Unmasking Diddy

The rap mogul shook off decades of rumored bad behavior with wholesome PR revamps. Now the allegations against him are his legacy.

- Craig Jenkins

A NATURAL-BORN party promoter, Sean "Diddy" Combs could work any room. Chatting with hedge-fund manager Ray Dalio in 2019, Diddy broadcast a voracious hunger for knowledge, plying his mentor for career advice: "I don't want to make the most money. I want to be known for giving the most money away." Dropping into New York rap radio station Power 105.1's "The Breakfast Club" amid a noisy return to music last year, he served liquor, talked about spirituality, and cracked "pause" jokes in quick succession. That disconcerting closeness of the cosmic and the carnal was par for the course for Combs, an altar boy turned entrepreneur whose career is a monument to these and other striking dualities. His business empire blossomed across the '90s and the early aughts in spite of jarring investigations into his enterprises and morals. He cultivated an affable, absurdist air offsetting his worst press, which in turn always tugged against his wholesome revamps. Now, as Combs fights an array of allegations of ghastly violence and sex trafficking that figure into a few different decades of his career, and endures FBI raids on his homes, how much of his public persona may have been a deliberate, face-saving con is becoming clear.