Sean Combs: The Reckoning (2025) s01e01 Episode Script

1
Things are happening, and it's like,
I want to fight for my life.
I don't want to fight for--
just for not guilty.
I want to have a life, to be able to live.
It's really gonna be hard for me
to take more hits than I've taken,
God forbid, get in front of a jury
and have a chance.
So I'm having this emergency call
because something has to give.
We need the core theme to be,
you didn't do anything wrong.
You didn't do anything wrong on any front.
And you've come to New York
to face things head on.
If anyone was ever paying any attention
to what you've actually been doing,
you've handled this with complete honor.
I don't… I don't think it's working.
I've listened.
I've been a superb client, as you said.
I jumped on a plane,
I'm coming to New York, but I'm just like…
I'm just running around
waiting for… for a shoe to drop.
But we're losing sight
of the big picture, man.
It's the middle of September
and there's still no indictment.
That, that--
No, bro,
then you have to have a spokesman.
You have to have some sort of comms
to constantly be pushing that, Marc.
'Cause you may just be a person
that just does-- You just may watch CNN.
You know? And there's like,
nine billion people in the world.
And seven billion of them is on Instagram.
And TikTok.
And so you have…
Y'all at the wrong place looking to see
what the possible jurors are thinking.
We have to find somebody
that'll work with us,
whether they're from this country
or from another country.
It could be somebody that has dealt
in the dirtiest of dirtiest dirty business
of media and propaganda.
I've seen the media portray me
like I'm a gangster.
I'm a…
Or I'm-- At times, I'm a cold individual.
Or I'm just a shrewd businessman,
which is just not the case.
Happy birthday to you
I'm a dreamer.
I love closing my eyes
and dreaming. I don't…
I don't really deal with reality.
I think you're a great guy,
a great role model.
Diddy, P., Papa. Papa Diddy Pop?
Sorry. I don't know
what you call yourself now.
American dream come true.
-Thank you, America.
-Support this guy!
It's like, we have a movie
and you're speaking this language,
And we're not providing the audience
I invited you to this movie
and you in this thing,
and you don't know what's going on.
You just see…
You just see images, you know, quickly.
Now it has a whole life of its own.
The Department of Homeland Security
conducting a raid at a house connected to…
Another woman is accusing
Sean "Diddy" Combs of sexual assault…
Trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping.
-Fourth lawsuit…
-Fifth lawsuit…
-The seventh lawsuit…
-Now more than a dozen…
…criminal conduct
that does indeed span two decades.
I'm taking eight nuclear bombs,
you know what I'm saying,
straight to the head.
And I'm tired of going back and forth
with y'all, with the lawyers…
That's not true.
-Okay, so, so, so--
-And let me… let me…
No, no, no. Let me tell you something.
Let me… let me say this.
I'm not… I'm not a referee.
I'm gonna get off the phone right now.
Listen to me.
I'm gonna get off the phone right now.
And I am going to let you professionals
look at the situation
and come back to me with a solution.
No matter what nobody said. Let's just--
Here and there, y'all are not working
together the right way. We're losing.
Just get little cutaways of them,
looking from the…
Know what I'm saying? That's why too.
All of us got to go to the Maker,
and we will be held accountable
for the things we did and we didn't do.
Sean Combs is a asshole.
He is the motherfucker
you're not gonna like
and you won't get the fuck along with
if he doesn't get his way.
Don't ever disrespect nobody
that's down with me, motherfuck--
He quickly became my hero.
Whatever I want, I'm going to get!
Whatever I want, I have to get!
If y'all had a fucking chance
to meet this guy…
Yes!
…you'd be like,
this nigga's energy is everything.
I got to get up and go.
I got to get up and do it.
What's next? What's next? I got to get it.
I'm not gonna stay fucking down.
He was presenting this freedom
that Black people hadn't had.
Like, we hadn't experienced a Black man
being able to say, "I don't want that."
I don't want no problems. Come on!
Yo, Dawg, what are you talking 'bout?
Telling me I'm on some bullshit?
I ain't on no bullshit with you.
So when I first met him, he quickly became
the guy I wanted to be like.
When you're a leader in that way,
it's admirable until you get to the point
where you want to control
everyone around you.
He got to that point.
What y'all wanna do?
You want to be ballers?
Shot-callers? Brawlers?
It's like Scarface,
the movie.
"I want the world and everything in it."
-This is Diddy's stop right here.
-But you got everything.
Hey, yo, New York, we fucking did it!
Harlem, we did it!
Mount Vernon, we did it!
It was a mantra that Sean had.
"Nobody's gonna be bigger than me."
Sean is the 1% of the 1% of the 1%.
We'll never see a Sean
in my lifetime again. Ever!
It was like the more money he got,
the more power he got.
The more power he got,
the more money he got.
And he always felt like money
can get him out of everything.
I do feel it's important
that we let the public know,
from the juror's standpoint,
just kind of how we reached the verdict.
It's not everything
that the media has put it out to be.
You want to put stuff
in my fanny pack, King?
He's creating a narrative always.
He is the best storyteller in hip-hop.
He thinks he's Black Superman.
"I can do what I want."
You can't go on for long in life
doing the things that he was doing
before something eventually happens.
You can't continue to keep hurting people
and nothing ever happens.
It's just a matter of time.
Is it good to be back in New York?
It's always good to be back in New York.
Once upon a time not long ago
When people wore pajamas
And lived life slow
When laws were stern and justice stood
And people were behavin'
Like they ought to good
How do you change the gears on here?
There lived a little boy
Who was misled
By another little boy
And this is what he said
"Me and you,
Tonight we're gonna make some cash"
"Robbin' old folks
And makin' the dash"
I was there from the very beginning
with the invention of Sean Combs.
I co-founded Bad Boy with Sean.
I was dazzled by his ideas
and his unique talent.
But he was a very different Sean Combs
back then.
Yo, Puff, man.
You wanna-- I'm gonna take it…
Sean was 19
when he dropped out of Howard University.
He wanted to be
in the flashy, swaggy music industry.
-It seems to me, you need my love
-Oh, yes! You need, yes, you need…
He started off dancing,
wanting to be in videos.
I'm not the man I used to be
Wanting to be
a pop culture mover and shaker
at a time where things were changing.
Ice and I'm a soldier at war…
Hip-hop was evolving.
Like it or not, rap is here to stay.
It has become part of mainstream commerce.
You know what that time is…
It was just explosive.
Run-D.M.C.
KRS-One.
Public Enemy.
Rakim.
…you should keep quiet…
The late '80s,
it was fantastic.
There were a lot of independent labels
that gave birth to hip-hop
in the way that we know it today…
What is this new music?
Yo, check this out!
…like Uptown Records.
Grab a hold of yourself
And check this tempo
-Remember these rhymes
-Why?
Heavy D said so!
The overweight…
Heavy D was the biggest rapper
signed to Uptown.
-Excuse me.
-We got Heavy D in the house today.
Thanks for coming.
With the hardest cats in the hood,
you could rock Heavy D.
You're with your grandmother in the car,
you ain't got to turn off the radio.
We called him the official mayor
of "Moneyearnin' Mount Vernon."
Moneyearnin' Mount Vernon!
Vernon! Vernon!
Mount Vernon is in Westchester County.
The first city outside of the Bronx.
Heavy D put that area on the map.
Heavy D and The Boyz!
And his influence reached
all the young people in the neighborhood.
Including the young Sean Combs,
who was at Mount St. Michael High School.
A Catholic private school.
He would knock on Heavy D's door every day
to see if Heavy would take him
to meet Andre Harrell.
Uptown, uptown!
Andre was the champagne of rap.
And he took the streets to Wall Street.
The only entrance
into hip-hop at that point
was Andre Harrell and Russell Simmons.
Into the corporate hip-hop world,
into the money.
Sean had impressed Andre enough
to give him an internship.
And that was the beginning.
I worked with Sean as an intern at Uptown.
I'ma lay it out for you.
When you thought of Uptown Records,
you thought of Heavy D and Al B. Sure!
I can tell you how I feel about you
Nite and day
I was the first number one artist
on the Billboard charts on Uptown.
And the first platinum artist
on the Uptown label.
He was a GQ nigga.
You know,
he was a real penny loafers type.
He was one of them fly,
light-skinned niggas. Girls loved him.
He's ours. All ours.
Al was dating Kim.
Kim Porter.
Kim is at the receptionist desk at Uptown.
You get out the elevator,
first person you see is Kim.
And it was a beautiful sight.
Everybody said that. You know what I mean?
But when Sean saw Kim…
It was different.
And now Sean's always
at the receptionist desk
begging Kim for something.
A date, a kiss.
He put it all on the table for Kim.
It was weird. It was weird in the air
because everyone knew this was Al's girl.
Al is hot as fish grease right now.
Hi, this is Al B. Sure!
Here's my exclusive number.
Two dollars for the first minute,
45 cents for each additional minute.
And Sean was not really, like, the catch.
He didn't drink alcohol.
He forbade marijuana.
He did not like drugs.
He had the Gumby,
and he looked like a scholastic dweeb.
But Sean was so determined.
"Yo, I bet you I can get Kim."
Niggas like, "Nah, hey. No way.
Your weight ain't even up enough yet."
But when Sean wants something,
he's gonna get it.
It might be a couple of years from now,
but sooner or later, he's gonna get it.
Andre Harrell, Heavy D, Al B. Sure!,
they had all the money and the power.
I was like, I don't know what they did,
but that's what I wanna do.
I got to Uptown
a few months after Sean did.
And I saw him being built into cool.
He had to go through
the Uptown flavor camp.
I learned a lot quickly.
Being in front of Willie Burgers
on 145th and 8th or being at The Rooftop.
Let's get it going, Rooftop!
The fashion, the walk, the talk,
the attitude, the drive,
the determination.
I was ready to do whatever it took to win.
The young Sean Combs
during that time, he was so tenacious.
You would ask him to turn
Wednesday into Tuesday,
he would set about doing it.
First task we had given him
was just go get a tape ten blocks away.
He came back in two minutes
or something crazy.
I was on the phone, I looked up
when he came back, I was like,
"How'd you get there so fast?"
He said, "I ran, there and back."
Right then and there I said, "Oh, okay."
I should have known then
that that was never gonna stop.
The run there and run back.
He ingratiated himself to Andre
and made himself very valuable.
Something that you don't want
to do without.
Like, "Who's gonna get my clothes?
Who'll Armor All my tire?"
"This is so convenient."
Then they lived together.
I bought the first million-dollar house.
Funny that that weekend,
just before I moved in, he had
a mysterious fight with his mother.
And he said, "I can't go home.
I got to stay here with you."
Puff moved in before I did.
Meanwhile,
Andre's taking him under like a son.
Andre is the very first patriarch
he connected with.
Sean grew up with the illusion
of what masculinity looks like.
My first encounter with Sean,
I remember it like yesterday.
My family, we rented the first floor
of Sean's house.
I was my mom and dad's only child.
Now Sean has somebody to brother up with.
We experienced a lot of firsts together.
I taught him how to ride a bike.
It was the best thing to let go
of the bike and him start riding.
We fit so well.
Sean was another misfit, just like me.
But the difference in my household,
my dad taught me right from wrong.
No, Sean didn't have that.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like
to introduce my mother, Janice Combs.
What were the primary jobs that you did
to support your family?
I did so many jobs at one time.
I worked at the United Cerebral Palsy.
I worked at, uh, the Board of Ed.
in Westchester County.
I drive the school bus.
I worked in a baby's boutique shop.
And he never knew this,
I worked in a after-hours spot too.
I have to come clean.
-I needed to come clean.
-Okay.
Okay. Man.
Okay.
I made more money because
the men thought I was very glamorous.
I used to pour liquor.
And they'd give me big tips.
In Sean's house,
there was Janice and there was Sean.
My father's name is Melvin Combs.
I didn't get a chance to get to know him.
I was too young.
My father got his brains blown out,
like, on Central Park West.
I did the research.
They said my mother had brought me to the
funeral in a full-length chinchilla.
It was like a sigh of relief, you know?
'Cause I finally knew
that what I was feeling was true.
That I was the son of a hustler
or a gangster.
Melvin's presence was there.
His money was there.
And I understood that
Melvin made a lot of things possible.
But Sean's mom was his everything.
If you look at some of the early pictures
that Janice has of Sean,
she was always making him into something.
The hats.
Fur coats.
I think she tried to overcompensate
for the father being gone
by making him into this dandy.
Everything associated
with Sean was Harlem.
Whoever was fly in Harlem,
that's what he was as a child.
Janice, she'd always be in Harlem.
And there were times where she'd bring us.
Here we are in this brand-new Cadillac,
because that's all Janice drove.
She's making stops. Here and there.
And oh, we knew the rule, the drill.
"Y'all sit there, I'll be right back."
She ain't turn the car off.
Nobody took the car.
Mm-mm. No.
So you knew there was a different vibe
going on with this family.
In his household,
the groove was a little different.
I feel love, I feel love…
A lot of Donna Summer playing.
Then we had these movies we'd watch.
He's got to be number one.
This genre of films
called Black exploitation.
Super Dude.
You had Super Fly.
Super Fly.
You had The Mack.
When you got nothing,
and you want everything,
you gotta get to be the mack.
Their parts were hustler parts.
In Sean's household, you'd start to see
all the stuff that you saw in the movies.
Janice knew how to throw a party.
And the parties were packed.
You got ladies that looked like
they're straight out of Jet Magazine.
Some brothers up there.
If you want to call them pimps, you can.
You want to call them hustlers, you can.
You got a member of the New York Knicks.
Or two.
There was a stage in her living room.
Literally a stage.
And that's where we used to
have to go and dance.
And everybody's calling you "baby."
And everybody's saying, "Do that dance."
And all of this stuff he's taking in.
So from the movie screen
to the home screen,
these are the makings of Sean Combs.
Now, mind you, as a child, Sean was goofy.
Kids would pick on him a lot
around the block.
And he didn't know how to defend himself.
Sean was a prince.
And Janice, she didn't want no princess.
She held back nothing.
You've said, "I would be 12 years old."
"And sometimes I'd be out
until 3:00, 4:00 in the morning."
James, we don't have to
get into that right now.
Ma'am?
He got a lot of beatings too.
His beatings made me scared.
Right?
I got beatings, now.
But when he got his beatings,
it wasn't no…
It wasn't a joking thing.
No.
Damn, I hate thinking about that, man.
My mother was, I guess,
raising me for the real world.
She was always telling me if somebody
hit me, make sure I hit them back harder.
Make sure they never hit me again.
Make sure I fucked them up.
You know how you hear
your mom's voice in your ear?
"Boy…"
"You better…"
"Boy?"
Sean started fighting.
He started stepping up.
But Sean don't fight like this.
Sean's gonna bite you.
He's gonna eat your ear off.
He's gonna cut your neck open
with his mouth.
He's not losing.
I know people shaped by pain.
As well as by love.
And if it was more pain than love,
watch out.
It's gonna be pain
that you're gonna give others.
'Cause you're responding to that pain
you just can't seem to cut out of you.
I didn't know much about him.
I know that he had a big ego.
I met him around '89, '90.
My job was to promote music videos.
And Puffy, he was always doing
the party promotions.
So he's always, like,
handing out the flyers.
I was working with Andre Harrell.
He wasn't paying enough.
I had to promote parties on the side.
Which was all good.
Daddy's House.
He was savvy enough to promote parties.
The most successful parties at that time.
But they were all about promoting himself.
One of the brothers that put
the party together. My man, Puff Daddy.
It was no problem. My Black brothers
and sisters came together.
Like my man Doug E. Fresh.
All the beautiful women out here.
We came together to have a good time.
I went to a party for a good friend.
It was getting very late.
Puffy's like,
"Oh, you know, I'm having an after-party
at, uh, Andre Harrell's house."
Andre Harrell wasn't there,
he was out of town.
People were tracking mud
through the house.
And I remember at the end of the night,
I was helping clean up the mud.
Puffy's like, very polite.
You know, thanking me for helping him.
And he asked me,
"Oh wow, I just got this call.
This girl backed out of this music video."
"Can you do it?"
And I was like,
"I don't do music videos."
But this party was in New Jersey.
And I needed a ride back to Manhattan.
So I went along.
And I'll never forget,
I had the same clothes on
that I had from the night before.
The music video was called
Straight from the Soul.
By Finesse & Synquis.
The whole premise
was for me to jump out the car
and go with these girls
and get away from the pimp guy.
Nice clothes in a car
Doesn't make you a star
You can't talk positive
And do the opposite
'Cause then you're labeled as a phony
Yeah, a hypocrite
You can't be righteous
Throw a party then flip
Snorting, drinking, driving
Have your sister strip
What that looks to your people?
A big disgrace!
Dying sisters don't want to look you
In your face!
Wanting to be a pimp, brother?
Your heart ain't that cold
And this is straight from the soul
-Straight from the soul
-I'm coming
Was there ever a time
that Sean Combs sexually assaulted you?
Yes.
Someone called me up
and told me that, um, he said,
"You know he has you on video."
And I was like, what?
And that's when he, um, described it
and explained it.
I just want to say this.
This thing was incredibly devastating
to my family.
My mother.
She's a social worker.
We don't have money.
The thing…
…that we had
was our pride.
We carried ourselves well.
We were pretty. We were intelligent.
This is the basis of what I had.
Self-respect.
My mother wrote a letter
to Combs's parents.
I just found this recently.
-Can I read it?
-Yes.
"Dear Mr. and Mrs. Combs,"
"I'm writing you to inform you
of something that your son
did to my daughter."
"One weekend while visiting my daughter,
I awoke to her screaming
in the middle of the night."
"She told me
that she was dreaming about Puffy."
"I asked her why she was screaming
and who is this Puffy person
that he would cause her
to have nightmares."
"I was shocked and mortified
to hear her story."
"She told me that several people
have come to her to inform her
that your son has made
an obscene videotape of her."
"…without her knowledge, he videotaped him
doing something sexual to her."
"Apparently, your son shows these tapes
at parties on large screen televisions."
"I realize that this may be hard
for you to believe,
but if I hadn't heard this story
from my daughter's own mouth
and looked into her eyes,
I would have scarcely believed
that any individual
would compromise
another person's dignity in this manner."
I approached a lot of people for help.
I got things like,
"What do you want me to do about it?"
To…
"If I help you,
I can't get into his parties."
We got Puff Daddy from Puff Daddy's house.
What's up?
And who revolutionized
the hip-hop club scene this year.
Why would you want to do that?
Drug and rape a girl.
Tape it and then put it up on the screen.
Here's my theory.
Yo! Do you know what time it is?
Alpo Martinez.
Drug lord, famous,
Harlem, street, tough guy,
hung out at The Rooftop.
Welcome you and yours to The Rooftop.
Alpo had a lot of girls,
and he would tape girls
that he was having sex with.
On a Saturday night, he might
bring his camera and put it on the wall.
And everyone knows
that's so-and-so's girl.
That's that ho!
What Sean saw was,
"I want to be looked upon in that way,
as someone that has that type of stature."
All his life,
he's been trying to honor a man
he believed was a famous Harlem gangster.
And that gave his father
a mythic presence.
People like Alpo, he looked at those guys
with a certain amount of jealousy or envy.
A certain amount of respect.
And there's a certain amount of desire.
That thing was in him from there.
Did you ever confront Sean about it?
I did.
I avoided him for a very long time.
I ran into him one day.
He came to me.
He got on his knees
and swore he did not do this thing to me.
And denied it.
And that was the very last time
I talked to him.
We fucking did it! Let's go!
The key to the city. Yeah, yeah, yeah!
When I think back in terms of his rise…
Yo, come and give me this love.
…it is the most helpless feeling.
I was always nauseous
when I saw his image.
The one image in Times Square
where he's holding his fist up.
When I saw it, I vomited.
Right there on the street.
You are really
raising your hand in victory
and I'm living in trauma and defeat.
Woop-woop!
Woop!
-New legal trouble for Combs.
-Another new lawsuit.
Accused of sexual assault,
sex trafficking,
and drugging underage girls.
Federal prosecutors interviewed
numerous women who allege wrongdoings.
This is at least the tenth civil lawsuit
filed against Sean "Diddy" Combs
alleging sex trafficking…
Just take the blood, man.
What the fuck else y'all want?
I don't know.
-It's a bunch of silly bullshit.
-Just silly bullshit, noise.
-Just all haters and noise.
-No sense.
But it's the legal system doing it now.
Because, like, legally…
-You gotta go through it.
-It's-- Yeah.
Now I gotta spend money
to go and get rid of this bullshit.
-Oh, yeah.
-They ain't got nothing left.
Got nothing left going on.
-They ain't breaking me, though.
-Say less.
How are you, boss?
If you don't mind, one picture, please.
I'm not good with the camera,
so I'm gonna try.
-Take a few photos?
-Yeah.
-For you?
-Nice to meet you.
-Group or individual?
-Aight. Y'all hop in as a group.
Sean was destined to be famous.
-Appreciate it.
-Okay.
-One more. Wait, what's up?
-Yeah.
I didn't see infamy coming.
I swear I didn't see that coming.
I'm 19 and I always liked
seeing people entertained.
And I thought over the holidays,
I just wanted to throw
a celebrity basketball game in Harlem.
I was at the game. On the floor.
All of us was there.
Every rapper in New York, right?
Yo! MTV Raps came.
I'm at City College
in the heart of New York City
for the Puff Daddy, Heavy D
first all-time celebrity all-star classic.
That was one of
the biggest basketball games.
If that had turned out correctly,
it would've went down in history.
There were lines and lines
around the campus to get in.
There's no more room,
but everyone still wants to come.
We open up the doors,
everybody starts flowing through.
But then thousands more come.
Please don't run over each other.
Everybody.
Don't panic. Take your time, please.
Everybody, keep calm…
There was this thing in hip-hop
called bum-rushing the door.
People don't have a ticket,
they hear it's sold out,
they say, "Fuck it, we gotta get in,
we'll bum-rush the door."
When they got to the bottom of the stairs,
the doors didn't go out that way.
They only came in.
So people were stuck.
They was crushing people
down at the bottom of the stairs.
We were on the court, warming up to play.
Doug E. Fresh grabbed the mic
and said there's people that are dead.
Y'all could be the biggest star
or whether you're
the most regular person in here,
you need to leave.
It is over.
Sean over-promoted, over-hyped.
And that led to a crowd.
It was just like, "Oh shit,
how'd it just happen so quick?"
How are people gonna explain it?
We need a lot of help here.
There's a lot of people hurt
and aren't breathing.
Not breathing?
Yes, I mean we have
a f emergency over here.
We got a lot of people here
dead in the gymnasium, please!
They're dead?
The death toll from last week's stampede
at a New York charity basketball game
has risen to nine.
They was getting trampled!
All for money, $12, man.
-What do you mean $12?
-It cost $12 for a ticket.
One of the unanswered questions remains
who's to blame for the stampede
that killed nine people?
Throughout the newspaper headlines,
throughout the confusion,
the finger-pointing, who was responsible,
Sean, young, in real time,
carried the weight of all of that.
My dream for this evening was to bring
a positive program to my people,
to people of my age,
and to people in my community.
Whatever must be done,
must be done to ensure
that this never, ever, ever happens again.
It was the biggest news ever.
That's how he got super famous…
was that game and those deaths.
That's the beginning of Puff Daddy.
That's really how I started
to become famous,
was through a tragedy.
He was holed up in a hotel
on the East Side, him and his mother.
He didn't know what was going to happen.
And I saw Janice question Sean.
He's going into this music business thing.
He just left school,
and now this extreme tragedy has occurred.
She's like,
did he make the right decision?
And I saw him put his hands on her.
Called her a bitch and slapped her.
He's not looking back.
Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs
and sponsors claim no responsibility
in the tragic chain of events
that claimed nine lives and injured…
The brass that afforded Uptown
its distribution money wanted Sean out.
I saw Andre fight and fight
to keep Sean in.
And he did.
Andre Harrell, Puff Daddy,
he's passing on to, I guess, his son.
-Protégé.
-Protégé.
-Yes, yes.
-Puffy.
Tell me a little bit about this man
and why you like working with him.
'Cause he's not intimidated by youth.
You know what I'm saying?
He knows the importance
of leaving a legacy behind.
Because we need more adults out there
that's gonna teach the young,
such as myself.
I took Andre Harrell out to lunch,
and I said,
"Can I get a chance to maybe do A&R?"
The A&R is Artists and Repertoire.
The guy that works with the record company
that puts the records together
and works with the artists.
I said, "Give me a chance.
You're making music for young people."
"I'm young, and who better
to make the music than me?"
We had a group back in the day.
They drove up to New York,
unannounced, to meet Andre Harrell.
When we make love
Jodeci.
It's like a dream…
They sing for Andre. Andre loves it.
Immediately that becomes
Puff's first responsibility.
Nigga, go make Jodeci.
What's in the future of Jodeci?
Hopefully to make hits, hits, hits.
Andre put his trust with Sean
as opposed to the artist.
He told us,
"I don't care who the artist is,
you're more important than them."
"The artists don't work without you."
What'd be the ideal musical setting
for y'all?
I guess performing
in front of millions of people.
You have to be able to control everything.
I basically style
and come up with the images
and design most of the clothing
for all the artists.
It was him that put Jodeci in the pants,
baggy, sagging at the bottom,
the boots, not lacing it up.
He is able to sponge from the community
and the culture and package it.
And in the studio, he did the same thing.
Sean wasn't a producer
where he can tell you,
you need a C here,
a C note, or this is an F.
But he did have a good ear
for what could be a hit.
I'll give you an example.
Let's get it going, Rooftop!
At The Rooftop in Harlem,
the DJ Brucie B
would mix a cappellas from R&B songs
with hard hip-hop beats.
And it drove the kids crazy at the clubs.
That's what Sean did with Jodeci
on those remixes.
It was very minimal. It was very hard beat
and snare, no melody.
-Talk to me baby
-Come and talk to me
-My baby
-I really wanna meet you
Jodeci's record
started climbing the charts.
Here we go!
Go, Jodeci, go!
Sean turned that into the blueprint
for his special brand of A&R.
Then the next artist to benefit from that
was Mary J. Blige.
Yo, Mary, it's Puff.
Pick up the phone, nigga.
Hey, Mary, it's Puff.
Mary's What's The 411?
was out the box.
Then tomorrow
you gotta do this video shoot.
The hat pulled down, the mysteriousness.
It had a little bit of a darkness
and moodiness to it as well.
All of that was groundbreaking.
Real love
He launched a female artist
in a male-dominated hip-hop era…
What's up, Apollo?
…who became an instant success.
And that created hip-hop soul.
-Mary became the owner of that sound.
-Sing!
Doo-doo-doo
Mary J
Sean was making the hits happen
and the visuals happen.
In 1992, Sean is promoted
to VP of A&R and Artist Development.
What's up? My name's Puff Daddy,
Vice President of A&R
and Artist Development
for Uptown Records,
which brought you
the hits of Jodeci, Mary J. Blige,
Heavy D and the Boyz, Father MC,
and, you know, on and on and on.
Puffy had Jodeci and Mary J. Blige.
But Puffy's a big, huge EPMD fan.
My background sing
My background sing, for the crossover
He was at my "Crossover" video shoot.
Crossover
And he asked me to do
the Mary J. Blige intro for the 411 album.
Yo, Mary Blige, what's up?
It's Erick Sermon, MC Grand for you.
I did that for him and then
all of a sudden we became friends.
I thought it was a genuine friendship.
Until I see that this game
is being played.
You got an agenda.
Misa.
He was trying to court her
after we broke up.
Sean wants her
because Erick was that dude.
Fly high like Mike and just do it…
It was about,
"I got her, I won her over from him."
He had to have the girl.
And Sean has a way about,
when he gets you, he got you.
He got you.
And now you become property.
Me and Misa was just friends.
But he wanted to make sure
that there was no calling
and me being friends with that girl.
Sean's jealousy, it got to the point
where he would put his hands on her.
Right outside of Uptown Records,
they're fighting in the street
and he's beating her into the car well.
She's on the ground.
And people are pulling him
off of her and separating her.
A year or two later,
they're still together,
and Justin is born.
When he invited me
to be the godfather of his first son,
I was able to push that
in the back of my mind and say,
"That was a really bad moment,
but he was weak and…"
It was a bad moment.
Does that make me
part of a Sean Combs cult?
Maybe so.
I may have been
the first disciple, believer…
and then overall protector
against all odds.
Uptown
Everybody say Up, Uptown
-Uh!
-Up, Uptown!
I want to invite
one more brother on stage.
-Responsible for Jodeci, Mary J. Blige.
-Puff Daddy, Puff Daddy
-Puff Daddy, come to the stage, baby!
-Puff Daddy, Puff Daddy
Pick it up, pick it up there, boys
Pick it up, pick it up, oh
At that point,
Sean is on top of the world.
His trajectory was only up.
I was just a wonder kid.
I was something they never saw before.
To be young and…
to be Puff Daddy.
It's just, it's just like…
I felt like my dream had came true.
Everybody now is looking for this kid.
Because they all have artists that
they have to get to the top of the chart.
What does that do to a person?
Do you think I'm still gonna be
like, "Yes ma'am, no ma'am,
thank you very much"?
He became too big for Uptown Records.
I'll be so drunk and high by 8 o'clock,
I'm not gonna give a fuck.
But I give a fuck.
There started to be
some dissension between Andre and Puff.
Andre was the king of the Uptown Castle,
of the empire he created.
And the intern
was taking his place.
I remember it like yesterday.
Andre called me into his office.
He tells me just like this.
He says, "Dawg, I just fired Puff."
I said, "Word?"
It was a sad day.
Andre was like a surrogate dad for Sean.
Sean was really sick when Andre fired him.
I'm talking about sick.
Couldn't believe it.
And then Sean called me.
And he said,
"Yo, I'm about to do my thing, Dawg."
I'm the perfect competitor
Jewels and all that
And clothes is all that
Chump stepping to me
That's where you take the fall at…
Puff was like,
"I'm looking for some hardcore artists."
He said he's tired of doing
the Mary shit, Jodeci shit.
He wanted to do hard shit, street shit.
Straight outta Compton
Crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube
From the gang called
Niggas With Attitude
So I guess I gots to handle mine…
The West Coast had the hits
that we wanted.
Yeah, hard core sick shit, injection
What you want, nigga?
Sean signed Biggie in 1992.
People didn't know we had to produce
Biggie's album for Uptown.
He was an Uptown artist.
-It's the Notorious B.I.G., then?
-Yeah.
B-I-G. Business Instead of Game. Right?
Tell them I told you.
But when Andre fired Puff,
he fired him with a caveat.
"I'm letting you go,
but I'ma let you take Biggie with you."
…my cheddar, feel my Beretta
Buck what…
Andre decided to sell us the Biggie album.
Cocked it, extra clips…
But now,
we had to find a way to pay for it.
I fuck around And get hardcore
We were living on borrowed time.
I went about setting up the meetings.
We met with Epic, Sony, Columbia.
And we met with Clive Davis at Arista.
Everybody knows him on a first name basis.
Clive runs a 100-million-dollar
record company called Arista.
He's all I got
He has discovered Whitney Houston,
Carly Simon, Aretha Franklin,
and a long list of other pop stars
who thrive in the world,
according to Clive.
So we went to Clive,
and we played a few tracks
from B.I.G.'s album.
I remember one of the first ones
that we played was "Gimme the Loot."
Yes, love Love your fucking attitude
Because the nigga play pussy…
And Clive's eyes went like this.
I'm slamming niggas Like Shaquille
Shit is real…
And I said, "Wow, you got the goods."
And I bought into his vision.
Gimme the loot! Gimme the loot!
-Gimme the loot! Gimme the loot!
-I'm a bad, bad boy
I named it Bad Boy
'cause I wanted to go against the grain.
I didn't want to just make records.
I didn't want to just make money.
I wanted to make history.
Word up! Bad boy, representing.
Puff Daddy.
I was at Bad Boy
starting from the day
that we put the LLC together.
And Sean gave me 25% in stock,
and his mother Janice
had 75%.
He did not put the company in his name
to protect him
from paying families at CCNY.
And I saw from that moment on,
Sean had shifted in his personality.
I didn't see any more
of the Mount St. Michael teen Sean.
And he had become
more like the person I see today.
We did a deal
for approximately $10 million.
$1.5 went as an advance
into Sean's pocket.
Another $1.5
is supposed to be our overhead.
Sean said, "That's yours.
You can do whatever you want with it."
"But you better make sure
my company's running."
From day zero,
I wrote everything down, every day,
so I could keep track
of everything I needed to do.
I ran all the money,
all the budgets for the company,
as well as a lot for his personal life
and all that came with it.
I don't like the way you're treating me
on me getting my second half.
This shit is bullshit.
Yo, yo, bust your asses and ask me…
I think that he had this thing
with strongmen.
And he had a thing with wanting to be one,
but not positioned to be one street-wise,
but positioned to be one industry-wise.
And they call that a paper gangster.
…shit over. I'm not paying,
nor am I involved in any of that shit.
And so as he's paper-gangstering,
he's also trying to street gangster too,
at the same time.
Savage! I'm a savage!
He's not from the street.
His mother did the very best
to give him the best.
What's next? Give me something else.
What can't you do? I can do it.
But now,
he's been getting beefier and beefier
with the power from the music.
That's a good way
to get your head filled up
to think that you're just as gangster
as they are now,
without even having
to pop your gun off yourself.
You wanna step
You must be freebasing…
Now after all this time,
me and Misa is still cool.
We was just friends.
But one time, she just happened
to be in my driver's seat of my truck.
And all of a sudden,
I heard somebody go… and it's him.
He's steaming.
He swings on me.
So I'm laughing, 'cause I'm like,
"You swung on me?"
You're putting yourself in jeopardy,
knowing you can't whoop none of us.
So now, I'm like,
"Yo, let's go around the corner."
Because I'm respectful enough.
So he actually gets in the car,
and we drive around the corner.
So I'm about to give him the business.
Shit could have got really ugly.
He just said, "Sit down,
I want you to hear something real quick."
And that's when he played me
the Biggie Smalls album.
Yeah
This album is dedicated
to all the teachers that told me
I'd never amount to nothing…
The "Juicy" single, dropped summer of '94.
It was all a dream
I used to read Word Up! Magazine
But Biggie's trajectory
was not zero straight to the top.
Biggie had a slow start.
Very nervous at first.
At the time,
that West Coast thing is happening.
So we began to look
at what they were doing.
And Tupac was like a shining star.
There's a song called
"I Get Around" by Tupac.
I get around
Still down with the underground clowns
Round and round and round they go
I get around
That song, if you're in a science lab,
and you're looking at something
with a microscope,
and you're trying to figure out
what it is, and what it's made of,
that's what we did with that song,
"I Get Around."
Sean was just mesmerized
by that particular song.
The structure of it,
the video and the visuals.
It showed the culture.
It's like, let me dissect this.
Let me understand it. Let me do it my way.
The next single was "Big Poppa."
And that dropped,
and it took us over the edge with Biggie.
-I like this
-Yeah
He was out of here from that moment on.
I love it when you call me Big Poppa
Throw your hands in the air
If you's a true playa
We had Ready To Die
before it came out.
B.I.G. had sent Tupac a demo.
We played that tape to death, man.
We played that tape till it was destroyed.
And then Pac got the phone call that
Big was having an album-release party.
He said to us,
"Man, we all going to that."
He was very excited for him.
The Notorious B.I.G. album-release party.
It was so phat and hip. Everybody's here…
I've never seen someone
more excited for someone else's success
as Pac was for B.I.G.'s success.
-Ready, nigga?
-Yeah.
Ready for that raw dog shit, nigga?
-Only on Underground.
-Okay. All right.
Let me see how I'ma hit you with it.
He thought Big was dope.
He wasn't doper than him
as far as he was concerned.
Tupacolypse don't sleep
I keep a motherfuckin' Glock in my car…
But he was the next thing smoking.
I'm a high guy, from Bed-Stuy
Putting the swelling on your eye
Your nose even
When I choke you, you stop breathing
When police come, I'm leaving
Peace and love.
-You saw that?
-Yeah.
Pac would take B.I.G. with him on tours
and let him open up for him.
…three Becks as I wreck shit
What the fuck you expected?
A fly guy? Well, fuck it
I'm the high guy from…
Pac was developing Thug Life,
this ideology of taking back
our communities.
B.I.G. was with that.
He felt it. He resonated with it.
So they had a connection.
Sean was insanely jealous
of Biggie and Pac's friendship.
When I was around B.I.G.,
I felt like he really loved me.
I felt like if I left the room,
he wasn't gonna say nothing bad.
Or, if somebody said something bad
about me, he'd defend that.
He's probably one of the only people
I really trusted, like, for a long time.
-We going to the writing room right now.
-Gonna turn the AC on in here?
There's a yearning for him to have
that complete, total control.
"You're my artist. You're my best friend."
We were writing this song
for like 30 motherfucking days.
Extra clips in my pocket…
"I pay you. You work for me."
"I make hits with you."
I needed money of my own
So I started slinging…
"And who is this guy?"
"Why do we need him in the picture?"
Guess who gonna win?
Tupac was a very likable person.
All the women loved him.
Being a rapper, being a movie star.
For Sean, being a marketer,
you're a manipulator.
Please welcome Tupac Shakur.
And there's envy for people
who have success, fame,
with no manipulation.
Puff is, to me, very threatened by Pac.
When I reflect on
how this all came into play,
it's a trail.
City College.
Innocent lives got taken.
Then it became the ability
to get away with anything.
Then you circle in the fact
that he has legit money.
Then you have the antagonist,
Tupac Shakur.
All those ingredients
created the chain of events
that started in New York
and ended in Vegas.
I'm out on one right now.
I got a couple guys shot.
Need medical ASAP.
Do you know who was responsible
for the killing of Tupac Shakur?
No, I don't.
I think that Sean, now in my mature mind,
had a lot to do with the death of Tupac.