Sean “Diddy” Combs made hip-hop glimmer with a sense possibility – but perhaps it only meant to distract us from years of alleged abuse, writes Chris Richards. Photo / Getty Images
Sean “Diddy” Combs made hip-hop glimmer with a sense possibility – but perhaps it only meant to distract us from years of alleged abuse, writes Chris Richards. Photo / Getty Images
Opinion by Chris Richards
THREE KEY FACTS
A grand jury indicted Sean “Diddy” Combs on charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking, according to a federal document unsealed this week.
The music mogul is to remain in custody as he awaits trial.
Cassie Ventura accused Combs of rape, sex trafficking and abuse in a 2023 lawsuit that was settled quickly.
OPINION
His sense of shimmery uplift helped rap go pop. But new allegations of sex trafficking and racketeering change the meaning of his music.
If Sean “Diddy” Combs really is one of the most powerful figures rap music will ever know, his power has been alchemical. In the 90s, he figured out how to turn concrete into gold, helping to transform the sound of New York hip-hop from something hard and rough into something sleek and shimmering. As an impresario, he heard starry magnetism in the voices of the Notorious B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige, and as a producer, he sampled the euphoric disco hits that his generation had grown up with, infusing rap with a new mood that allowed dreams of escapism, triumphalism, nostalgia and prosperity to effortlessly intertwine. Amid all the cash and sparkle, he unlocked the fundamental power of pop music itself: transposing pain into happiness.
Now the pain is back. Combs was arrested on Monday after a grand jury in New York indicted the 54-year-old music mogul on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering that date back well over a decade. A federal document unsealed on Tuesday outlines a disturbing list of allegations, many of them centred on the numerous sex parties that Combs referred to as “freak offs”, during which drugged victims were forced to perform sexual acts so demanding that Combs’s staff allegedly supplied them with IV fluids to help them recover from exhaustion and drug intake. Additionally, Combs and his associates are accused of narcotics distribution, arson and kidnapping – all of which transforms the meaning of his work in ugly and permanent ways. His music’s blinding shimmer now feels like its primary function was to conceal.
Maybe his entire career was designed that way. When Combs first started appearing on MTV in the mid-90s alongside the Notorious B.I.G., it wasn’t immediately clear whether he was the sidekick, the hype man, the creative partner or the mastermind. After Biggie was shot and killed in 1997, Combs elevated himself into the spotlight with I’ll Be Missing You, a requiem megahit – made with the help of Biggie’s widow, Faith Evans, and the group 112 – that ultimately posited Combs as the tragedy’s primary grief avatar. His reputation grew even blurrier after he was arrested following a galactically publicised nightclub shooting in 1999, but after being found not guilty, he rebranded himself, changing his rap name from Puff Daddy to P. Diddy in 2001.
In the years that followed, Combs presented himself to the general public as both a sadist (he played a cruel industry coach on the MTV reality series Making the Band, degrading contestants by making them walk miles to fetch him a slice of cheesecake), and an altruist (he founded the voter mobilisation group Citizen Change in 2004, which became synonymous with its “Vote or Die” slogan). As a pop culture fixture and magnate, Combs remained unknowable and omnipresent. Only the most perversely enigmatic capitalist would name his television network Revolt.
Video footage obtained by CNN last year appeared to show Sean "Diddy" Combs assaulting his then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura in 2016. Photo / via CNN video
As the 21st century wore on, Combs’s odyssey through the music business became more about business and less about music, but that was fine, so long as the back catalogue continued to age well. From the start, plenty of 90s rap purists dismissed Combs’s productions as “shiny suit music”, perhaps intuiting Combs’s dazzling outfits as some kind of disguise. But the significance of his biggest hits has been ratified on dance floors the world over ever since: Mo Money Mo Problems with Biggie and Mase; the remix of It’s All About the Benjamins with Biggie, Lil’ Kim and the Lox; and so many more. Over time, shiny suit music has come to stand for aspiration and uplift. To have it so utterly trashed now is something worth grieving. It hurts to lose feel-good music in an exponentially feel-bad world.
But there’s an even sadder, more mysterious pain around the music we’ll never get to hear. Nearly 20 years ago, an especially promising pop singer named Cassie was putting the finishing touches on an auspicious debut album. Around that same time, she became Combs’s protege and romantic partner. You’d think dating one of the most powerful figures in the music industry might bolster a career in popular music, but after the relative success of her excellent eponymous 2006 debut, Cassie’s sophomore album never materialised. Instead, the singer disappeared into Combs’s unknowable world, eventually ending the relationship in 2018 and, in November, filing suit against Combs in New York under the state’s Adult Survivors Act, which allowed victims of abuse to sue beyond the statute of limitations within a limited window. The suit accused Combs of more than a decade of physical abuse, sex trafficking and rape.
Combs settled the case out of court overnight. That wasn’t alchemical music power. It was something grievous and frightening – the ability of a powerful man to make years of dehumanisation vanish with a pen stroke. After Monday night’s arrest, has that power finally reached its limits? Combs turned concrete into gold. Then he allegedly turned human beings into playthings. His music now sounds drained of its gleam and gloss. And there’s no changing that.
Chris Richards has been The Washington Post’s pop music critic since 2009. Before joining The Post, he freelanced for various music publications.
