Also media.
Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcasts being recorded on a shockingly good week. We've all been in a real downswing since the election, but some great news lately. A thing happened that we probably shouldn't joke about, but you know what it is. Bashar al Assad fled Syria. Nick Fuintes got arrested, and our guest today is one of my favorite people, someone that the audience has not met before, but someone who has been a friend of mine for like fifteen years.
Human I have told some stories about this great human stuff, a great human my humanitarian friend Greasy Will Greasy with a Z Grammy Award winning.
Audio engineer and proof that you can accomplish great things with of a brain.
For the album we won that Grammy before the album Michael by Killer Mike. My audience will also know you as the other person in that story where I had a light bulb fight in Santa Monica.
Oh man, amazing times.
Good.
You and I had some adventures and you know what's cool is like, I mean, you know, I'm gonna have my best etiquette today because I am a Behind the Bastards fan, Because you know, I listened to this show because it's like hanging out with my friends still. You know, It's like it's like every day that we've ever been together. It's like like Robert gets im like, hey man, you guys, you guys ever heard that story about the Egyptian guy?
No, tell me more, tell.
Me more about this fucked up dude.
And we had a lot of conversations about when we were going to introduce you to the behind the Bastard's audience. And I have made a request for three separate topics, and I have never told people those three topics that I have requested Robert to write about, but one of them is today, and I desperately wanted you on these episodes.
So I'm very, very excited about this.
As a representative of the hip hop and it's appropriate that we are gathered here today to talk about p Diddy. Oh my god, John Buffy Coles.
It has been an amazing opportunity to be here for this because you know, there's a certain thing and I'm gonna try and be careful today because like there's when you're in the industry as deep as I am fifteen years into doing this, it is it's damn near impossible to miss the rumors, right, It's like and I actually had a huge viral like TikTok right at the beginning of all this when the first lawsuit dropped, when the Cassie lawsuit dropped, I had a viral TikTok that got
like ten million views because I was like, immediately, I was like, uh, did he's go down, dude, Because there's certain people in the industry You've heard so many things about for so long that when that thing comes out and like the first damn breaks, that first little the Dutch boy pulls.
His finger out or whatever, yeah, you know, it is going.
To start uncovering ridiculous things. And I even said at the moment, I was like, if the tabloids are starting to run with this stuff, it is only a matter of time before the Feds get involved. Like the Feds don't like looking stupid, they don't like looking bad like that. And when somebody is sex trafficking across countries.
I'm not laughing at the sex trafficking.
He got caught, yes, yeah.
Yeah, you know, it's like you you gotta know, it's like this was coming, it was going to happen, and when it opened up when the dam opened up, it was.
Like, oh, let's see what happens. Let's see yeah. Yeah.
At one point Robert was like, he had new baby goats. What kind of goats were they?
That is the story that opens this podcast. Yeah, yeah, because you started by being like in the industry, I've been hearing fucking rumors about p Diddy for years, well, roughly a year ago. My goat had little baby goats, and one of them was a hybrid Nigerian Angora mix with the softest hair I've ever felt on an animalst
It's not a chinchill, a beautiful animal. Previously, I had gone with the rubric of naming my livestock after famous historic dictators because it amused me to have to, for example, cut the shit out of Joseph Brodes Tito's astread blocks, like that's just kind of funny, right, But this particular goat was really cute, so I decided I wanted to give him a mirthful name, and I told Sophie, my producer, I'm not call him P Diddy.
Now.
Let me say here. I'm not a pop culture guy. I didn't know anything other than like P Diddy was like a rapper, I actually didn't realize how into gangster rap he was because again, not super aware of all this stuff. I was just like, oh, he's like a Snoop Dogg type big ues.
His image has never particularly been gangster rap, like not, I mean.
Since he was having people killed.
Yeah, yeah, he definitely took more mogul. Yes, absolutely, that is a great way to say it is like he was he was. He was the guy who has companies, the alcohol so rock, He's got you know, he's got this, he's got shoes, he's got clothing, he's got all this stuff. Like he definitely shifted like ice Cube did to Disney movies.
Like it was like that immediate, like oh man, you can get away with not accusing ice Cube of anything, but you can get away with so much more if you look a different way than the guy who's like involved in multiple deaths and.
Shoes you know.
Yeah and yeah, so so like that was I was like, I was just named p Ditty.
That's a fun name, right.
Uh. Anyway, Sophie did her job, which is to dive in front of bullets for her host as a producer, and yeah and and said, no, you cannot name your goat after Diddy because he's a monster, and I was like, oh, and I looked dead to him and there wasn't a ton out at the time, and then he righted by the FBI a few months later.
It took a minute. It was gonna take them in.
It did not take It was a well known secret. Most of my entire life living in Los Angeles.
I had missed it. Yeah, everybody, everybody.
If you're like in a certain like kind of scene around the world, in like the in the industry in LA it's like you will always hear that, like some
old like you know, it's like the caterers. It's the people that are like the service workers of the of the world, you know, the engineers, the white dude in a room full of rappers sitting at the desk that's like, oh shit, Like really, they just say this out loud, and it's like sometimes it's secondhand sometimes, but it's like you'll hear these things and it will be like some older like Grizzly dude that's like, yeah, man, don't ever don't ever work for Kanye man.
You know, or or famously, don't go to a Didty party.
Don't don't go to a Ditty Party, Don't hang Out with Diddy.
I had even watched earlier this year that movie Blink twice and I was like, oh, this is kind of interesting, you know, and then I realize I find out they're like, oh, it's supposed to be about Ditty, Like this was a veiled way of talking about this guy. So if you are like me, or if you're someone who knows more about Ditty, you know, the question is how did all this like, how did this guy get to where he is and get to do what he did for so
long without having a downfall? And we are going to answer that question and more this week on Behind the Bastards, a podcast about people I almost named goats after.
And we're back. So.
Sean John Combs, which is kind of Sean John, which is the name of the clothing brand he's going to make later, was born on November fourth, nineteen sixty nine, in Harlem, New York. He was the son of Janis Combs, a former model who worked as a teacher's assistant most of his childhood. His father, Melvin Earl Combs, had served in the Air Force, but later in life became a drug dealer. He also he worked for a guy named Frank Lucas. Does the name Frank Lucas mean anything to y'all?
No, he is.
If you've seen American Gangster, that's the guy Denzel plays American Gangster. Sean's dad works for a very serious gangsters like played by Denzel. Serious, right, it's as a side. If your goal is to make a movie about like crime is bad, don't have Denzel play. That's just gonna make me want to be a gangster. Everyone wants to Aaron Taylor Johnson of situation. You know, you gotta get like, you know, the right kind of feel for people.
Yeah, Denzel is so handsome.
Where do they do it? It was like the Gladiator to movie. Really wouldn't like it would have been a totally different time.
Yeah.
I was like, he is a good guy.
I'm supposed to like this guy? Is he bad? I'm so confused.
Man, it's Denzel. He's wearing purple. What's not to like?
He looked regal as fuck.
I was just like, oh, man, I just he should be the emperor.
Yeah, yeah, he seems fair. Yeah.
So Tragically, Melvin Colmes was never played by Denzel in a movie. Instead, he was assassinated, shot dead in his car in Central Park when he was thirty three years old.
Shaw. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is uh Diddy's dad. That is a young one.
Yes, yes, Sean is two years old at the time, so he never really knows his father. As a little boy, his dad's death served as a constant reminder of the consequences of crime as a lifestyle, or at least that's what he would say. I don't know how true that is, because again, very involved in crimes, you know, seems.
More like it was like a lesson on, like, don't be the guy in the car getting smoked at thirty three, you know.
Be the guy who Denzel winds up playing right. Yeah yeah, at the couple levels.
You know you got you got some more wiggle room up there, uh huh yeah. Don't be a private, be a general. Yeah. Yes.
So his mom moved the family out of Harlem not long after Melvin's death, taking them to Mount Vernon, a suburb of in Chester County. Now, as an adult, going by the name P Diddy, Sean would make a lot of statements about the poverty he was raised in, because if you are coming up in hip hop in the way he did, you want to like act like you came from a really hard back.
Sure, I mean this is we will probably talk about this, I'm sure eventually at some point, but like this is the Tupac thing, Like he went to he went to like a performing arts school.
Like he didn't grow up.
I mean, his mom was a revolutionary you know, activist or whatever. But he came up in a pretty decent kind of lifestyle and it wasn't until he got into that East Coast West Coast beef that he gangstered up hard.
Yeah.
Yeah, Whereas I mean, we're going to talk about Biggie. Biggie does come from like a rough background, like.
Making record deals. Yeah.
Now, And obviously Sean is massively exaggerating how rough his background was. I don't want to minimize like his dad getting shot when he's two. But his mom is like Tupac's mom, one of these people who works incredibly hard and is very responsible. She gives her kid a good degree at kids a lot of stability. And Sean goes to a prestigious private school, Mount Saint Michael. It's a Catholic school. His family is very Catholic. He wears a uniform,
he plays football. His mom describes him in interviews as having been an entrepreneur from a young age, starting his own paper and not in the way that you often mean that a hip out he starts. He starts a paper route as a kid, right, like, in order to make money.
She told the New.
Yorker we had a Cadillac car and a house and he liked life like that.
Right.
So yeah, the actual quote that he was an entrepreneur at an early age, that was a direct quote. Yeah, there will be a Connor Roy was interested in politics at a young age.
There will be a lot of other stories like that.
It's again, I mean this has been brought up many times on the show You Kids Show. Kids show too much aptitude for something at a young age. You got to worry about.
It when your kid says he wants to be a CEO. Look, I'm not saying you should do this legally, but maybe get him into drugs, you know, slum down a little bit, slum down a little bit.
Look, I got two kids, now, you know it's not you don't just give them drugs.
You leave them around him on the street. They'll figure it out.
Yeah.
Yeah, put him outside and don't watch him enough. Like my parents did. Yeah, yeah, that's and we all turned out great.
Your children could also be having light bulb fights in the streets of Santa Monica and winning a Grammy and winning Grammys. So one story Diddy likes to tell is of the time his aunt baby sat him at her home, which was in a public housing project called the Patterson Houses in the Bronx. Again, his mom gets out to
the suburbs they own a home. Other members of his family obviously are a lot less comfortable, and the story he tells us that he wakes up sometimes he'll say, I woke up with fifteen cockroaches on my face, which you didn't count the cockroach as nobody would in that situation.
You can feel it.
You can feel a dozen cockroaches, but you can't count them as fast exact number. Man.
And in other recitations he's less specific. I'm not saying this didn't happen. I think it probably did, just knowing the other stuff about his life.
But he also lived in decent places where yeah, cocker.
I too have woken up with some croaches on my face. This apparently inspired him to seek wealth and success. Quote and this is from him years later. I was like no, I'm not going to do that. I'm gonna get out of here. I'm gonna be somebody. I'm gonna own something and be able to take care of my family. I don't want to live in these conditions no more. And again,
you know I'm not maybe something like this happened. He also does bring it up exactly the way you would if you're trying to like throw out in interviews, scenes that people will put in a biopic about you, right.
Right, Yeah, for sure, that one SoundBite that grabs you at the perfect time and they're like, yeah, man, like that's it.
You're never gonna be anything.
You never make it.
Kid, You're gonna go down just like your father.
Dead in the back of the car now.
Diddy would later claimed that the memory of this herowing event inspired him whenever he made a change in his career. It was something that just kind of snaps on, you don't take less in life and fight back those roaches. Still to this day, whenever I get comfortable, I just remember them. I remember living in a situation where babies weren't changed for two or three days, and everything smells and there's no food. The memory is the thing that really fuels me to make sure that one day none
of us have to live like that? And did he didn't do anything to make sure none of us had to live like that? And you didn't live like that, right.
Yeah, yeah, sure he didn't. Yeah, I major you didn't have to live that way. But yeah, fair enough. But that's it.
I mean, like that is often, you know, whether true or not, you know, I like there's definitely probably essences of that, you know, like of being true because like you know, like that is the story of a lot of people in America right now. It's like going through some really tough times and like seeing her trying to like get there, and like that is often the story, especially when it comes to successful people. Right The music and like hey man, I come up hard used to
be anyways. It's more nepo babies these days.
It doesn't even was.
The great equalizer, you know. It's like you could be poor and from nowhere and become the biggest in the world. That's that's what music used to be.
So yeah, and it's I mean, like everything it becomes more oligarchic as it fucking ages and gets sclerotic, but like it's also not weird. You know, I can say I didn't. I wouldn't say I had a hard upbringing. My parents were like poor when I was a little kid. Financial stress is like a lot of my earliest memories.
And that's definitely part of why I have gone after money as an adult, right is because like I didn't want to have screaming fights in front of my partner about the fact that we couldn't afford rinter whatever.
You know.
That's that's absolutely like a lot of people have had that experience. A lot of people deal with that now. It sucks ass, Like, so I don't doubt that some version of this is true, right, that he encountered a lot of poverty around his family and was like, well
fuck that shit, right yeah. And I do think it's interesting that, like his connections with financial despert are not direct, they're family members, right, So he always there's always this sense of like, I'm separate too from this, from the hardship, right, Like it's not direct to me, which is interesting. Now, it's worth noting that Diddy, as an adult told lots of inspirational stories about moments from his childhood that inspired him to later greatness, and maybe all of these are bullshit.
But you know, let's hear him out.
That's definitely a market he has, is like the inspirational climbed out of this like even in his verses.
Yeah, but that's not Also that's not exclusive to him.
That's a lot of rap as well, you know, Like so you know it is it kind of goes hand in hand. It's a it's a bit of that like that that tale of like rising up out of the worst situations that makes like so many people respect to understand you as a as a rapper.
So and I'll even say that's not you know, that's a thing that rap gets from the same source that a lot of others because you see that in evangelical Christianity the whole Like I was, you know, down and out load look high rising and low slide, popping reds and busting heads, kicking in doors and banging whores, and then I met Jesus. You know that's sort of fucking
deal a lot. But it's this thing everybody gets from, like you know, power of positive thinking, like hustle culture where it's like okay, you got to have like the down and out story, and then I had my realization and like you can do it too. It works for everything. It's not just immiliating.
Yeah, and just to tag onto that, I literally was just making fun of NEPO babies because it was like, so, it's like the opposite is literally when it comes to most of creative culture, to be considered the worst you can be, to have privilege in everything that's considered like the worst because it's like WHOA, well, you you don't have to learn guitar on a guitar that only had three strings and like you know, was given to you by blind Willy down on the corner who definitely had
tuberculosis and leftist early type shit.
You know.
Yeah, yeah, that's just that's just the way you like frame things if you want Americans to to if you want to be a fucking mogul. Anyway, here's a quote from something that he said later in a c in an article. One day when he was a child, he he asked his mother for a new pair of sneakers, but she couldn't afford them. He recalled into twenty sixteen CNN interview that his mother almost began to cry upon hearing his request. That day, he said, my hustle was born,
and he's got a lot of that day. My hustle was, Yeah, that was the one day. His mom being like, we had a Cadillac. Maybe she's exaggerating because she doesn't want to admit that things were harder than they were, But I kind of think it might just be more than. He wanted expensive sneakers and his mom wasn't like, no, we don't have the money. His mom was like, no, you don't need those sneakers. Yeah, I'm not going to send two hundred dollars on fucking sneakers for you.
Like it wasn't.
It wasn't my mom being like, we could go to Goodwill and find you a dice nice pair that you'll grow into type thing. It was like, it was like, oh, you want three hundred dollars nikes like hard, yeah, hard pass you know.
Yeah, it's less.
It's a lot less inspirational to be like my store, which is like I wanted a computer that could play StarCraft and my mom said, no, you don't need that. Well, yeah, I want to be able to buy my own computers when I grow up, right, Like, that's not an inspirational story. That's not like, yeah, nobody's gonna put in the biopic you know, the music swells and you get a fucking razor.
So yeah, one thing that we can definitely mark as a turning point in his life was a football injury that he acquired while playing for Mount Saint Michael Academy. He will always say I was gonna be in the NFL. I was good enough to be in the NFL. He'll kind of insinuate he was being scouted by the NFL. I don't know that he was.
I'm not entirely sure, but I'm pretty sure. He's like five nine or something, right, He's like, he's not a big guy.
He's not a big guy, but there's there's positions for shorter guys.
Sure, for sure.
Just to say, for the record, the amount of men that I've told me I was going I was going to be an insert professional sporting league here.
Yeah, you're like, sir.
Yeah, for sure.
When I was in the Marines, there used to be a joke about, you know, everybody was gonna go to a great college. They had a full ride to go to a great college, and they were all varsity whatever, and they were gonna One of the dudes in my platoon.
It was so funny.
He started off saying he was gonna be he was scouted to be the quarterback at USC and when everybody was like, dude, you were not scouted to be the quarterback. That's a prestigious position. We could have we would have seen that. You would have been like in the news and shit like that's a big deal. And he was like, I didn't say quarterback. I said cornerback.
It was like that was that was his way out of it, man, cornerback. Yeah, one dude.
I remember he used to he had like one of his pecks was bigger than the other, and he said, yeah, man, I was I was gonna play quarterback, and and my coach always had me benching one side only, you know, And that's why I.
Was like, what, no way would do that? No one.
So I kind of got every guy in the entire world, if they played sports for like five seconds, has like.
A oh it's almost you know, story could have been great. Then I broke my leg. I ran for twelve touchdowns.
If you've ever done that to me?
Just no, I was like, bullshit, Yeah, there's a certain inner bullshit detector. I feel like you definitely have, like you kind of like it's like the Sophie I roll where it's just like huh yeah, like just yeah yeah, that right there, the smirk and the.
Uh huh yeah. Sure yeah.
It's a crucial life skill to develop.
Sure you've won a Grammy. I bet you have. That's why you keep it directly behind you. Man.
Now, I will say whether or not he was almost in the NFL. His team was very good. They won the division title in nineteen eighty six. I think when he's a junior, so like, he does play on a very good team. I'm sure he was not bad at it. I just don't know that he was in the NFL. That said, he does break his leg in his last year of high school badly on the field, which ruins his pro dreams. Now Man, As a fun aside, will Well, I was read here and I love this.
Well.
I was researching these articles. I found an old twenty twelve interview in The New York Times with Diddy. This is back during his you know mogul, you know, generally popular phase, and the the article was about a movie that he had helped produce called Undefeated. This was based on an Oscar nominated documentary about a real life high school football coach named Bill Courtney, who was apparently pretty good. I don't know much about high school football coaches.
You're from Texas. How do you not know much about high school?
Like I developed, I fucking played high school football for middle school. I forget which year I was in football, but I played football.
I did a sport once.
Yeah, I was not almost in the NFL.
It wasn't as fun as drugs.
So now that I could have gone pro in will yet I could have been. I really could have been in the in the NFL of drugs.
Absolutely, I still feel like I have a chance.
Like I feel like I got like a field of dreams chance in fact, you know, like.
I do, I do want to see the field of dreams of drugs. It's like they put up a table in a field and just like drugs start materializing. Fucking John Belushi walks out of a cloud.
Willie Nelson is like he's not even dead, but he's the guy that gets to walk back on the field and get younger.
He's the Ray Liota and he.
Dick pulls himself off out of a sewer.
Oh my god, they will come.
The biggest bong ever and just like a table of cocaine.
Oh, we could make this movie.
So I feel like someone is going to rip this off from us. We better act quickly.
Back to this story, So did he produces this movie or helps to produce this movie about this high school football's coach named Bill Courtney, And he's interviewed in the Times about it. And in the interview, Colmes talks about his own football experiences in high school, and he laments I didn't have a coach like Bill Courtney who stood by me and helped motivate me in everything I was envious.
To be honest, he's kind of insinuating that a better of coach might have helped him overcome his broken leg or whatever.
Anyway he could have healed me with his witch doctor. Ways, right, right, right anyway.
The best part of that interview, though, is that Colmes was working as a producer on the remake of that documentary with the Weinstein Company, and the interview with him in the Times includes this line. Next quote, Combe said, he and Harvey Weinstein had been trying.
To do something together for seven years.
And yeah, bro, bet you guys were Yeah, I bet you projects you were in on.
Yeah. Absolutely.
It is almost like I hate whenever people start like because like every time some of this stuff comes out, you know that like a certain person's like a grease back, then every person that's ever been in a picture with them is suspect, you know, And it's like this, and it's like, yeah, but like not all those people are actually doing bad shits, are just taking advantage of somebody's like status to up themselves a little bit or meet people or what.
But also, yeah, a lot of times they are.
Yeah, a lot of times the whole Harvey Weinstein connection maybe should have been a sign.
Yeah, a lot of times they're absolutely running a fucking little circle jerk over there with each other.
You know.
Yeah.
Yeah, Now it was during Shawn's high school years that he first actually you know what, speaking of Shawn's high school years, you know it'll help you get through high school drugs well and the backs and services that support this podcast. Fair enough, uh, and we're back. I hope you've all graduated and you are ready for the rest of the pod.
And don't join the military like I did, because it is not going to be a good idea.
When you graduate, man, do anything else.
But the recruiter says, I can even pick my mos.
Did I ever tell you that.
I had a friend that thought he was joining the Marine Corps snowboarding team. His recruiter literally showed him pictures of dudes on snowboards and was like, yeah, man, if you he was like from Colorado and he thought he was joining it.
Like he was like two weeks into being in the fleet, and he was like, so, when does the snowboarding guy.
From the snowboarding team gonna like hit me up? Or like how do I get over there? Like, bro, we are deploying for our recket, like seven minutes.
You are not going to the Marine Corps. There isn't even a Marine Corps snowboarding team.
There ought to be like an Olympic for a military recruiter lies, Oh my god, one's up there.
Oh my god, there's so many hoops.
I had another friend who literally the recruiter he came in and he was like, yeah, man, I want to be the in infantry.
He's like, and the recruiter like like slow played, and he's like, well, I don't know, man, it's it's pretty exclusive. And he got on the phone with like his master sergeant in the back room.
He's like a car dealer being like my boss agreed, we're gonna we never do this.
We're gonna do what we can for you. We're gonna, you know, we're gonna hook you up. Man.
You seem like a pretty pretty wise individual, you know, really, you you belong up in infantry.
Man.
Yeah, we can get you in man.
Fuck.
So it was during Sean's high school years that he first acquired the nickname Puffy, and we have two different stories for how that happened. Here's the first, as related in an article on Hip Hop Insider. He used to puff out his chest to make his body seem bigger, which is where the name originated.
Maybe that's true, that's what his mom said.
I remember seeing his mom in an interview that said the same thing that that's where it came from.
That he used to because he wasn't a big dude. Back to the point earlier.
And there's a slightly different story that he told in nineteen ninety eight to Jet magazine. Whenever I got mad as a kid, I used to always huff and puff. I had a temper. That's when my friend started calling me Puffy. Yeah, but you know they're not necessarily.
I mean, you know, they're not at odds with each other. That might be like, yeah, yeah, it's like.
He's like one of those fish.
Yeah, anytime he's threatened, he gets.
Big oh Man and puffer fish. Infamous sex criminals. Do not let your friends go home alone with a puffer fish.
I remember that in Finding Nemo. That was one of the subplots of Finding You. Was that puffer fish for sex criminals?
Yes, yeah, I used past. There's sex past, sex pests.
Yeah.
So with football out of the way, young Sean leaned into the other less discussed aspect of his personality, which was that he was kind of an artsy theater kid. Did He had a reputation at his private school for being neatly dressed, and in college for wearing designer clothes, which he funded through a variety of legal entrepreneurial ventures. For example, in between classes this is again when he's
at college. He's at Howard University, he would operate a shuttle service to the airport, and he would also sell his old term papers, t shirts and soda to his classmates. So again entrepreneur but not exactly a gangster. Roe Ronan's book Bad Boy, which covers Ditty's influence on the hip hop industry paints a picture of a young man who
was beyond everything else an opportunist. At one point, while he's in at Howard, there's this massive protest campaign on the campus over the presence of Lee Atwater on the university board of trustees. And again, Howard is a historically black university. Lee Atwater is the author of the Republican Party's infamous Southern strategy, which I cannot run late directly to you without using the N word repeatedly, like.
You had me at a Republican party.
I was there, I was there already. You're just edging me from there.
The basic idea of the strategy that Lee Atwater helps put together is that you can't campaign in nineteen sixty eight. Before sixty eight, you can campaign by just screaming about black people and saying you want to hurt them. Right by sixty eight, you can't do that, So you have to instead campaign on issues that will hurt black people, but you can pretend aren't racist, like fiscal conservatism cutting programs that help Black Americans without calling them slurs. Right,
that's Lee Atwater. So obviously Howard University students are like, the fuck is this guy doing on the board of trustees.
Hey, bro, you you've got your hood many Yeah, that.
Is essentially the tenor of the protest campaign. Now, Sean's peers rightly thought it was fucked up for this guy to have a seat on the Howard board, and they do win. I'm going a spoiler heat. He winds up leap stepping down.
Man every now and then plugging a CEO and broad daylight the city street does something right. Protest work.
Protests can work. So there's this big protest campaign. There's like clashes with riot police, they occupy buildings on campus.
It's a whole thing.
How far you have to go to get one white man fired from right fired?
Yeah.
In the book it was all a dream. Culture journalist Justin Tinsley writes this of sophomore Sean Colmes's involvement in this protest campaign. For Colmes, the student protests in the spring of eighty nine presented an opportunity to unite the student body and put some money in his pockets. At the same time, Colmes took images from the protests, photos of students and police clashing and students being whisked away, and printed up some posters and he like sells posters
based on this. He's like, he's a profiteer.
Yeah right, yeah yeah.
A write up by Chris Malone goes further. Future producer and co worker of Ditty's Derek d Dot Angeletti was at Howard at the same time as Ditty and saw how he made a quick buck from the protests. In the two thousand and three Notorious Big documentary Unbelievable, he spoke about Diddy's photo enterprise during the protests. He made hundreds of them and sold them for ten and fifteen dollars a piece. Angeletti said, that's the type of guy.
I saw all this protest shit as well and good, but he was getting paid off it.
He was ready. Yeah, this is the eighties. Yeah, eighty nine.
Yeah, so I mean yeah, so ten to fifteen bucks, that's that's a lot of money too. That's that's not cheat Like we think of ten teen to fifteen bucks now, but in eighty nine, ten to fifteen bucks, Like.
Yeah, it was like seven hundred, eight hundred dollars.
Yeah, it's a lot more money, whatever the math works out to.
But yes, absolutely, yeah, this was back when a dimebag cost ten dollars.
Yeah, and that wasn't cheat.
Yeah, it used to be iron We used to be a country.
We had onions and our belts.
It was his style at the top of yeah. Amusingly enough, in two thousand and nine, did he made statements in support of another protest movement at Howard, promising I got y'all back and saying, do what we did and take it over. Let's go and do it in a peaceful way, but do it. And again, you did not take anything over. You sold pictures of people doing that.
Like we were.
Looking back through a lens, so it's easy to like see like like, oh, he probably was kind of but you want to believe that. Like any when you heard this earlier, you know, did he telling this story, you were like, yeah, yeah.
Good for you speaking up for the kids.
Yeah, yeah, you.
Did it, man, But like and then like hearing it in retrospect, he's just like you know, you know, everything that he did was slimy.
Yeah, he's just always pulling an angle.
He was almost facing a riot line to get at water fucking fired.
Right.
If you're one of those, if you or your parents did good for them, that's.
Pretty cool man. Yeah.
So a good deal of our knowledge of college age. Did He comes from Derek Angeletti, who I quoted earlier. He's the guy who described young Puffy as a flashy guy. Quote he was always out at the clubs and the young girls loved him. That's a creepier line in modern context. He'd be in the middle of the floor doing all the new dance moves, and his style of dress was a little more colorful Boulder. Everyone took notice of this cool,
overconfident young dude. I was DJing at the time, and one night he came up to me and said, I'd like to throw a party with you. You're pretty popular, And that's kind of how did he did. He's really good at recognizing people that other people like. That's his primary talent. He becomes a billionaire off the basis of that.
You will definitely see, especially in the music industry, there's so many there's such a wide ranging culture of that being the thing.
You know.
It's like the lou Pearlman or the or the or you know, or the Ditty or the jay Z with Rockefeller, you know' rock Nation. You know, it's like all these different organizations that's what they're looking for. All the time is like who is the thing that other people can look at? And because like that's what it takes you have to have. You have to have a stable of
people for everything. To have a party, you got to have the best caterer in the world, but you also got to have the best DJ, and you also got to have you know, it's like that's what all those people are the best at, is collecting a whole bunch of the best ofs that they know.
Yeah, and that's like, I mean, honestly, like that's that's also just an entertainment industry thing, Like you know, Sophie and I that's a skill we have in a different way, right, Like you.
Got a stable of really cool podcasts.
A year or so ago, I'm reading this ed Zitron guy and I'm like, I bet he could be a podcaster, you know, Like that's just that is just kind of the industry too. That's like how you you know, and and he's going did He's gonna be one of the best.
Day you will unify the entirety of all podcasters in the world takeovers.
So we're starting the East Coast West Coast podcast rivalry. Get d and shot in a fucking conflict with one of the NPR guys.
Oh man, another movie idea.
You guys are great movie. I'm making ed the Biggie Smalls of podcasts. Sorry man, you cooked enjoy the next couple of years. Buddy so Combs took things a few steps further than most people who throw popular parties on campus by sometimes successfully convincing or paying celebrities to show up. He included his name on flyers with their name, which is part of how he would brand himself. Right, you're
attaching yourself to celebrity. You're also just making sure everyone who goes to this huge party with like fifteen hundred people knows that's a diddy party.
Right. Yeah, Reputation is everything.
That and he he's good at reputation management. He prints business cards for himself that he hands out. They have his name engraved on them as Sean in parentheses puff Combs just one fu. So he's still working on the nickname.
Right.
That's a bad that's a bad process.
It's a process.
Some stuff here, I knew you before you were greasy.
Well, his friends are like puff puff PuF.
There should at least be two f's.
It's like, damn near poof bro like, I don't know, man, it's gonna be confusing.
Just a boardroom of guys. Yeah. Oh and that's one of my one of my By the way, speaking of like wasted o people are lying, one of my because this this comes up periodically when people will like lie about having been in the military or special forces. If anyone ever tells you they served and they had a really cool nickname.
Full of shit.
Yeah, nobody gets called the like the Avenger, your fucking killer or whatever, like, no, it's always like sack.
Yeah, like yeah, we're like two thumbs, yeah shit stained.
Yeah, you're like, oh man, there's there's nothing about thumbs that could have been a good story here.
Yeah.
So uh.
These parties with Diddy grow to be sizable affairs, but the biggest of them was a homecoming event at a Masonic temple fifteen hundred, which actually does sound pretty cool. Yeah, fifteen hundred attendees were expected, but Sean's marketing of the event was so successful more than forty five hundred people showed up, which causes a problem when three times as many people show up, and this is going to be
a continuing problem for him. Angeletti later claimed, the DC police shut down the whole block and brought out the dogs. We had to get on our knees and beg them not to lock us up, which again not super gangster.
Yeah, getting on your knees and begging is exactly fuck the police.
No, Biggie wouldn't have done that. I'll tell you that Tupac would have shot those cops. Tupac would have shot those cups.
And he wasn't even that gangster man, but he would have shot them Cups.
Would have shot them cups. Man. We forget man.
This guy's hosting New Year's celebrationsanship, but that guy would shoot some cops.
That guy was hardcore. Martha Stewart's friend Weekly parties were all well and good for getting attention, but Sean wanted much more out of life, and he quickly decided a business administration degree from Howard wasn't going to get it for him. So he drops out and he starts begging record executives in New York for jobs, using his party planning career as a resume. This did not work, but when he reduced the request from job to unpaid internship,
he got a yes from Uptown Records's Andre Harrel. Now this is not a guy I'd heard of before, but Sheila Flynn for The Independent describes him as the man who quote famously coined the term ghetto fabulous. So, yeah, that's Andre Harrold. He's a big guy in the industry.
She describes his time interning for Uptown this way. Combs initially commuted weekly between college and his hometown, working eighty hour weeks as he literally ran to complete errands for his record superiors, and it wasn't long before he quit Howard altogether. By nineteen ninety one, Harold had installed him as an A and R executive, and Colmes was forging a reputation for identifying and molding top tier talent. So he goes very quickly from unpaid intern to paid executive.
He's very good at this. He works like crazy, and he's got an incredible eye for talent. And this is also ninety one rap is exploding.
Yeah yeah, and perfect timing for it all. Well there.
So just for there's an actual term for that in the interest, called a runner. It's literally because you are, in fact running for everything you do. You go and get things all throughout the day. It's the first job you do in almost any like music industry position. So it's like, this is what I did. I was an intern and then I became a runner, and then an assistant engineer and then an engineer. But that's how you like work up with and and it's crazy something that
people don't like. It's not like it's not like being an actor, right, like doing some of these jobs, like like what did he did here? Some of these jobs, it's not like being an actor.
You get out here and.
You're competing against just like everybody working at every diner in all of Los Angeles, right Like, doing some of these specific jobs like a and rs or producers or engineers, you can get into the industry and be one step away from the top immediately. There's so many stories of that. Is like you get it your first my first job, I lived in Texas where we met. In Texas, I was playing in a metal band and then I I was like, oh, I should maybe like do music for
a career. I went to school for nine months, graduated from a tech school, and started at the biggest studio in the world as a runner. But I was so good because my background in the military and all this stuff that I was in.
I was a runner for.
Like three weeks before I was like working for the studio as an engineer, So it was like you're only a very very short insert. It's like attacking the industry from a secret angle because you can do things like it's so fast. It's like your first job might be working for the president of a label. You know, if you have the right aptitude for the type of stuff,
it could happen just like that. Now, it's still competitive in everything you know, and it's really hard, but it's it's a different thing from like being like an actor or a musician, where you're competing against thousands and thousands of people in the same proximity trying to do that job.
It's kind of like a hack to get into the industry.
Well there you go, folks. You could have your own Grammy. Well maybe even be a guest on this podcast.
More tips like this on my TikTok Greasy Wheel Music.
I don't have any tips for becoming a journalist or a writer.
It's it's very.
Hard and it seems like no one's doing it anymore. Yeah, I don't know how it worked for us.
Get chat, GPT and just plug a subject in and then post that.
On a website. That's there you go.
You're a type of the Lord of the Rings into chat GPT and you too could be a novelist or sued by the Tolkien estate either way, same def.
Yeah.
So he's you know, by ninety one, he's an A and R executive, So he's he's doing he like. While he does that, he continues throwing parties. He understands that that's number one, that's how'm going to meet people. That's I'm gonna run into DJs, the people that I'm going to like poach, you know, as talent. He would throw what is described in one source as racially mixed daddy's house parties for street kids and preppiest students from Columbia
University and New York University. And this is where that's a Ronan who wrote a book about, you know, his role in hip hop says quote that's where he saw what fans were dancing to when wearing So this is also how he stays plugged in. Now you know it's I should say it's also how he's going to be committing a lot of his sex crimes.
But we'll get to that in a minute.
So yeah, daddy's house parties don't go great for a lot of people. Oh yeah, you brought your soundboard. Two choices, and he makes the choice next to kill nine people.
So he's twenty two years old.
He's going as puff with one F. He's a college drop out and an employed record executive. And one of the acts that Sean helps bring to prominence is Jordikey j O R D E C. I.
I don't know if jordanash the Gene company. Yes, yes, he discovers that enough.
Jordikee is a an R and B duo who were blowing up by ninety one.
Joas, Wait, what are you saying? Is it Jodasy?
It's jail Oh you're saying Jodasy.
I'll look it up. No, no, no, I can't No, no, no, it's it's not it's not okay. So what's the name j O R D No, No, no.
The way that Robert has it spelled, there's an R in there. But I think I think Will is right that it's Jodasy.
Is it Jodasy? Okay, Well we'll say it's Jodasy because there's a duo duo. Yes, then that's then it's called look, I don't know these but you know me and fucking not sure it's a there's a D in there.
Yeah, I mean you know it could be.
I don't know Joasy so no, no, no, it is it is.
Yeah.
Combs decided a good way to increase Jodas's visibility was to throw a charity basketball game pitting two teams of rappers against each other while fans watched. The event was to be held in the City College of New York. Jim once again did He did what he does best, which is promote, and so a shitload of people show up, in fact, several times as many people as can fit in the actual gym itself. This becomes a problem because Sean doesn't do anything but promote the event, and he's.
Set up any of the safety measures, any of the staff, any of the bathrooms, none of that.
Now he has two of his assistants, who have never run large gatherings do that, and he does not inform them. By the way, every time I do something several times as many people as we can actually support show up could be a problem. He just has it, tells his assistance to handle it, and then forgets all about it.
Largely because his attention is occupied by executing fraud at the tune of tens of thousands of dollars because the game had been advertised as a charitable event, but like he hadn't told anyone what charity and actuality charity?
Yeah, what kind of charity? You know?
As a kid with stuff that needs stuff, you know, yeah, kid problems.
As someone who has been that assistant that had to organize, like like I've been this guy. I've been this guy that had to put together a house party with three bands and like five hundred people show up and the lapd is circling with a helicopter, and then I have to be the representative of white people to go out and talk to cops so that it's okay. You know, one of the artists I used to work with, but he used to always be like, yo, hey, the cops are here, so yeah, you want to go You'll go
talk to him? Oh yeah, man, He's like, you know, you speak like cops and like white people and stead of.
Like all right, I got it, I gotta go go outside like skits.
Hey, gentlemen, how are you doing tonight? Oh yes, sir, absolutely, sir. You know, like, oh, the dogs. You don't need those.
So there's no beneficiary actually selected for this party, and for the more than twenty four thousand dollars in nineteen nineties money that had been raised for the event. Further blame for what's about to happen goes to the police on duty. Sean's assistance had only coordinated with Pinkerton's security guards hired by the university. Yeah, there's Pinkertons and everybody legendarily protective of people.
They're safe and never hurt nobody them Pinkertons.
And the university had increased to the number of security guards to twenty three because they started getting worried before the event. But the NYPD just sends a few guys, and when it becomes clear that more than twice as many people as expected showed up, the sergeant on scene
doesn't call for backup until it's too late. Eventually there are like sixty something officers in attendance, but it takes a while, and the sergeant on duty also ignores repeated calls by the university, being like, there's way too many people. There's way too many people. You need to do something. There's going to be a riot, And in fact there is.
Yeah, they ignored the neighbors at our parties too, man, they just did not listen to them.
So once it becomes clear because they have to tell this huge crowd most of you are not getting in, and then the crowd gets rowdy and violent and a riot begins. The NYPD officers who are there are as useless as the NYPD tends to be when therever they're actually needed for something, and things go very badly. At seven pm, with far too many people crowded into the venue, the single door they had been using to funnel people
in was shut. Since that door was steel and at the bottom of a stairwell, with the crowd basically pushed up against it, it creates a solid barrier in a room that has four more people than are supposed to be in it. People panic and a crush develops. Dozens are injured, and nine young people are crushed to death, literally asphyxiated by the weight of the crowd. Medical exammers will note that like none of them had broken bones, they are just suffocated by the mass.
I mean, for those of you know, like I have been to a lot of concerts, I've been into metal music like the Sometimes it feels kind of you know, like how could you be killed by a bunch of people?
But like, if you have never seen a.
Crowd or been in a crowd, like even I is like, I mean, I'm a fairly large person myself, Like I'm not huge or anything, but like and I'm pretty okay with like bad situations. I've been in some crowd crush situations that have terrified me, wherea like this is like scary, like this has been If you've never been in those situations, it's really easy to understand if you have like what that's like. It's like it's like even a few hundred people can be like that, and you're talking about three
times the capacity of a venue. You know, that's like so easy for a crowd to just crush the shit out of some people.
It is like one of the best survival advice pieces I can give you is if you are ever in any kind of event and upon entering, you're like, your only way to get in is to push through a crowd of people with absolutely no gaps in it, and you immediately have like the hair stand up on the back of your neck and wonder, are there too many people in this room?
Fucking back the hell out. Yeah, get out there is go absolutely is, and it's not a good idea.
Don't fuck around with situations like that.
Next thing, you know you're gonna be surrounded by a bunch of Juggalos and an ICP concert at the Electric Factory and feel really uncomfortable.
So this is a horrible say again, nine people die because of this thing that Diddy has orchestrated.
One e MT. This this is early, this.
Is this is where more than one episode of this are.
We there's two episodes. There's more deaths to come.
There's two, there's two.
But Robert, I kind of feel like we can do this as a three parter.
I don't know, maybe we'll see one happened. Yeah. One e MT, who showed up on scene, described the result as a plane crash without a plane. There were bodies all over, people calling for help. That's a very bad way for your party to be. Although you and I have both thrown parties that I would describe as looking like a plane.
Crash after its h for sure, cool plane crash.
It's a very cool pane crash. You just feel like you're dead, like where people are like, man, that was the best night of my life.
Yeah, yeah, like the plane crash in Yellow Jackets. I haven't finished Yellow Jackets. I assume it goes well for those well.
Yeah.
This would mark the first time that Sean Colmes drew media attention.
In a big way.
New York news Day was one of the papers who first got reporters on scene, and years later one of them are called being told by a colleague the organizer was some guy called puff Daddy. In the days that followed, it became clear that a substantial amount of the blame for this disaster lay with puff Daddy, Puff Daddy, Puff Daddy.
A report compiled afterwards by the Mayor's office read mister Colem spent little time making the actual preparation for the game and delegated most, if not all, of the arrangements to Lewis Tucker and Ta Getter, both of them claimed to have no prior experience with such events. I found a fun article in the Columbia Journalism Review by one of the reporters who covered the crush, and this is
you know him writing after Diddy has been disgraced. His piece ended with this line, I do remember thinking, man, this puffy guy can't have much of a future after this. Let me tell you about America, my brother.
This is the thing though, too, is like it's like, you know, that happened, right, But I can't tell you how many events, how many things I've been to that have been like, you know, thrown like this.
A concert.
It's like, dude, I've been at a fest which is like a major concert that has felt like this, where it's like they didn't plan this very well.
There's not enough things here. It seems dangerous.
And the fine line between man, we just pulled off this crazy party, nine people died, is it's razor thin. You know, there is sometimes where it's like this is the coolest party I've ever been to, and then and it doesn't go completely wrong, but it could have at any time. One of those house parties we had, we had two hundred people and they're raging in the living room, and I thought for I started standing closer to the wall because I was.
Like, this floor is gonna give out. Man, there's no way it's get in bad life.
This house could not be designed to have this many people jumping up and down like this.
Yeah, and you know, a lot of being happy, especially like being happy about how you spent your twenties. Is getting as close to that line as you can get without crossing over into the killing nine people at City College.
Yeah, so yeah, yeah, risking it. Yeah, I've been on the edge.
Yeah, the edge is a place, but it's also place that's called the edge for a reason because sometimes.
Yeah, you know, hey man, you know sometimes you gotta get rid up to the edge and just.
Leave and laugh. Man. Yeah.
Hunter Thompson wrote eloquently about the edge and also diet unable to hold in his bowls.
So you know that is the consequence. It's not a long life.
It's not a long life. So because this is America, getting a bunch of people killed due to your own staggering negligence does not mean that you don't have it yet, none at all. And puff Daddy proves immune to consequences for his actions, even though again, every review of the disaster is like he he's to blame for a lot of this. Now again, I don't want to say all of it, because let's not forget the NYPD. Yeah, I also got those kids killed.
Look, there's never a time where the NYPD hasn't been a little bit negligent in some people dying in New York City.
You know, it's what they do best. That's part of their that's what they get paid for. Of course.
Yeah, the NYPD operates one of the largest surveillance apparatuses on the planet so that they can know more places to get kids killed. So puff Daddy winds up testifying in court about the disaster when the families of the dead and the survivors sued the college after a nineteen ninety eight court appearance.
So they didn't go after him at all, They just went to college. No, go after the college.
I think at this point the college is who has money?
He's not right, Yeah, he's a kid. Yeah, yeah, good point. Yeah, no reason to go after him. He's got Yeah, what's he gonna do for you.
After a nineteen ninety eight court appearance, he told reporters that, like, I think about it every day. I think about, you know, the dead every single day. You know, I'm always my thoughts are always with them.
Quote.
But the things that I deal with can in no way measure up to the pain that the families deal with. I just pray for the families and pray for the children who lost their lives every day.
So he literally wrote I'll be missing you like I'll be about the.
People he got crushed to day.
Yeah, right, all the every day man. Every time I pray, man, I'm missing you. Yeah. He hit him early with that, he did right away. That always works for him. Get the hits, man, play the hits.
I can't wait till we have our first dictator who takes a note data, who like fucking like uses chemical weapons on a crowd of protesters and is that then gets in like a studio and sings I'll be missing you. Pro tip for the future dictators who listen to this podcast, there's gotta be one of you and the bang are ready to go, have a banger, ready to go, and look if you do succeed in becoming a dictator, just give me a province. Just one province, is all I asked.
Hell you, I mean let me you know, I'll make a golden house for my of course I'm gonna make a golden house, you know, but like it'll be it'll be gold plated. I'm not that much, does everyone does? You can bring your grammy over to my gold plated house.
Whoa man, it'll take shots out of it.
Yeah. Now speaking of I'll be missing you. I'm gonna be missing you all because this is the end of part one. But don't worry, folks, we have a lot more coming. This is this, This whole week is gonna be Diddy Week here at behind the Bastard. Yeah, Diddy, will my friend. You have a TikTok to plug.
I have a TikTok. I am Greasy Wheel Music. I have a podcast it's called that sounds about right. I have a Instagram that you can find me Greasy. I'm Greasy Wheel g r e A z y W.
I L one L because the second one wasn't pulling any heavyweight and I decided I was wasting time doing it.
But no, so yeah, fuck that L. But I am highly googleable.
I am all over the internet. I can be found almost anywhere. You could even send a telegram to me. Still, I accept telegrams as long as they are Western Union and contain money as well.
Yes, yeah, yeah, I send you telegrams, but entirely about our oil business down in the eras Zona territory.
Yeah. I drank your milkshake. That's right, that's right.
That's how you and I spend our free time. Old timey oilmen. It's a great time everybody. Well until next week, folks, become an old timey oil man yourself, you know, start a start an oil rig.
Somewhere next week.
Next part, next.
Part, yeah, next part. Not next week. We'll be back tomorrow probably anyway, minutes from now, just a minute. We're gonna keep recording.
Yes, anyway, I love you all, go to hell.
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