2024 is shaping as much as be a memorable 12 months for US hip hop star Sean ‘P.Diddy' Combs, for all of the incorrect causes. Here's why – together with what ‘freak off' events need to do with his fall from grace.
Photo: ROBYN BECK
Warning: This story comprises particulars that will upset some readers.
Explainer: Once upon a time within the 90s, P Diddy (actual title: Sean Combs) was the topped king of US hip hop, with a stellar music profession and pals in excessive locations. Now he is in huge bother – and in custody – after being charged with intercourse trafficking and racketeering. How did we get right here?
Who is P Diddy, anyway?
Sean ‘Diddy' Combs, 54, is a US music mogul and influential hip hop producer who first gained fame within the 90s.
Combs, also called Puff Daddy, P. Diddy and Diddy, made his title by being the supervisor and producer of rapper Notorious B.I.G (Biggie Smalls). He's a three-time Grammy Award-winner who has labored with an extended record of massive names, together with Mariah Carey, Mary J Blige, Usher and Faith Evans.
His debut album, No Way Out, bought seven million copies worldwide and featured ‘I'll Be Missing You', a tribute he wrote after Biggie's loss of life in 1997.
He's additionally dabbled in style, launched a TV channel and partnered with a significant drinks firm.
What expenses is he dealing with?
Last week Combs was arrested in a Manhattan resort and brought into custody. He was charged with three counts of intercourse trafficking, transportation to interact in prostitution and racketeering. Reuters reported that prosecutors accused Combs of working a felony enterprise to facilitate his exploitation of girls, relationship again at the very least 16 years. According to the 14-page federal felony indictment of Combs, the rapper was accountable for coordinating days-long sexual events – know to the individuals concerned in them as “freak offs”.
While Combs' defence attorneys tried to have him launched on a US$50 million bond, prosecutors informed the choose that Combs was “extremely dangerous to the community”. He stays in custody pending trial.
What do we all know concerning the “freak offs”?
The New York Times reports that Combs was responsible for establishing these “freak offs,” masking up any harm to resort rooms, or individuals, after they have been over.
“Elaborate and produced sexual performances” is what they have been known as within the official courtroom paperwork – that concerned drug use and coerced intercourse that might allegedly depart them so exhausted they needed to be given fluids intravenously to get well.
The New York Times reported that Combs weaponised any movies he filmed on the freak-offs to maintain everybody quiet.
“Freak-off activity is the core of this case, and freak-offs are inherently dangerous,” Emily A Johnson, one of many prosecutors, stated at a listening to final week.
Lawyers for Combs say they have been consensual encounters. “Does everybody have experience with being intimate this way? No,” Marc Agnifilo, a lawyer for Combs, stated at a courtroom listening to on Tuesday. “Is it sex trafficking? No, not if everybody wants to be there.”
The authorities alleges that Combs ran a felony racketeering enterprise, and that these freak offs have been organised by individuals who labored for him. “Combs did not do this all on his own,” stated Damian Williams, the US legal professional for the Southern District of New York, at a information convention final week.
“He used his business and employees of that business and other close associates to get his way. Those individuals allegedly included high-ranking supervisors in the business, personal assistants, security staff and household staff.”
When did P Diddy's troubles start?
Things began to unravel in a giant method for Combs in late 2023. Combs confronted three lawsuits from girls alleging abuse and assault in every week, together with one from former accomplice Cassie Ventura. That specific case was settled a day after it was filed, although Combs' lawyer stated it was “in no way an admission of wrongdoing”.
Soon after the Ventura case was settled, Combs was sued by one other lady who accused him of intercourse trafficking and gang rape.
He took to Instagram to plead his innocence, claiming that this declare was “sickening” and “made against me by individuals looking for a quick payday”.
In February 2024, Combs was accused of ‘grooming' by music producer Rodney Jones Jr, who has filed a NZ$50 million lawsuit in opposition to him.
A few months later, the US Department of Homeland Security raided Diddy's mansions in Los Angeles and Florida. Associated Press reported that the properties have been searched “as part of an ongoing sex-trafficking investigation”.
It wasn't clear then whether or not Combs himself was the goal of the investigation, however the raid sparked a whole lot of hypothesis about his whereabouts. Court paperwork now present that authorities discovered medication and 1000 bottles of child oil and lubricant, alongside with AR-15 rifles with defaced serial numbers.
Things received worse for him a number of weeks later. In May 2024, CNN revealed a resort surveillance video from 2016 that confirmed Combs showing to seize, shove and kick Cassie Ventura in a Los Angeles resort hallway in 2016.
After the footage grew to become public, Combs took to Instagram to say that his behaviour was “inexcusable” and that he was “committed to be a better man”.
“I used to be disgusted then after I did it. I'm disgusted now.
“I had to ask God for his mercy and grace. I'm so sorry,” he stated.
What subsequent for Diddy?
In a number of months, a jury in Manhattan should determine which facet of what occurred on the “freak off” events is extra credible.
Until then, it is seemingly Combs will stay on the federal jail in Brooklyn as he is been denied bail. The choose stated the rapper posed a threat of witness tampering and was a hazard to the group whereas awaiting his intercourse trafficking and racketeering conspiracy trial.
Prosecutors informed courtroom final week they've a “massive amount” of proof together with witnesses, photographs, movies and textual content messages. Including that video which was launched of Diddy with his ex-girlfriend, Ventura, through which he's seen putting her and dragging her by her hair whereas he wears solely towel within the hallway of the InterContinental Hotel in LA. It's alleged she was trying to depart the positioning of a freak off. Combs' lawyer defined the video on the time: that Ventura had discovered proof the rapper had “more than one girlfriend” and he or she had hit him within the head with his telephone and brought off with all his garments.
