Former music executive Daniel Evans says he can still remember the threat from his old boss, Sean “Diddy” Combs – then known as Puff Daddy – to a colleague. It was 1997, he says, in the New York office of Combs’s Grammy Award-winning music label Bad Boy Records.
“It was like, this is what money does to you,” he says.
Combs was often “prickly”, but Evans says power was transforming him. Just days before, the hip-hop mogul had received his biggest reward to date – $6m (£4.8m) to mark the label’s success, which boasted platinum-selling artists like The Notorious B.I.G.
That year Combs’s music career reached its peak, with his empire soon expanding into fashion, alcohol and even his own TV network.
Nearly three decades on, his legacy is in ruins as he sits in jail awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering alongside battling dozens of lawsuits accusing him of drugging and assault at lavish parties, high-end hotels and in his label’s recording studio. He denies all the allegations.
Now the BBC has spoken to more than 20 people who worked with Combs at Bad Boy Records – including former executives, assistants and producers – who describe for the first time troubling incidents they say they witnessed during its 1990s rise.
Some executives say they had concerns after seeing Combs having sex with women in the studio, including one incident where the employee says the young woman did not seem to react when he walked in. Another staff member complained Combs asked her to bring him condoms.
The BBC also heard that corporate funds were used to fly in women from across the US for sex at the request of artists and other employees.There was a course of conduct that became more egregious over time and that conduct does go back to the 90s,” says Tony Buzbee, a US lawyer representing dozens of alleged victims, including one who says Combs threatened to kill her in similar terms to the incident Evans says he witnessed.
His client alleges Combs raped her on a bathroom floor at a promotional party held for The Notorious B.I.G., the label’s biggest star, in 1995. She says in her lawsuit that afterwards, Combs told her not to tell anyone or “you will disappear”.
In a statement, Combs’s legal team accused Buzbee of being “more interested in media attention than the truth” and said the hip-hop star “never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone”.
The 55-year-old’s lawyers said they had not been provided with sufficient details about the BBC’s claims to present the facts that would “counter these fabricated accusations”.
“As we’ve said before, Mr Combs cannot dignify every publicity stunt or facially absurd claim with a response. He has full confidence in the judicial process, where the truth will prevail: these accusations are pure fiction,” they said. A brash go-getter, Sean Combs became an overnight millionaire when he launched Bad Boy Records in 1993 with a roster of top artists.
It was Combs’s first venture, having already built a name for himself as a talent director at another music label, Uptown Records, aged 19.
“He said that he wanted to be one of the biggest artists in the world and it didn’t matter if I believed him or not,” remembers Jimmy Maynes, a former Uptown colleague.
Maynes remembers Combs having a short fuse in the office, sometimes banging “his hands up against the desk” like a “bratty kid” and yelling if he did not get his way.
Combs was eventually fired from Uptown and at the age of 23 started Bad Boy Records.
“He’s the hardest working man that I’ve ever met and always wanted people to match his energy,” says Daniel Evans, a senior executive who managed Bad Boy’s recording budgets and artists’ contracts between 1994 and 1997.
Combs described himself as the “Great Gatsby” and swiftly became known for hosting coveted celebrity bashes at New York nightclubs, on the beaches of Cancun, Mexico, and later infamous “White Parties” – named after the all-white dress code – in the Hamptons.
Even President Donald Trump attended events in the 90s, says Evans, who once saw him sit on a golden throne at Combs’s 30th birthday and exclaim: “I’m the real King of New York!”
