know, that the big basketball game tomorrow,

- Are you going to be there? - Yeah.

It's gonna be crowded, it's gonna be packed.

A lot of people coming

to play in a celebrity basketball game.

Jodeci, Boyz II Men,

Brand New Being, LL Cool J.

Everyone you knew in all boroughs

were talking about City College that night.

I was 17 years old.

My brother Dirk really wanted to go

I remember Dirk showing me the ticket.

Dirk was someone to look up to.

Out of our neighborhood

there was only a few of us

that actually went away to college.

Combs was dating Misa Hylton at the time.

My sister Sonya and Misa were close friends,

I was the big brother

because we were so close in age.

We had a real close bond.

She was going to become a pediatric nurse.

At the time, I had two young daughters

and she was totally hands on with her nieces.

She loved them deeply.

The day of the event, she said she wasn't going,

but Misa reached out to Sonya and told her

that Puffy had a ticket for her.

And she decided to go.

Day at City College comes

I'm a part of Sean's staff.

One thing Sean knew how to do was promote,

and the buildup to City College was so phenomenal

was almost like gods coming to town.

The gym filled up,

in like a blink of an eye.

They were still selling tickets at the door.

But there's still a huge crowd outside of people with tickets.

The bouncers or whoever said,

"It's over. No one else is getting in."

And that's when the door to the gym was closed.

So now the crowd that saw that the doors were closing,

many had tickets in hand.

They decided to push

And it caused a stampede

going down the stairs with no way

to enter the gymnasium with the four doors closed.

The crowd went crazy.

They broke the doors.

And a bunch of people

just rushed down those steps.

And pushed them against those doors.

I'm not quite sure what door Misa went through.

But she wasn't with Sonya.

My brother and his friends

are in the staircase already, getting pushed.

Sonya was behind

one of the young girls that was with them.

And her face was in her back.

Imagine being packed like sardines.

And if you're packed like this,

there's nowhere to go.

They had to literally pull the door open,

crush someone opening the door.

And then start pulling people out into the gym

one by one from one door.

You see just a wave of people

falling on the floor.

Fighting to breath.

You'll see in the footage Sean Combs

shirt open and walking around.

Just stressed out.

I look over, he's over there pumping chests

and breathing into people's mouths.

And Sonya was one of the people

well, he was trying to resuscitate

Dirk wasn't getting enough oxygen to his brain.

When they were doing CPR on him,

his chest was going down.

It hit the floor.

And then my mother called.

And then that was when I found out he was dead.

She said, "He's gone, Jason."

My mom and my dad and myself

went back to City College to identify Sonya's body.

They showed us Polaroids

and someone tried to go over the top of the crowd.

And clearly in the Polaroid,

you can see the boot mark

in Sonya's head.

I think Puffy bears a lot of responsibility

for what happened that day

because the doors remained closed,

they could have been opened.

Dwight Heavy D. Myers,

and Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs

pointed the fingers at everyone but themselves.

Whatever must be done must be done to ensure

that this never, ever, ever happens again.

I know that he and Heavy D

did not intend for that day to end that way.

Puffy clearly wanted to throw the biggest best event,

and he promoted the hell out of it.

But he didn't do enough

to protect the crowds of people that came out.

There was a lawsuit

for all the things that happened at City College.

This was a huge case.

The litigation lasted years.

When my mother called me and told me

that the lawyers were talking about a settlement,

it was like take this money and she didn't shut up.

Really, nothing mattered to me

other than keeping Sonya's memory alive.

And Puff wasn't hearing me,

and that created a lot of tension

between me and him.

I said, "Was Sonya your friend?"

He didn't want to answer the question.

She got the ticket from you, man.

These interactions started to make me physically sick.

Clearly he had no interest on helping me

keep Sonya's memory alive.

Or the other eight.

The city college incident for Puffy

was a turning point

in how people began to feel about him.

He asked one time,

"When is this ever going to be behind me?"

And I said, "The more good you do,

this will get further and further down

on the list of questions that you're asked.

Diddy was able to put it behind him

because he was good at creating stars

and making hits.

He was succeeding. He was thriving.

He was winning.

In time, he becomes too big

to be working with Andre.

And so Andre fired him.

His gear was placed in the hallway,

and they said, "Come get your gear."

And I was like, "Whoa! So I guess

I won't be hearing from him anymore."

When you become a millionaire at 19,

you probably go crazy.

Act a little obnoxious.

It was such a disappointment to me

because I got fired by the first person that believed in me.

And then I remember somebody saying

Puff is having a meeting

with Clive Davis about starting a label.

It was said in a way of like

That is so ridiculous.

He's like the white godfather

of black music for the last 50 years.

He sees an opportunity to bring Sean Combs' energy

and gives him his own signature label,

It was incredibly significant for a young black man,

to have his own label,

and Puffy was in his 20s.

That was incredible.

Right away, Bad Boy is different than other labels,

and this is coming from the energy of the guy at the top,

I remember going into Bad Boy

and there was words painted on the wall.

Sleeping is for losers.

Yo, yo, yo, yo bust your asses.

I'll go back in the studio

and you'll just pay for me to go back in the studio

and tell me exactly what you want.

I was his first publicist.

One day, Mr. Davis called me at my desk,

he said, "Lajoyce,

from this day forward,

I want you to garner press for Puffy."

And I also understood the assignment

to protect the black boy genius.

Puffy was such a visionary.

Everything that he touched would eventually turn to gold.

And platinum.

And it is gone. It's on dog.

Every single day,

and I mean with no exaggeration.

Puffy would call me between 02:15 and 04:00 o'clock.

"What's going on?

What's happening with the artist?

Who's going to be appearing on what television show?

I have an idea."

And he'd leave it to you to execute.

"By the way, in 48 hours."

Bad Boy, you know what I'm saying?

Your brand is all big

Yeah, we got Craig Mack.

The year for Bad Boy's, 1994.

Craig Mack, drops "Flava in Ya Ear".

"Flava in Ya Ear" was something that I made up.

Yeah, I sampled some crazy sound

and listen at that.

Then on the hook, I threw that loud siren in

It's special. I knew it was special.

Puff was like, "Yo, I need some tracks

for my new artist, Craig Mack."

So I showed up with this tape.

He played it and he said, "Yo, I will cut you a check for that right now."

You know what I said, right?

Sold.

And then Notorious B.I.G puts Bad Boy on the map.

What Biggie does is it gives the label,

and it gives Sean Combs, street cred.

So Combs' ideas with Biggie

was how can we make something

that's very rowdy and of the streets

but make it so that everyone likes it.

How can we do that within one song?

And then you go to "Juicy".

Even though he's rhyming about

standing on the corner selling dope.

We might be at a pool party.

We're gonna make it look good and glamorous and fun.

Those mini juxtapositions

in Biggies, repertoire

to me are what made him work.

Puff was definitely like, "Let's elevate the culture."

A lot of it, in retrospect, was about elevating himself.

He's in the videos.

He's on the songs.

In the concerts, on the stage.

He's very much part of the story.

He understood

that I represent the brand.

So when you see me, you see the Bad Boy brand.

But the West Coast was a legitimate threat

to East Coast hip hop.

The West Coast folks are selling many more records.

This moment is where we start

to see this intercoastal battle.

Puff realized that now hip hop is war.

We're fighting for number one,

and we're playing real dirty.

And a lot of people got hurt.

Bad Boy was as hot as fish grease.

He couldn't be touched,

but more money, more problems, right?

Everything was heightened.

Backstabbing was heightened.

Dishonesty to distrust, unloyalty

All of that just started to unravel.

Suge Knight he ran Death Row Records on the West Coast.

Two very, very different versions of moguls.

Suge Knight, who was a legitimate, scary figure.

Suge Knight goes back to jail.

Knight had been on probation for a 1992...

with assault and battery...

And Sean Combs, who felt a little bit more cuddly...

to people, right.

The East Coast West Coast beef at that time

took on epic proportions.

And the two stars that we think about in that moment,

who represents these two very different coasts.

Are really, The Notorious B.I.G.

and Tupac Shakur.

Tupac was a megastar,

rapper, icon.

What a lot of people don't realize

is that Death Row was trying to set up Death Row East.

They really thought they could come and take New York.

And they tried.

It's unsettling to watch this Tupac video,

knowing a short time later what would happen.

We're coming to the East Coast

to overthrow the government

y'all got right now, which is Bad Boy.

Believe in Death Row East.

Believe in that, for real.

That was a bold move.

The feud was so bad at that time

that you might be in trouble

throwing up the W on the East Coast.

I could have been a casualty

of the East Coast West Coast beef.

I came up in the music industry

as a concert promoter.

And one nigh I was at a place called PJs,

up in Harlem.

Some cat comes in promoting "Death Row East."

He has these bright white T-shirts

and he's giving them away.

And I was like, "Okay, I like that. Let me get one."

And I... I just... I threw it on.

Later, we're going downtown.

I'm with Lance Coffey, who is my security.

We get to the club.

Me and my Death Row East T-shirt.

It was packed.

An hour later, I come out of the club.

We go across the street to my jeep.

We get in, I'm in the driver's seat.

And Puffy pulls up in a sports car.

He's in the passenger seat.

And then he said to me, "What's up, bitch?"

I said, "Puff, man, I don't want nothing to do with you, man.

Keep your drama to yourself."

I really tried to deescalate the situation.

He said, "Nah, you're a bitch."

He aligned his beef with Suge Knight

and Death Row in the West Coast

with that T shirt.

So it's like, "How dare you

jump to the other side?

How dare you promote Death Row?"

And we proceed down the block.

His car veers over and cuts me off.

And forces me into an island.

Lance and I both jumped out of the car.

A shot blasted off.

Lance yells, "Gun, gun!"

And I don't know who shot it.

I leap over the island and now it's a car chase

and um, I'm... I'm fighting for my life at this point.

All I know is that I need to get away.

And so I'm driving.

I'm going down a one way streets.

I'm on the sidewalk at one point.

It's a high speed chase through Manhattan.

I just thank God I escaped that situation.

What we see is this massive overreaction

and tendency towards brutal violence.

If he could fly off the handle that easily.

Over such a small perceived slight.

What else was he capable of?

You asked me earlier

like, why I'm here?

Like I almost wouldn't be here, period.

My whole future would be erased.

Dude, you're a menace...

to society.

My story is just a piece

of the bigger puzzle of his mayhem.

Sean Combs has been the figure

more associated with death,

tragedy and brokenness

than any mogul.

He ran on fear and intimidation. It was abused.

Combs wants what he wants when he wants it.

He was saying things like, turn around, let me see that ass.

All of a sudden, I just seen him out of nowhere

just punching.

And God said to me, be still you're about to get hit.

I truly believe monsters are not born...

they're made.