Combs' mother Janice had always told her son that Melvin Combs, who died when Sean was just 3 years old, had been killed in a car accident. But something told Combs to research his father himself, and he spent a day in Founders library searching through microfiche, until he discovered, thanks to the Amsterdam News, that his father — who had ties to drug dealer Frank Lucas — had been murdered in a "drug deal gone bad."
"I decided to embrace the entrepreneurship of my father, but in a honest way, in a legal way by earning, scraping, working harder, believing in myself and most importantly making the most of the blessings that God blessed me with," Combs said in the commencement address.
Sean Combs, better known as Diddy, the entertainment mogul on whom "Empire's" Lucious Lyon is loosely based, was arrested Monday and charged with three counts of assault with a deadly weapon, one count of making terrorist threats and one count of battery after an alleged attack involving a kettlebell. He was released the same day on $50 000 bail.
His son, Justin Combs, is a redshirt junior defensive back on the UCLA football team. Sean was allegedly confronting UCLA strength and conditioning coach Sal Alosi over Alosi's treatment of his son when the altercation began.
Though he's a native New Yorker, Combs spends more of his time now in Los Angeles and it's not uncommon for him to attend Bruins practices.
Combs's story is the tale of two vastly different worlds and the ways they've collided as he began pursuing legitimacy the moment he dropped out of Howard to take a job working for Andre Harrell at Uptown Records. Janice Combs went from being a matriarch who worked four jobs to support her two children to witnessing her son become one of the most recognisable and successful entrepreneurs of his time, worth an estimated $735 million.
- East vs. West
It's a little confounding to those who remember the rivalry between Combs's Bad Boy Records and Suge Knight's Death Row label to see where the two men have landed.
Nearly 20 years after the unsolved murders of Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace (Notorious B.I.G.), their associates are still entangled with the law, although Knight is having a harder go of things than Combs.
Knight is in jail awaiting trial after allegedly running over two men with his truck and killing one, Terry Carter. The incident was caught on video.
Combs paid his $50 000 bail and released a statement through his cable network, Revolt, refuting media accounts of his altercation with Alosi. "The various accounts of the event and charges that are being reported are wholly inaccurate," his representative said. "What we can say now is that any actions taken by Mr. Combs were solely defensive in nature to protect himself and his son. We are confident that once the true facts are revealed, the case will be dismissed."
Wallace was killed in a drive-by shooting while leaving a party at Petersen Automotive Museum in March 1997. Shakur was killed in a drive-by shooting on the Las Vegas strip. Knight was in the same car as Shakur, and survived despite being shot in the head. The rivalry between Bad Boy and Death Row reportedly began in 1994 when Shakur was shot five times and robbed in the lobby of a New York recording studio. He blamed Biggie and Combs for orchestrating the attack.
"I'm hurt a little bit spiritually by all the negativity, by this whole Death Row-Bad Boy s**t," Combs told Vibe magazine in 1995. "I'm hurt that out of all my accomplishments, it's like I'm always getting my most fame from negative drama. It's not like the young man that was in the industry for six years, won the ASCAP Songwriter of the Year, and every record he put out went at least gold ... All that gets overshadowed. How it got to this point, I really don't know. I'm still trying to figure it out."
The fact that Justin is a student at UCLA might be the greatest symbol of just how far removed we are from the coastal rancor of the mid-'90s. In fact, Justin has a different life altogether, having grown up with a father who opened a restaurant named for him and gifted him with a $360 000 Maybach on his 16th birthday for getting good grades.
- Club New York
After the sobering deaths of Shakur and Wallace, Combs continued to build Bad Boy.
He and Faith Evans released ‘I'll Be Missing You’, a tribute to Biggie based on ‘Every Breath You Take’, by the Police. He started dating Jennifer Lopez, who was at the height of her fame. The two even featured each other in their music videos. Things were going well.
He signed Shyne, a rapper who could only be described as Biggie's vocal twin, to Bad Boy. In December 1999, Combs, Lopez and Shyne were all involved in a shooting at Manhattan's Club New York. Three people were injured, and Lopez and Combs fled the scene in his Lincoln Navigator, along with Combs' bodyguard. A gun was tossed out the window.
Multiple witnesses claimed they saw Combs brandishing a gun in the club. Shyne was later convicted on two counts of assault, reckless endangerment and gun possession, though he was acquitted on the most serious charge, attempted murder. Combs hired Johnnie Cochran as part of his team of lawyers to defend him on bribery charges. Combs was accused of offering his driver $50 000 to say the gun was his. He was acquitted in 2001. Though they appeared together at the Grammys in 2000, the year Lopez wore her legendary green Versace dress, the two broke up soon after.
- "Making the Band"
Combs helped usher hip-hop through a decade of excess and conspicuous consumption marked by fur, Cristal and more fur, most of which was incorporated into his Sean John fashion line. He began an acting career, appearing in ‘Monster's Ball’ and making his Broadway debut opposite Audra McDonald in ‘A Raisin in the Sun’. He ran the New York City marathon and raised $2 million for the city's public schools. He started the ‘Vote or Die!’ campaign, aimed at boosting minority voter registration numbers.
With the MTV reality show ‘Making the Band’, Combs created a series of tissue paper acts (O-Town, Da Band, Danity Kane, Diddy Dirty Money) that immediately collapsed as soon as the scaffolding of Diddy's imprimatur was removed. In fact, the most lasting legacy from ‘Making the Band’ wasn't even part of the original show. It was a ‘Chappelle's Show’ sketch sending up Da Band member Dylan.
In 2007, he signed on to become a celebrity spokesperson for Cîroc vodka. By 2008, he'd received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was charming daytime television watchers into buying Cîroc by doing shots with Ellen DeGeneres. Combs was a master of reinvention. His annual Hamptons White Party, which he began throwing in 1998, became known as one of the hottest celebrity bashes around. Diddy had become so woven into popular culture that he appeared as an exaggerated version of himself named Sergio in ‘Get Him to the Greek’, Nicholas Stoller's music buddy comedy starring Jonah Hill and Russell Brand. And by 2013, Combs was on stage at the CMA Awards, presenting with Kellie Pickler. The takeover was complete. Even country music fans knew who Diddy was.
- Dr. Combs
When Howard University announced that it would award Combs with an honourary doctorate degree in humanities, the news wasn't welcomed in all corners — some argued the honour was a farce, others said it was undeserved because Combs didn't graduate.
For years, Combs had been an annual fixture during Howard's homecoming — swooping into town and sprinkling D.C. with his own brand of aspirational lavish cosmopolitanism. His parties at local nightclubs were always high-priced, sought-after affairs that called back to his days as a business major at Howard. Even then, he was known for throwing the best parties. This reputation, detractors argued, should not be rewarded with an honourary degree and a keynote speaker slot.
But Howard stood fast, and a delighted Combs spoke at the 2014 commencement. He gave a genuine, heartfelt speech, free of any pretence of erudition. He owned up to his mistakes.
"See, if I didn't leave school early, I would have been more prepared sometimes when I was starting out ... I would be in a board room negotiating and I would be like, 'what they talking 'bout?' cause I didn't finish my economics class," Combs said. "I would be writing memos and my secretary would be like 'you not supposed to say it like that.'"
Before he found his rhythm, his voice wavered a bit. The man left Howard after two years and went on to build an empire worth nearly a billion dollars, and 26 years later was visibly nervous.
Even multimillionaires crave validation, and he'd received it. Perhaps the world was witnessing a wiser, more mature Combs.
That lasted for a matter of months before Combs went back to his old ways and punched Drake at a Miami nightclub — over a beat. TMZ reported that Combs was angry because Drake used a Boi-1da beat for "0 to 100? — you know, the song that was so popular Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry and his wife actually made their own viral video that sprung from a shout-out in the song.
Apparently Boi-1da sent the beat to both Combs and Drake, and when Combs didn't do anything with it, Drake recorded and released "0 to 100." Then, when Combs finally saw Drake in December 2014, he allegedly punched him and said "You'll never disrespect me again."
So much for decorum.
Now, Combs is embroiled in yet another scandal. Oddly enough, the Harlem-born Combs, a major player in one of rap's greatest rivalries and someone who became something of a caricature as an industry mogul, is now recast as another all-too-familiar character in his latest brush with the law: the wealthy helicopter parent overstepping his bounds in an effort to advocate for his son.
WASHINGTON POST-BLOOMBERG