by Francesco Erario and Emanuele Mastrangelo
The storyline intensifies around the arrest of Sean Combs, the US rapper and businessman best known as Puff Daddy, on 16 September. Combs, accused of crimes so serious that his lawyers rejected his bail offer of $50 million, is currently being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center federal prison in Brooklyn, where he has made it known that he fears for his life. The affair is in some ways reminiscent of the scandal involving Jeffrey Epstein and numerous VIPs from all over the world.
The businessman, the singer, the VIP
Born and raised on the streets of the working-class Afro-American neighbourhood of Harlem in New York, Sean Combs is the son of Melvin Combs, a man very close to Frank Lucas, a high-profile boss in the New York underworld of the 1970s, who died in an armed ambush when the future rapper was just a child. Frank Lucas' fame as a criminal, with whom Melvin Combs is directly associated, is such that Ridley Scott dedicated the 2007 film "American Gangster", starring Denzel Washington and Russel Crowe, to him.
From a young age, Sean Combs set his sights on breaking into the American music industry. In 1993, he founded Bad Boys Records, through which he managed to influence the rap music scene for more than a decade, reaching the top of the charts several times. Among the artists that have been produced is The Notorious B.I.G., the iconic New York rapper of enormous success, protagonist together with his rival Tupac Sakur of a great and bloody feud. If Tupac, under contract to the Death Row Records label, represented the West Coast rap movement, The Notorious ‘Biggie’ B.I.G. was the champion of the ‘East Coast’ and New York rap. It was a real war fought not only with rap songs, but also with gunfire, which saw both Tupac and The Notorious B.I.G. die, the latter just 25 years old. Even for these never solved crimes, rumours and hearsay have placed Sean Combs as more or less directly involved in both murders, without anything ever being confirmed or ascertained. It was precisely from the production of Biggie's even posthumous records that Sean ‘Puff Daddy’ Combs derived great profits and an enormous return in terms of visibility in the US jet set of the 1990s and early 2000s, to the point of becoming a deus ex-machina of the US music and culture industry.
To understand the level of power Sean Combs has come to hold, one only has to look at his wealth, which according to some estimates is between 800 million and 1 billion dollars. Over the years, he has chosen and used different stage names, from the first and perhaps best known Puff Daddy to the latest Diddy Dirty-Money, but always following the same leitmotif: sex and money. Sean Combs is also a well-known rapper, with several worldwide hits to his credit. 1997's "I'll Be Missing You", for instance, released as a tribute to The Notorious B.I.G. who had been murdered a few months earlier, is still a world-famous hit today.
1998 is a pivotal year for understanding current events, and the very likely repercussions they may have. Indeed, it is the year in which Diddy threw the first of his infamous White Parties, increasingly exaggerated and excessive parties, described as somewhere between a huge bacchanal and an orgiastic, esoteric-like ritual. These drug- and sex-fuelled parties, whose main objective was debauchery, have been attended by so many music and Hollywood stars over the years that it would be easier to remember the names of those who, especially these days, boast of never having taken part in them. Among the names of participants at the White Parties, named after the obligatory dress code, would also include Leonardo DiCaprio, Ashton Kutcher, Megan Fox, Justin Bieber (when he was still a minor), Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Mariah Carey, Usher, Khloe and Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and Jennifer Lopez, the latter his girlfriend in 1999, when both were involved in a shooting for which Combs was tried and acquitted for lack of evidence.
The accusations
At least eleven women accuse him directly of sexual abuse at different times, but not only: the charges also include sex trafficking, aiding and abetting prostitution, extortion and drug and prostitution racketeering. Already last May, Sean Combs hit the headlines after CNN showed a video taken in a hotel room in which the rapper repeatedly kicked and punched his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura. An episode impossible to deny, which led to a trial that ended in a multi-million dollar settlement between victim and aggressor.
Abuse and rape allegedly involved not only women, but also men and underage boys, not disdaining to exercise his power and position to promise contracts or careers in show business. Combs has been portrayed as a sexual predator who would violently prey on his victims after knocking them unconscious with horse drugs (literally), then exploiting his fame to intimidate them into silence, or blackmailing them with films depicting participants at his parties engaged in sexual acts of all kinds. In this sense, every statement, photo or film that might have seemed prurient at best in the past, takes on a completely different and disturbing appearance: emblematic is the video that captures Combs with the then 15-year-old Justin Bieber, before the two spent 48 hours together in his villa.
The world of show business thus shows its dark side. In particular, the musical sector known as hip hop, which includes in particular gangsta rap and, more recently, trap, ‘musical’ genres on which disturbing shadows are looming over their true nature. What shakes the already shaky world of American stars and their high-ranking friends from the foundations is, at this point, a single question: how is it possible that nobody knew anything? [1 - to be continued].
Bachelor's degree in Communication, Publishing and Journalism (Sapienza University of Rome), Master's degree in Business Communication (University of Salerno), postgraduate course in Economics (University of Parma). He deals with marketing and business development in Italy for a small foreign company. Passionate about sociology, media and politics, he studies the emerging cultural and subcultural phenomena among young westerners.
Editor of the Centro Studi Machiavelli “Belfablog,” Emanuele Mastrangelo is editor-in-chief of “CulturaIdentità” and has been editor-in-chief of “Storia in Rete” since 2006. A military-historical cartographer, he is the author of several books (with Enrico Petrucci, Iconoclastia. La pazzia contagiosa della cancel culture che sta distruggendo la nostra storia e Wikipedia. L'enciclopedia libera e l'egemonia dell'informazione).
Italiano 
English
Scrivi un commento