Original subtitles

Things are happening, and it's like, I want to fight for my life. I want to

fight for, you know, just to not kill people.

I want to have a life to be able to live.

You know, it's really going to be hard for me to take more hits than I take it,

God forbid, get in front of a jury and have a chance.

And so I'm having this emergency call because something has to give.

We need the core theme to be, you didn't do anything wrong.

You didn't do anything wrong on any front.

And you've come to New York to face things head on.

Benjamin, was I ever paying any attention to what you've actually been

You've handled this with complete honor.

I don't think it's working.

I've listened.

I've been a superb client, as you said.

I jumped on the plane. I'm coming to New York. But I'm just like...

I'm just running around waiting for a shooter drop.

We're losing sight of the big picture, man.

It's the middle of September and there's still no indictment.

I don't know.

Then you have to have a spokesman. You have to have some sort of comms to

constantly be pushing that, Mark. Because you may just be the person that

does, you just may watch CNN.

You know what I'm saying? And there's like, there's 9 billion people in the

world. And 7 billion of them is on Instagram and TikTok.

And so you have, y 'all, you're at the wrong place looking to see what the

people with the possible jurors are thinking.

We have to find somebody that'll work with us, whether they're from this

country. or from another country.

It can be somebody that has dealt in the dirtiest of dirtiest dirty business of

media, in propaganda.

I've seen the media portray me like I'm a gangster, or

at times I'm a cold individual, or I'm just a shrewd businessman,

which is just not the case.

I'm a dreamer. I love closing my eyes and dreaming. I don't really deal with

reality. You know, I think that you're a great guy, a great role model.

Diddy P.

Papa. Papa Diddy Pop.

I'm sorry, I don't know what you're calling yourself these days. American

come true. Thank you, America.

It's like we have a movie, and you're speaking this language, and you know

I'm saying, we need subtitles.

And we're not providing the audience with subtitles.

And I invited you to this movie, and you in this thing, you don't know what's

going on. You just see.

You just feed images, you know, quickly.

Now, it has a whole life of its own.

The Department of Homeland Security conducting a raid at a house connected

Sean. Breaking news, another woman is accusing Sean Diddy Holmes of sexual

assault. Trafficking fourth labor, kidnapping.

The fourth lawsuit in the last few weeks. The fifth lawsuit.

There are now more than a dozen civil conduct that does indeed span two

I'm taking it.

eight nuclear bombs, you know what I'm saying, straight to the head.

And I'm tired of going back and forth with y 'all, with the lawyers.

That's just not true. Okay, so, so, so, so, so, so.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Let me tell you something. Let me say this. I'm not a

referee. So I'm going to get off the phone right now. Listen to me. I'm going

get off the phone right now, and I am going to let you professionals look at

situation and come back to me with a solution.

No matter what nobody says.

Here and there, y 'all are not working together the right way. We're losing.

yeah just get little cutaways of them like looking from the you know that's

you all

of

us got to go to the maker and we will be held accountable for the things we did

and we didn't do

Sean Combs is an asshole.

He is the motherfucker you're not going to like and you're not going to get the

fuck along with if he doesn't get his way.

He quickly became my hero.

If y 'all had a fucking chance to meet this

guy, you would be like, this nigga's energy is everything. I got to get up

go. Gotta get up and do it.

What's next?

What's next? I gotta get it. I'm not gonna stay fucking down.

He was presenting this freedom that black people hadn't had.

Like, we hadn't experienced a black man being able to say, I don't want that.

I don't want no problems, bitch. Come on. Hey, yo, dog, what are you talking

about? I'm telling me, like, I want some bullshit. I ain't on no bullshit with

you. So when I first met him, he quickly became the guy I wanted to be like.

When you're a leader in that way, it's admirable until you get to the point

where you want to control everyone around you.

He got to that point.

What y 'all want to do?

Want to be ballers, shot callers, brawlers?

It's like Scarface the movie.

I want the world and everything that's in it.

But you got everything.

Hey, y 'all, New York, we fucking did it!

Harlem, we did it, Montana, we did it!

It was a mantra that Sean had.

Nobody's going to be bigger than me.

Sean is the 1 % of the 1 % of the 1%. We'll never see a Sean in my lifetime

again, ever.

It was like the more money he got, the more power he got, the more power he

the more money he got.

And he always felt like money can get him out of everything.

I do feel it's important that we let the public know.

From the juror's standpoint, just kind of how we reach the verdict,

it's not everything that the media has put it out to be.

He's creating a narrative always.

He is the best storyteller in hip -hop.

He thinks he's Black Superman. I can do what I want.

You can't go on for long in life doing the things that he was doing before

something eventually happened.

You can't continue to keep hurting people and nothing ever happens.

It's just a matter of time.

Once upon a time, not long ago, when people wore pajamas and lived life slow,

the laws were stern and justice stood, and people were behaving like they ought

to good.

How you chasing kids on here?

Then there's a little boy who was misled by another little boy, and this is what

he said.

Me and you tonight, we're going to make some cash robbing old folks and making

them die.

I was there from the very beginning.

with the invention of Sean Combs.

I co -founded Bad Boy with Sean.

I was dazzled by his ideas and his unique talent.

But he was a very different Sean Combs back then.

Sean was 19 when he dropped out of Howard University.

He wanted to be in the flashy, swaggy music industry.

He started off dancing, wanting to be in videos.

Wanting to be a pop culture mover and shaker at a time where

things were changing.

Hip -hop was evolving.

Like it or not, rap is here to stay. It has become part of mainstream commerce.

It was just explosive.

Run DMC, Chaos One, Public Enemy, rock him.

The late 80s, it was fantastic.

There were a lot of independent labels that gave birth to hip -hop in the way

that we know it today.

What is this new music?

Like Uptown Records.

Heavy D was the biggest rapper tied to

Uptown. Excuse me. We got Heavy D in the house with us today. Thanks for coming

down. If you had the hardest cats in the hood, you could rock Heavy D. You with

your grandmother in the car, you ain't got to reach for the radio and turn it

off.

We called him.

the official mayor of Money Earner Malvernon.

Fuck Money Earner Malvernon!

Malvernon is in Westchester County, the first city outside of the Bronx.

Heavy D put that area on the map.

And his influence reached all the young people in the neighborhood,

including the young Sean Combs.

who was at Mount St. Michael High School, a Catholic private school.

He would knock on Heavy D's door every day to see if Heavy would take him to

meet Andre Harrell.

Andre was the champagne of rap, and he took the streets to

Wall Street.

The only entrance into hip -hop at that point was Andre Harrell and Russell

Simmons.

Into the corporate hip -hop world, into the money.

Sean had impressed Andre enough to give him an internship, and that was the

beginning.

I worked with Sean as an intern at Uptown.

I'm gonna picture, I'm gonna lay it out for you.

When you saw the Uptown records, you saw the Heavy D.

And I'll be sure.

I was the first number one artist on the Billboard charts on Uptown and the

first platinum artist on the Uptown label.

He was a GQ nigga. You know, he was a real penny loafers type.

He was one of them fly light skin niggas. And girls loved him.

was dating Kim.

Kim Porter.

Kim is at the receptionist desk at Uptown.

You get out the elevator, first person you see is Kim.

And it was a beautiful sight.

Everybody said that, you know what I mean? But when Sean saw Kim, it was

different.

And now Sean's always at the receptionist desk begging Kim for

A date, a kiss. He put it all on the table for Kim.

It was weird. It was weird in the air because everyone knew this was Al's

Al is hot as fish grease right now.

Hi, this is Al B. Shore.

Here's my exclusive number.

Two dollars for the first minute, 45 cents for each additional minute.

And Sean was not really, like, the catch.

He didn't drink alcohol.

He forbade marijuana. He did not like drugs.

He had the Gumby, and he looked like a scholastic dweeb.

But Sean was so determined.

I bet you I could get Kim.

And he was like, nah, no way. Your weight ain't even up enough yet.

But when Sean wants something, he's going to get it.

It might be a couple of years from now, but sooner or later, he's going to get

it.

Andre Harrell, Heavy D, Al B. Shaw, they had all the money and all the power,

and I was like, I don't know what they did, but that's what I want to do.

I got to Uptown a few months after Sean did, and I saw him being built

into cool.

We had to go through the Uptown flavor camp.

I learned a lot quickly.

Being in front of Willie Burgers on the 145th and 8th floor, being at the

rooftop.

The fashion, the walk, the talk, the attitude, the drive, the determination.

I was ready to do whatever it took to win.

The young Sean Combs, during that time, he was so tenacious.

You would ask him to turn Wednesday into Tuesday.

He was set about doing it.

First task we had given him was just go get a tape.

10 blocks away.

He came back in two minutes or something crazy.

And I remember I was on the phone. I looked up when he came back. I was like,

how'd you get there so fast? And he said, I ran there and back.

Right there and there. I said, oh, okay.

I should have known then that that was never going to stop, to run there and

back.

He ingratiated himself to Andre and made himself very valuable.

Something that... You don't want to do without.

Like, who's going to get my clothes?

Who's going to armor all my tire?

This is so convenient.

Then they lived together.

I bought the first million -dollar house. It's funny, that weekend, just

I moved in, he had a mysterious fight with his mother, and he said, I can't go

home. I got to stay here with you.

Fuck moved in before I did.

Andre is taking him under like a son.

Andre is the very first patriarch he connected with.

Sean grew up with the illusion of what masculinity looks like.

My first encounter with Sean, I remember it like yesterday.

My family, we rented the first floor of Sean's house.

I was my mom and dad's only child. So now Sean has somebody to brother up

We experienced a lot of firsts together.

I taught him how to ride a bike.

It was the best thing in my life to let go of the bike and him start riding.

We fit so well.

Sean was another misfit, just like me.

But the difference in my household, my dad taught me right from wrong.

No, Sean didn't have that.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce my mother, Janice Combs.

What were the primary jobs that you did to support your family? I did so many

jobs at one time. I worked at the United Cerebral Palsy.

I worked at the Board of Ed in Westchester County. I drove the school

I worked in a baby's boutique shop.

And he never knew this. I worked in an after -hours spot, too.

I needed to come clean.

I made more money because the men thought

I was very glamorous, and I used to pour liquor, and they'd give me big tips.

In Sean's house, there was Janet, and there was Sean.

My father's name is Melvin Combs.

I didn't get a chance to get to know him. I was too young.

My father got his brains blown out like on Central Park West.

I did the research.

They said my mother had brought me to the funeral of Fulham Chinchilla.

It was like a sigh of relief, you know what I'm saying, that I finally knew

what I was feeling was true, you know what I'm saying, that I was a son of a

hustler, a gangster.

Melvin's presence was there.

His money was there, and I understood that Melvin, made a lot of things

possible.

But Sean's mom was his everything.

If you look at some of the early pictures that Janice has of Sean, she

always making him into something.

The hat, fur coat.

I think she tried to overcompensate for the father being gone by making

him into...

This dandy.

Everything associated with Sean was Harlem.

Whoever would fly in Harlem, that's what he was as a child.

Janet, she'd always be in Harlem. And there were times where she'd bring us.

Here we are in this brand new Cadillac, that's all Janet drove.

She's making stops.

here and there. And you know, we knew the rule, the drill. Just sit there.

be right back.

She ain't turn the car off.

Nobody took the car.

No.

So you knew there was a different vibe going on with this family.

In his household, the groove was a little different.

A lot of Donna Summer playing.

And then we had these movies we'd watch.

Got to be number one.

The genre of film called black exploitation.

Super dude.

You had Superfly.

Superfly. You had the Mac. When you got nothing, you want everything. You gotta

get to be the Mac.

Their parts were hustler parts.

In Sean's household, you start to see all the stuff that you saw in the

Janice knew how to throw a party.

And the party's packed.

You got the ladies that look like they're straight out of a jet magazine.

Some brothers up there, you know, if you want to call them pimps, you can. If

you want to call them hustlers, you can.

You got a member of the New York Knicks or two.

There was a stage in her living room.

Literally a stage.

And that's where we used to have to go and dance.

And everybody's calling you baby, and everybody's saying, do that dance.

And all of this stuff, he's taken in.

So from the movie screen to the home screen, these are the makings of Sean

Combs.

Now, mind you, as a child, Sean was goofy.

Kids would pick on him a lot around the block.

And he didn't know how to defend himself.

Sean was a prince.

And Janice, she didn't want no princess.

She held back nothing.

You said I would be 12 years old, and sometimes I'd be out until 3, 4 in the

morning. James, James, we don't have to get into that right now.

Ma 'am?

Got a lot of beatings, too.

His beatings made me scared.

Right?

I got beatings now.

But when he got his beatings, it wasn't no... It wasn't a joking thing.

No.

Damn, I hate thinking about that, man.

My mother was, I guess, raising me for the real world.

She's always told me if somebody hit me, make sure I hit them back harder.

Make sure they never hit me again.

Make sure I fucked them up.

You know how you hear your mom's voice in your ear?

Boy, you better.

Boy.

Sean started fighting. He started stepping up.

But Sean don't fight like this.

Sean's going to bite you.

He's going to eat your ear off.

He's going to cut your neck open with his mouth.

He's not losing.

I know people are shaped by pain as well as by love.

And if there's more pain than love, watch out.

There's going to be pain that you're going to give others.

Because you're responding to that pain that you just can't seem to cut out of

you.

I didn't know much about him.

I know that he had a big ego.

I met him around 89, 90.

My job was to promote music videos.

And Puffy, he was always doing the party promotions, so he's always, like,

handing out the flyers.

At the time, I was working with Andre Harrell. He wasn't paying me enough, so

had to promote parties on the side, which was all good, you know what I'm

saying? Daddy's house.

He was savvy enough to promote parties.

They were the most successful parties at that time, but they were all about

promoting himself.

I went to a party for a good friend.

It was getting very late.

Puffy is like, oh, you know, I'm having an after party at Andre Harrell's house.

Under her road wasn't there. He was out of town.

People were tracking mud through the house, and I remember at the end of the

night, I was helping clean up the mud.

Puffy is, like, very polite, you know, and thanking me for helping him.

And he asked me, oh, wow, I just got this call, you know, someone, this girl

backed out of this music video, you know, can you do it?

And I was like...

I don't do music videos, but this party was in New Jersey, and I needed a ride

back to Manhattan, so I went along.

And I'll never forget, I had the same clothes on that I had from the night

before.

The music video was called Straight From the Soul by Finesse and St. Quips.

The whole premise was for me to jump out the car and go with these girls and get

away from the pimp guy.

Was there ever a time that Sean Combs sexually assaulted you?

Yeah.

Someone called me up and told me that, um, he said, you know, he has, you know,

video.

And I was like, what?

And that's when he, um, described it and explained it.

I just want to say this.

This thing was incredibly devastating to my family.

My mother, she's a social worker. We don't have money.

The thing that we had

was our pride.

We carried ourselves well.

We were pretty.

We were intelligent.

This is the basis of what I had, self -respect.

My mother wrote a letter to Combs' parents.

I just found this recently.

Can I read it?

Dear Mr.

and Mrs. Combs,

I'm writing you to inform you of something that your son

did to my daughter.

One weekend while visiting my daughter, I awoke to her screaming in the middle

of the night.

She told me that she was dreaming about Puffy.

I asked her.

Why she was screaming and who is this puffy person that he would cause her to

have nightmares.

I was shocked and mortified to hear her story.

She told me that several people have come to her to inform her that your son

made an obscene videotape of her.

Without her knowledge, he videotaped him doing something sexual to her.

Apparently, your son shows these tapes at parties on large screen televisions.

I realize that this may be hard for you to believe, but if I hadn't heard this

story from my daughter's own mouth and looked into her eyes, I would have

scarcely believed that any individual would compromise another person's

in this manner.

I approached a lot of people for help.

I got things like, what do you want me to do about it?

To, if I help you, I can't get into his party.

Why

would

you want to do that?

drug and rape a girl, tape it, and then put it up on the screen.

Here's my theory.

Alpo Martinez, drug lord, famous Harlem street tough guy,

hung out at the rooftop.

Alpo had a lot of girls, and he would tape girls that he was having sex with.

And then on a Saturday night, he might bring his camera and put it on the wall.

And everyone knows that so -and -so's girl.

What Sean saw was, I want to be looked upon in that way,

as someone that has that type of stature.

All his life, he's been trying to honor a man. He believed it was a famous

Harlem gangster.

And that gave his father a mythic presence.

People like Alpo, he looked at those guys with a certain amount of jealousy

envy, a certain amount of respect, and there's a certain amount of desire.

That thing was in him from there.

Did you ever confront Sean about it?

I did.

I avoided him for a very long time.

I ran into him one day.

He came to me.

He got on his knees and swore he did not do this thing to me

and denied it.

And that is the very last time I talked to him.

When I think back in terms of his rise, it is the most

helpless feeling.

I was always nauseous when I saw his image.

The one image in Times Square where he's holding his fist up,

when I saw it, I vomited right there on the street.

You are really raising your hand at victory, and I'm living in trauma and

defeat.

Another new lawsuit.

Federal prosecutors in New York have interviewed numerous women who will let

Jerome do it.

Just

silly

bullshit noise.

But it's like the legal system is doing it now. Because, like, legally, it's

like I got to spend money to go and get rid of this bullshit.

Oh, yeah.

Ain't got nothing left.

Got nothing left going on.

They ain't breaking me, though.

How are you, boss? If you don't mind, one picture, please.

I'm not good with the camera, so I'm going to try.

Sean was destined to be famous I

didn't see him for me coming.

I swear. I didn't see that coming 19

and always like seeing people entertain

And I thought, you know, over the holidays, we wanted to throw a celebrity

basketball game in Harlem.

I was at the game. I was on the floor.

All of us was there. Every rapper in New York, right?

Your MTV Raps came.

I'm at City College in the heart of New York City for the Puff Daddy having the

first all -time celebrity all -star classic.

That was one of the biggest basketball games. If that would have turned out

correctly, it would have went down in history.

There were lines and lines around campus to get in.

There's no more room, but everyone still wants to come.

We open up the door, everybody starts flowing through, but then thousands more

come.

There was a thing in hip -hop called bum -rushing the door.

People don't have a ticket when they hear something sold out. They say, fuck

we got to still get in. We're going to bum -rush the door.

We went up to the bottom of the stairs. The doors didn't go out that way. They

only came in.

People were stuck.

They were just crushing people down at the bottom of the stairs.

We were on the court, warming up to play.

And then Dougie first grabbed the mic and said, there's people that are dead.

Sean over -promoted, over -hyped, and that led to a crowd.

He's just like, oh shit, how did this happen so quick?

How would people want to explain it?

The death toll from last week's stampede at a New York charity basketball game

has risen to nine.

I was getting trampled.

Awful money. $12, man.

What do you mean $12? Caught $12 for a ticket.

One of the unanswered questions remains who's to blame for the stampede that

killed nine people.

Throughout the newspaper headlines, throughout the confusion, the finger

-pointing, who was responsible?

Sean Young, in real time, carried the weight of all of that.

My dream for this evening was to bring a positive program to my people, to

people of my age, and to people in my community.

Whatever must be done, must be done to ensure that this never, ever, ever

happens again.

It was the biggest news ever.

That's how he got super famous.

was that game and those deaths.

That's the beginning of Puff Daddy.

That's really how I started to become famous. It was through a tragedy.

He was holed up in a hotel on the east side, him and his mother.

He didn't know what was going to happen.

And I saw Janet's question, Sean.

He's going into this music business thing. He just left school, and now this

extreme tragedy has occurred.

Like, did he make the right decision?

And I saw him put his hands on her, call her a bitch, and

slapped her.

He's not looking back.

Sean Puff Daddy Combs and sponsors claim no responsibility in the tragic chain

of events that claim nine lives and injuries. The brass that afforded Uptown

distribution money wanted Sean out.

I saw Andre fight and fight to keep Sean in, and he did.

Andre Orell, Puff Daddy, he's passing on to, I guess, his son.

Protégé. Protégé. Yes.

Puffy. Yes. Tell me a little bit about this man and why you like working with

him. Because, you know, he's not intimidated by youth, you know what I'm

He knows the importance of leaving a legacy behind.

We need more adults out there that's going to teach the young, such as

I took Andre Harrell out to lunch, and I said, can I get a chance to maybe do A

&R?

The A &R is artists and repertoire.

That's the guy that works with the record company that puts the records

and works with the artists.

I said, give me a chance. You know, you're making music for young people.

I'm young and, you know, who better to make the music than me?

We had a group back in the day.

They drove up to New York unannounced to meet Andre Harrell.

When we make love.

Jodeci.

It's like...

They sing for Andre.

Andre loves it. Immediately, that becomes Puff's first responsibility.

Nigga, go make Jodeci.

What's in the future of Jodeci?

Hopefully to make whips, whips, whips. Andre put his trust with Sean as opposed

to the artist.

He told us, I don't care who the artist is, you're more important than them. The

artists don't work without you.

What would be the ideal musical setting for y 'all? I guess we're going in front

of millions of people.

You have to be able to control everything.

I basically style and come up with the images and design most of the clothing

for all of the artists.

It was him that put Jodeci in the pants, baggy, sagging at the bottom, the boots

not lacing it up.

He is able to sponge from the community and the culture and package it.

And in the studio, he did the same thing.

Sean wasn't a producer where he can tell you, you need a C here, a C note, or

this is an F.

But he did have a good ear for what could be a hit.

Let me give you an example.

At the rooftop in Harlem, the DJ Brucey B would mix acapellas from R

&B songs with hard hip -hop beats.

And it drove the kids crazy at the clubs.

That's what Sean did with Jodeci on those remixes.

It was very minimal. It was very hard beat and snare.

No melody.

Jodeci's record started climbing the charts.

Sean turned that into the blueprint for his special brand of A &R.

And then the next artist to benefit from that was Mary J. Blige.

Mary's what the 411 was out the box.

The hat pulled down, the seriousness.

It had a little bit of a darkness and moodiness to it as well.

All of that was groundbreaking.

He launched a female artist in a male -dominated hip -hop era.

He became an instant success, and that created hip -hop soul.

Mary became the owner of that sound.

Sean was making the hits happen, and the visuals happened.

In 1992, Sean is promoted to VP of A &R and Arts and Development.

So my name is Puff Daddy, Vice President of A &R and Arts Development for Uptown

Records, which brought you the hits of Jodeci, Mary J. Blige, Heavy D and the

Boys, Fall MC, and you know, on and on and on.

Puffy had Jodeci and Mary J. Blige, but Puffy's a big, huge EPM defense.

My background's taken, my background's came for the crossover.

He was at my crossover video shoot, and he asked me to do the Mary J. Blige

intro for the 411 album.

I did that for him, and then all of a sudden we became friends.

I thought it was a general friendship until I see that this game is being

played.

You got an agenda.

Mesa.

He was trying to court her after we broke up.

Sean wants her because Eric was that dude.

It was about, I got her, I won her over from him.

He had to have the girl.

And Sean has a way about when he gets you, he got you.

He got you.

And now you become property.

Me and Misa were just friends, but he wanted to make sure that there was no

calling and me being friends with that girl.

Sean's jealousy, it got to the point where he would put his hands on her.

Right outside of Uptown Records, they're fighting in the street, and he's

beating her into the car well.

She's on the ground.

And people are pulling him off of her and separating her.

A year or two later, they're still together, and Justin is born.

When he invited me to be the godfather of his first son, I was able to push

in the back of my mind and say, that was a really bad moment, but he was weak.

And it was a bad moment.

Does that make me part of a Sean Combs cult?

Maybe so.

I may have been the first disciple, believer,

and then overall protector against all odds.

Personally invite one more brother on stage.

Responsible for my show to see. Mary J. Blige.

Puff Daddy, come to the stage, baby.

At that point, Sean is on top of the world.

And his trajectory was only up.

I was just a wonder kid. I was just something that they never saw before.

To be young and...

To be Puff Daddy, it's just like, I felt like my dream had came true.

Everybody now is looking for this kid.

Because they all have artists that they have to get to the top of the chart.

What does that do to a person?

Do you think I'm still going to be like, yes ma 'am, no ma 'am, thank you very

much?

He became too big for Uptown Records.

I don't be so drunk and high by Wednesday at 8 o 'clock. I'm not really

give a fuck. But I give a fuck.

There started to be some dissension between Andre and Puff.

Andre was the king of the Uptown castle of the empire he created.

And the intern was taking his place.

I remember it like yesterday.

Andre called me into his office.

He tells me just like this.

He says, dog, I just fired Puff.

I said, what?

It was a sad day.

Andre was like a surrogate dad for Sean.

Sean was really sick when Andre fired him.

I'm talking about sick.

Couldn't believe it.

And then Sean called me, and he said, yo, I'm about to do my thing, dog.

Puff was like, yo,

I'm looking for some hardcore artist.

He's ain't tired of doing the Mary shit.

Jodeci said he wanted to do some hard shit, some street shit.

The West Coast had the hits

that we wanted.

So behind Biggie in 1992, people didn't know we had to produce Biggie's

album for Uptown. He was an Uptown artist.

But when Andre fired Puff, he fired him with a caveat.

I'm letting you go, but I'm going to let you take Biggie with you.

Andre decided to sell a Biggie album.

But now, we had to find a way to pay for it.

We were living on borrowed time.

I went about setting up the meeting.

Then we met with Epic, Sony, Columbia.

Then we met with Clive Davis at Ariston. Everybody knows him on a first -name

basis. Clive runs a $100 million record company called Ariston.

He has discovered Whitney Houston, Carly Simon, Aretha Franklin,

and a long list of other pop stars who thrive in the world, according to Clive.

So we went to Clive and we played a few tracks from each album.

And I remember one of the first ones that we played was Gimme the Loot. Yes,

love. Love your fucking attitude.

Because the nigga play pussy, that's the nigga. And Clive's eyes went like this.

I'm slamming niggas like to kill.

Shit is real.

And I said, wow, you got the goods. And I bought into his vision.

Gimme the loot. Gimme the loot.

Gimme the loot.

Gimme the loot. Gimme the loot.

I named it Bad Boy because I wanted to go against the grain.

I didn't want to just make records. I didn't want to just make money.

I wanted to make history.

I

was

at Bad Boy starting from the day that we put the LLT together and Sean gave me

25 % in stock.

And his mother, Janice, had 75%. He did not put the company

in his name to protect him from paying families that CCNY.

And I saw from that moment on, Sean had shifted in his personality.

I didn't see any more of the Mount St. Michael teen Sean.

He had become more like the person I see today.

We did a deal for approximately $10 million.

1 .5 went as an advance into Sean's pocket.

Another 1 .5 is supposed to be our overhead.

Sean said, that's yours.

You can do whatever you want with it, but you better make sure my company's

running.

From day zero, I wrote everything down every day so I can keep track of

everything I needed to do.

I ran all the money, all the budgets for the company, as well as a lot for his

personal life and all that came with it.

I think that he had this thing with

strongmen. And he had a thing with wanting to be one, but not positioned to

one streetwise, but positioned to be one industry -wise.

And they call that a paper gangster.

I'm not paying, nor am I involved in any of that shit.

And so as he's paper gangstering, he's also trying to street gangster too at

same time.

Savage! I'm a savage!

He's not from the street.

His mother did the very best to give him the best.

What's next? Give me something else. What can't you do? I can do it. But now

he's been getting beefier and beefier with the power from the music.

That's a good way to get your head filled up to think that you're just as

gangster as they are now without even having to pop your gun off yourself.

Now, after all this time, me and Misa are still cool.

We was just friends.

But one time, she just happened to be in my driver's seat of my truck.

And all of a sudden, I heard somebody go, and it's him.

He's steaming.

He swings on me.

So I'm laughing because I'm like,

you swung on me?

You putting yourself in jeopardy knowing you can't work none of us.

So now I'm like.

Yo, let's go around the corner. Because I'm respectful enough.

So he actually gets in the car, and we drive around the corner.

So I'm about to give him the business.

Shit could have got really ugly.

And he just said, yo, sit down. I want you to hear something real quick.

And that's when he played me the Biggie Smalls album.

Yeah, this album is dedicated to all the teachers that told me I never amount to

90.

It was all a dream.

I used to read Word Up magazine.

But Biggie's trajectory was not zero straight to the top.

Biggie had a slow start, very nervous at first.

At the time, that West Coast thing is happening.

So we began to look at what they were doing, and Tupac was like a shining

There's a song called I Get Around by Tupac.

That song, if you're like in a science lab and you're looking at something with

a microscope and you're trying to figure out what it is and what it's made of,

that's what we did with that song, I Get Around.

Sean was just mesmerized by that particular song, the structure of it,

and the visuals.

It showed the culture.

It's like, let me dissect this. Let me understand it. Let me do it my way.

And the next single was Big Papa, and that dropped, and it took us over the

with Big. I like that. He was out of here from that moment on.

We had Ready to Die before it came out.

Big had sent Tupac a demo, and we played that tape to death, man. We played that

tape till it was destroyed.

And then Pop got the phone call that Big was having an album release party.

He said to us, man, we all go into that.

He was very excited for him.

I've never seen someone more excited for someone

else's success as Pop was for Big's success.

He thought Big was dope.

He wasn't doper than him as far as he was concerned.

But he was the next thing smoking.

I'm a high guy. From bed, stop putting the swelling on your eye. Your nose

When I choke you, you stop breathing. When police come, I'm leaving.

Peace and love.

Here we go.

Pac would take big with him on tours and let him open up for him.

Pac was developing thug life, this ideology

of taking back our communities.

Big was with that. He felt it. He resonated with him.

So they had a connection.

Sean was insanely jealous of Biggie and Pac's friendship.

You know, when I was around Big, I felt like he really loved me.

I felt like if I left the room, he wasn't going to say nothing bad or

said something bad about me, he would defend that.

He's probably one of the only people I have really trusted for a long time.

There's a yearning for him to have that complete, total control.

You're my artist. You're my best friend.

I pay you. You work for me.

I make hits with you.

And who is this guy?

Why do we need him in the picture?

Tupac was a very likable person.

All the women loved him.

Being a rapper, being a movie star.

For Sean, being a marketer, you're a manipulator.

Please welcome Tupac Shakur.

And there's envy for people who have success, fame, with no manipulation.

Puff is, to me, very threatened by pop.

When I reflect on how this all came into play, it's a trail.

City College.

Innocent lives got taken.

Then it became the ability to get away with anything.

And then you circle in the fact that he has legit money.

Then you have the antagonist, Tupac Shakur.

All those ingredients created the chain of events that started in New

York.

And ended in vain.

Do you know who was responsible for the killing of

Tupac Shakur?

No, I don't.

I think that Sean now, in my mature mind, had a lot to do with the

death of Tupac.