Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcasts being
Speaker 2: recorded on a shockingly good week. We've all been in
Speaker 2: a real downswing since the election, but some great news lately.
Speaker 2: A thing happened that we probably shouldn't joke about, but
Speaker 2: you know what it is. Bashar al Assad fled Syria.
Speaker 2: Nick Fuintes got arrested, and our guest today is one
Speaker 2: of my favorite people, someone that the audience has not
Speaker 2: met before, but someone who has been a friend of
Speaker 2: mine for like fifteen years.
Speaker 3: Human I have told some stories about this great human stuff,
Speaker 3: a great human my humanitarian friend Greasy Will Greasy with
Speaker 3: a Z Grammy Award winning.
Speaker 4: Audio engineer and proof that you can accomplish great things
Speaker 4: with of a brain.
Speaker 2: For the album we won that Grammy before the album
Speaker 2: Michael by Killer Mike. My audience will also know you
Speaker 2: as the other person in that story where I had
Speaker 2: a light bulb fight in Santa Monica.
Speaker 4: Oh man, amazing times.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 5: You and I had some adventures and you know what's
Speaker 5: cool is like, I mean, you know, I'm gonna have
Speaker 5: my best etiquette today because I am a Behind the
Speaker 5: Bastards fan, Because you know, I listened to this show
Speaker 5: because it's like hanging out with my friends still. You know,
Speaker 5: It's like it's like every day that we've ever been together.
Speaker 5: It's like like Robert gets im like, hey man, you guys,
Speaker 5: you guys ever heard that story about the Egyptian guy?
Speaker 4: No, tell me more, tell.
Speaker 2: Me more about this fucked up dude.
Speaker 6: And we had a lot of conversations about when we
Speaker 6: were going to introduce you to the behind the Bastard's audience.
Speaker 6: And I have made a request for three separate topics,
Speaker 6: and I have never told people those three topics that
Speaker 6: I have requested Robert to write about, but one of
Speaker 6: them is today, and I desperately wanted you on these episodes.
Speaker 1: So I'm very, very excited about this.
Speaker 2: As a representative of the hip hop and it's appropriate
Speaker 2: that we are gathered here today to talk about p Diddy.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, John Buffy Coles.
Speaker 5: It has been an amazing opportunity to be here for
Speaker 5: this because you know, there's a certain thing and I'm
Speaker 5: gonna try and be careful today because like there's when
Speaker 5: you're in the industry as deep as I am fifteen
Speaker 5: years into doing this, it is it's damn near impossible
Speaker 5: to miss the rumors, right, It's like and I actually
Speaker 5: had a huge viral like TikTok right at the beginning
Speaker 5: of all this when the first lawsuit dropped, when the
Speaker 5: Cassie lawsuit dropped, I had a viral TikTok that got
Speaker 5: like ten million views because I was like, immediately, I
Speaker 5: was like, uh, did he's go down, dude, Because there's
Speaker 5: certain people in the industry You've heard so many things
Speaker 5: about for so long that when that thing comes out
Speaker 5: and like the first damn breaks, that first little the
Speaker 5: Dutch boy pulls.
Speaker 4: His finger out or whatever, yeah, you know, it is going.
Speaker 5: To start uncovering ridiculous things. And I even said at
Speaker 5: the moment, I was like, if the tabloids are starting
Speaker 5: to run with this stuff, it is only a matter
Speaker 5: of time before the Feds get involved. Like the Feds
Speaker 5: don't like looking stupid, they don't like looking bad like that.
Speaker 5: And when somebody is sex trafficking across countries.
Speaker 2: I'm not laughing at the sex trafficking.
Speaker 4: He got caught, yes, yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, it's like you you gotta know, it's
Speaker 5: like this was coming, it was going to happen, and
Speaker 5: when it opened up when the dam opened up, it was.
Speaker 4: Like, oh, let's see what happens. Let's see yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 6: At one point Robert was like, he had new baby goats.
Speaker 6: What kind of goats were they?
Speaker 2: That is the story that opens this podcast. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: because you started by being like in the industry, I've
Speaker 2: been hearing fucking rumors about p Diddy for years, well,
Speaker 2: roughly a year ago. My goat had little baby goats,
Speaker 2: and one of them was a hybrid Nigerian Angora mix
Speaker 2: with the softest hair I've ever felt on an animalst
Speaker 2: It's not a chinchill, a beautiful animal. Previously, I had
Speaker 2: gone with the rubric of naming my livestock after famous
Speaker 2: historic dictators because it amused me to have to, for example,
Speaker 2: cut the shit out of Joseph Brodes Tito's astread blocks,
Speaker 2: like that's just kind of funny, right, But this particular
Speaker 2: goat was really cute, so I decided I wanted to
Speaker 2: give him a mirthful name, and I told Sophie, my producer,
Speaker 2: I'm not call him P Diddy.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: Let me say here. I'm not a pop culture guy.
Speaker 2: I didn't know anything other than like P Diddy was
Speaker 2: like a rapper, I actually didn't realize how into gangster
Speaker 2: rap he was because again, not super aware of all
Speaker 2: this stuff. I was just like, oh, he's like a
Speaker 2: Snoop Dogg type big ues.
Speaker 5: His image has never particularly been gangster rap, like not,
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 2: Since he was having people killed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, he definitely took more mogul. Yes, absolutely, that
Speaker 5: is a great way to say it is like he
Speaker 5: was he was. He was the guy who has companies,
Speaker 5: the alcohol so rock, He's got you know, he's got this,
Speaker 5: he's got shoes, he's got clothing, he's got all this stuff.
Speaker 5: Like he definitely shifted like ice Cube did to Disney movies.
Speaker 5: Like it was like that immediate, like oh man, you
Speaker 5: can get away with not accusing ice Cube of anything,
Speaker 5: but you can get away with so much more if
Speaker 5: you look a different way than the guy who's like
Speaker 5: involved in multiple deaths and.
Speaker 4: Shoes you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah and yeah, so so like that was I was like,
Speaker 2: I was just named p Ditty.
Speaker 4: That's a fun name, right.
Speaker 2: Uh. Anyway, Sophie did her job, which is to dive
Speaker 2: in front of bullets for her host as a producer,
Speaker 2: and yeah and and said, no, you cannot name your
Speaker 2: goat after Diddy because he's a monster, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: and I looked dead to him and there wasn't a
Speaker 2: ton out at the time, and then he righted by
Speaker 2: the FBI a few months later.
Speaker 4: It took a minute. It was gonna take them in.
Speaker 6: It did not take It was a well known secret.
Speaker 6: Most of my entire life living in Los Angeles.
Speaker 4: I had missed it. Yeah, everybody, everybody.
Speaker 5: If you're like in a certain like kind of scene
Speaker 5: around the world, in like the in the industry in
Speaker 5: LA it's like you will always hear that, like some
Speaker 5: old like you know, it's like the caterers. It's the
Speaker 5: people that are like the service workers of the of
Speaker 5: the world, you know, the engineers, the white dude in
Speaker 5: a room full of rappers sitting at the desk that's like,
Speaker 5: oh shit, Like really, they just say this out loud,
Speaker 5: and it's like sometimes it's secondhand sometimes, but it's like
Speaker 5: you'll hear these things and it will be like some
Speaker 5: older like Grizzly dude that's like, yeah, man, don't ever
Speaker 5: don't ever work for Kanye man.
Speaker 6: You know, or or famously, don't go to a Didty party.
Speaker 5: Don't don't go to a Ditty Party, Don't hang Out
Speaker 5: with Diddy.
Speaker 2: I had even watched earlier this year that movie Blink
Speaker 2: twice and I was like, oh, this is kind of interesting,
Speaker 2: you know, and then I realize I find out they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's supposed to be about Ditty, Like this was a
Speaker 2: veiled way of talking about this guy. So if you
Speaker 2: are like me, or if you're someone who knows more
Speaker 2: about Ditty, you know, the question is how did all
Speaker 2: this like, how did this guy get to where he
Speaker 2: is and get to do what he did for so
Speaker 2: long without having a downfall? And we are going to
Speaker 2: answer that question and more this week on Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 2: a podcast about people I almost named goats after.
Speaker 4: And we're back. So.
Speaker 2: Sean John Combs, which is kind of Sean John, which
Speaker 2: is the name of the clothing brand he's going to
Speaker 2: make later, was born on November fourth, nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 2: in Harlem, New York. He was the son of Janis Combs,
Speaker 2: a former model who worked as a teacher's assistant most
Speaker 2: of his childhood. His father, Melvin Earl Combs, had served
Speaker 2: in the Air Force, but later in life became a
Speaker 2: drug dealer. He also he worked for a guy named
Speaker 2: Frank Lucas. Does the name Frank Lucas mean anything to y'all?
Speaker 4: No, he is.
Speaker 2: If you've seen American Gangster, that's the guy Denzel plays
Speaker 2: American Gangster. Sean's dad works for a very serious gangsters
Speaker 2: like played by Denzel. Serious, right, it's as a side.
Speaker 2: If your goal is to make a movie about like
Speaker 2: crime is bad, don't have Denzel play. That's just gonna
Speaker 2: make me want to be a gangster. Everyone wants to
Speaker 2: Aaron Taylor Johnson of situation. You know, you gotta get like,
Speaker 2: you know, the right kind of feel for people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Denzel is so handsome.
Speaker 2: Where do they do it? It was like the Gladiator
Speaker 2: to movie. Really wouldn't like it would have been a
Speaker 2: totally different time.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I was like, he is a good guy.
Speaker 4: I'm supposed to like this guy? Is he bad? I'm
Speaker 4: so confused.
Speaker 2: Man, it's Denzel. He's wearing purple. What's not to like?
Speaker 4: He looked regal as fuck.
Speaker 2: I was just like, oh, man, I just he should
Speaker 2: be the emperor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, he seems fair. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Tragically, Melvin Colmes was never played by Denzel in
Speaker 2: a movie. Instead, he was assassinated, shot dead in his
Speaker 2: car in Central Park when he was thirty three years old.
Speaker 4: Shaw. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is uh Diddy's dad. That
Speaker 4: is a young one.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, Sean is two years old at the time,
Speaker 2: so he never really knows his father. As a little boy,
Speaker 2: his dad's death served as a constant reminder of the
Speaker 2: consequences of crime as a lifestyle, or at least that's
Speaker 2: what he would say. I don't know how true that is,
Speaker 2: because again, very involved in crimes, you know, seems.
Speaker 5: More like it was like a lesson on, like, don't
Speaker 5: be the guy in the car getting smoked at thirty three,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 2: Be the guy who Denzel winds up playing right. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: at the couple levels.
Speaker 4: You know you got you got some more wiggle room
Speaker 4: up there, uh huh yeah. Don't be a private, be
Speaker 4: a general. Yeah. Yes.
Speaker 2: So his mom moved the family out of Harlem not
Speaker 2: long after Melvin's death, taking them to Mount Vernon, a
Speaker 2: suburb of in Chester County. Now, as an adult, going
Speaker 2: by the name P Diddy, Sean would make a lot
Speaker 2: of statements about the poverty he was raised in, because
Speaker 2: if you are coming up in hip hop in the
Speaker 2: way he did, you want to like act like you
Speaker 2: came from a really hard back.
Speaker 5: Sure, I mean this is we will probably talk about this,
Speaker 5: I'm sure eventually at some point, but like this is
Speaker 5: the Tupac thing, Like he went to he went to
Speaker 5: like a performing arts school.
Speaker 4: Like he didn't grow up.
Speaker 5: I mean, his mom was a revolutionary you know, activist
Speaker 5: or whatever. But he came up in a pretty decent
Speaker 5: kind of lifestyle and it wasn't until he got into
Speaker 5: that East Coast West Coast beef that he gangstered up hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Whereas I mean, we're going to talk about Biggie.
Speaker 2: Biggie does come from like a rough background, like.
Speaker 4: Making record deals. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, And obviously Sean is massively exaggerating how rough his
Speaker 2: background was. I don't want to minimize like his dad
Speaker 2: getting shot when he's two. But his mom is like
Speaker 2: Tupac's mom, one of these people who works incredibly hard
Speaker 2: and is very responsible. She gives her kid a good
Speaker 2: degree at kids a lot of stability. And Sean goes
Speaker 2: to a prestigious private school, Mount Saint Michael. It's a
Speaker 2: Catholic school. His family is very Catholic. He wears a uniform,
Speaker 2: he plays football. His mom describes him in interviews as
Speaker 2: having been an entrepreneur from a young age, starting his
Speaker 2: own paper and not in the way that you often
Speaker 2: mean that a hip out he starts. He starts a
Speaker 2: paper route as a kid, right, like, in order to
Speaker 2: make money.
Speaker 4: She told the New.
Speaker 2: Yorker we had a Cadillac car and a house and
Speaker 2: he liked life like that.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 6: So yeah, the actual quote that he was an entrepreneur
Speaker 6: at an early age, that was a direct quote. Yeah,
Speaker 6: there will be a Connor Roy was interested in politics
Speaker 6: at a young age.
Speaker 4: There will be a lot of other stories like that.
Speaker 5: It's again, I mean this has been brought up many
Speaker 5: times on the show You Kids Show. Kids show too
Speaker 5: much aptitude for something at a young age. You got
Speaker 5: to worry about.
Speaker 2: It when your kid says he wants to be a CEO. Look,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying you should do this legally, but maybe
Speaker 2: get him into drugs, you know, slum down a little bit,
Speaker 2: slum down a little bit.
Speaker 5: Look, I got two kids, now, you know it's not
Speaker 5: you don't just give them drugs.
Speaker 4: You leave them around him on the street. They'll figure
Speaker 4: it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, put him outside and don't watch him enough. Like
Speaker 4: my parents did. Yeah, yeah, that's and we all turned
Speaker 4: out great.
Speaker 2: Your children could also be having light bulb fights in
Speaker 2: the streets of Santa Monica and winning a Grammy and
Speaker 2: winning Grammys. So one story Diddy likes to tell is
Speaker 2: of the time his aunt baby sat him at her home,
Speaker 2: which was in a public housing project called the Patterson
Speaker 2: Houses in the Bronx. Again, his mom gets out to
Speaker 2: the suburbs they own a home. Other members of his
Speaker 2: family obviously are a lot less comfortable, and the story
Speaker 2: he tells us that he wakes up sometimes he'll say,
Speaker 2: I woke up with fifteen cockroaches on my face, which
Speaker 2: you didn't count the cockroach as nobody would in that situation.
Speaker 4: You can feel it.
Speaker 5: You can feel a dozen cockroaches, but you can't count
Speaker 5: them as fast exact number. Man.
Speaker 2: And in other recitations he's less specific. I'm not saying
Speaker 2: this didn't happen. I think it probably did, just knowing
Speaker 2: the other stuff about his life.
Speaker 4: But he also lived in decent places where yeah, cocker.
Speaker 2: I too have woken up with some croaches on my face.
Speaker 2: This apparently inspired him to seek wealth and success. Quote
Speaker 2: and this is from him years later. I was like no,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to do that. I'm gonna get out
Speaker 2: of here. I'm gonna be somebody. I'm gonna own something
Speaker 2: and be able to take care of my family. I
Speaker 2: don't want to live in these conditions no more. And again,
Speaker 2: you know I'm not maybe something like this happened. He
Speaker 2: also does bring it up exactly the way you would
Speaker 2: if you're trying to like throw out in interviews, scenes
Speaker 2: that people will put in a biopic about you, right.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, for sure, that one SoundBite that grabs you
Speaker 5: at the perfect time and they're like, yeah, man, like
Speaker 5: that's it.
Speaker 2: You're never gonna be anything.
Speaker 4: You never make it.
Speaker 2: Kid, You're gonna go down just like your father.
Speaker 4: Dead in the back of the car now.
Speaker 2: Diddy would later claimed that the memory of this herowing
Speaker 2: event inspired him whenever he made a change in his career.
Speaker 2: It was something that just kind of snaps on, you
Speaker 2: don't take less in life and fight back those roaches.
Speaker 2: Still to this day, whenever I get comfortable, I just
Speaker 2: remember them. I remember living in a situation where babies
Speaker 2: weren't changed for two or three days, and everything smells
Speaker 2: and there's no food. The memory is the thing that
Speaker 2: really fuels me to make sure that one day none
Speaker 2: of us have to live like that? And did he
Speaker 2: didn't do anything to make sure none of us had
Speaker 2: to live like that? And you didn't live like that, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, sure he didn't. Yeah, I major you didn't
Speaker 4: have to live that way. But yeah, fair enough. But
Speaker 4: that's it.
Speaker 5: I mean, like that is often, you know, whether true
Speaker 5: or not, you know, I like there's definitely probably essences
Speaker 5: of that, you know, like of being true because like
Speaker 5: you know, like that is the story of a lot
Speaker 5: of people in America right now. It's like going through
Speaker 5: some really tough times and like seeing her trying to
Speaker 5: like get there, and like that is often the story,
Speaker 5: especially when it comes to successful people. Right The music
Speaker 5: and like hey man, I come up hard used to
Speaker 5: be anyways. It's more nepo babies these days.
Speaker 4: It doesn't even was.
Speaker 5: The great equalizer, you know. It's like you could be
Speaker 5: poor and from nowhere and become the biggest in the world.
Speaker 5: That's that's what music used to be.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and it's I mean, like everything it becomes
Speaker 2: more oligarchic as it fucking ages and gets sclerotic, but
Speaker 2: like it's also not weird. You know, I can say
Speaker 2: I didn't. I wouldn't say I had a hard upbringing.
Speaker 2: My parents were like poor when I was a little kid.
Speaker 2: Financial stress is like a lot of my earliest memories.
Speaker 2: And that's definitely part of why I have gone after
Speaker 2: money as an adult, right is because like I didn't
Speaker 2: want to have screaming fights in front of my partner
Speaker 2: about the fact that we couldn't afford rinter whatever.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: That's that's absolutely like a lot of people have had
Speaker 2: that experience. A lot of people deal with that now.
Speaker 2: It sucks ass, Like, so I don't doubt that some
Speaker 2: version of this is true, right, that he encountered a
Speaker 2: lot of poverty around his family and was like, well
Speaker 2: fuck that shit, right yeah. And I do think it's
Speaker 2: interesting that, like his connections with financial despert are not direct,
Speaker 2: they're family members, right, So he always there's always this
Speaker 2: sense of like, I'm separate too from this, from the hardship, right,
Speaker 2: Like it's not direct to me, which is interesting. Now,
Speaker 2: it's worth noting that Diddy, as an adult told lots
Speaker 2: of inspirational stories about moments from his childhood that inspired
Speaker 2: him to later greatness, and maybe all of these are bullshit.
Speaker 2: But you know, let's hear him out.
Speaker 5: That's definitely a market he has, is like the inspirational
Speaker 5: climbed out of this like even in his verses.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's not Also that's not exclusive to him.
Speaker 5: That's a lot of rap as well, you know, Like
Speaker 5: so you know it is it kind of goes hand
Speaker 5: in hand. It's a it's a bit of that like
Speaker 5: that that tale of like rising up out of the
Speaker 5: worst situations that makes like so many people respect to
Speaker 5: understand you as a as a rapper.
Speaker 2: So and I'll even say that's not you know, that's
Speaker 2: a thing that rap gets from the same source that
Speaker 2: a lot of others because you see that in evangelical
Speaker 2: Christianity the whole Like I was, you know, down and
Speaker 2: out load look high rising and low slide, popping reds
Speaker 2: and busting heads, kicking in doors and banging whores, and
Speaker 2: then I met Jesus. You know that's sort of fucking
Speaker 2: deal a lot. But it's this thing everybody gets from,
Speaker 2: like you know, power of positive thinking, like hustle culture
Speaker 2: where it's like okay, you got to have like the
Speaker 2: down and out story, and then I had my realization
Speaker 2: and like you can do it too. It works for everything.
Speaker 2: It's not just immiliating.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and just to tag onto that, I literally was
Speaker 5: just making fun of NEPO babies because it was like, so,
Speaker 5: it's like the opposite is literally when it comes to
Speaker 5: most of creative culture, to be considered the worst you
Speaker 5: can be, to have privilege in everything that's considered like
Speaker 5: the worst because it's like WHOA, well, you you don't
Speaker 5: have to learn guitar on a guitar that only had
Speaker 5: three strings and like you know, was given to you
Speaker 5: by blind Willy down on the corner who definitely had
Speaker 5: tuberculosis and leftist early type shit.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's just that's just the way you like
Speaker 2: frame things if you want Americans to to if you
Speaker 2: want to be a fucking mogul. Anyway, here's a quote
Speaker 2: from something that he said later in a c in
Speaker 2: an article. One day when he was a child, he
Speaker 2: he asked his mother for a new pair of sneakers,
Speaker 2: but she couldn't afford them. He recalled into twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: CNN interview that his mother almost began to cry upon
Speaker 2: hearing his request. That day, he said, my hustle was born,
Speaker 2: and he's got a lot of that day. My hustle was, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was the one day. His mom being like, we
Speaker 2: had a Cadillac. Maybe she's exaggerating because she doesn't want
Speaker 2: to admit that things were harder than they were, But
Speaker 2: I kind of think it might just be more than.
Speaker 2: He wanted expensive sneakers and his mom wasn't like, no,
Speaker 2: we don't have the money. His mom was like, no,
Speaker 2: you don't need those sneakers. Yeah, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: send two hundred dollars on fucking sneakers for you.
Speaker 4: Like it wasn't.
Speaker 5: It wasn't my mom being like, we could go to
Speaker 5: Goodwill and find you a dice nice pair that you'll
Speaker 5: grow into type thing. It was like, it was like, oh,
Speaker 5: you want three hundred dollars nikes like hard, yeah, hard
Speaker 5: pass you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's less.
Speaker 2: It's a lot less inspirational to be like my store,
Speaker 2: which is like I wanted a computer that could play
Speaker 2: StarCraft and my mom said, no, you don't need that. Well, yeah,
Speaker 2: I want to be able to buy my own computers
Speaker 2: when I grow up, right, Like, that's not an inspirational story.
Speaker 2: That's not like, yeah, nobody's gonna put in the biopic
Speaker 2: you know, the music swells and you get a fucking razor.
Speaker 2: So yeah, one thing that we can definitely mark as
Speaker 2: a turning point in his life was a football injury
Speaker 2: that he acquired while playing for Mount Saint Michael Academy.
Speaker 2: He will always say I was gonna be in the NFL.
Speaker 2: I was good enough to be in the NFL. He'll
Speaker 2: kind of insinuate he was being scouted by the NFL.
Speaker 2: I don't know that he was.
Speaker 5: I'm not entirely sure, but I'm pretty sure. He's like
Speaker 5: five nine or something, right, He's like, he's not a
Speaker 5: big guy.
Speaker 2: He's not a big guy, but there's there's positions for
Speaker 2: shorter guys.
Speaker 4: Sure, for sure.
Speaker 6: Just to say, for the record, the amount of men
Speaker 6: that I've told me I was going I was going
Speaker 6: to be an insert professional sporting league here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're like, sir.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 5: When I was in the Marines, there used to be
Speaker 5: a joke about, you know, everybody was gonna go to
Speaker 5: a great college. They had a full ride to go
Speaker 5: to a great college, and they were all varsity whatever,
Speaker 5: and they were gonna One of the dudes in my platoon.
Speaker 4: It was so funny.
Speaker 5: He started off saying he was gonna be he was
Speaker 5: scouted to be the quarterback at USC and when everybody
Speaker 5: was like, dude, you were not scouted to be the quarterback.
Speaker 5: That's a prestigious position. We could have we would have
Speaker 5: seen that. You would have been like in the news
Speaker 5: and shit like that's a big deal. And he was like,
Speaker 5: I didn't say quarterback. I said cornerback.
Speaker 4: It was like that was that was his way out
Speaker 4: of it, man, cornerback. Yeah, one dude.
Speaker 5: I remember he used to he had like one of
Speaker 5: his pecks was bigger than the other, and he said, yeah, man,
Speaker 5: I was I was gonna play quarterback, and and my
Speaker 5: coach always had me benching one side only, you know,
Speaker 5: And that's why I.
Speaker 4: Was like, what, no way would do that? No one.
Speaker 5: So I kind of got every guy in the entire world,
Speaker 5: if they played sports for like five seconds, has like.
Speaker 4: A oh it's almost you know, story could have been great.
Speaker 4: Then I broke my leg. I ran for twelve touchdowns.
Speaker 6: If you've ever done that to me?
Speaker 5: Just no, I was like, bullshit, Yeah, there's a certain
Speaker 5: inner bullshit detector. I feel like you definitely have, like
Speaker 5: you kind of like it's like the Sophie I roll
Speaker 5: where it's just like huh yeah, like just yeah yeah,
Speaker 5: that right there, the smirk and the.
Speaker 4: Uh huh yeah. Sure yeah.
Speaker 2: It's a crucial life skill to develop.
Speaker 4: Sure you've won a Grammy. I bet you have. That's
Speaker 4: why you keep it directly behind you. Man.
Speaker 2: Now, I will say whether or not he was almost
Speaker 2: in the NFL. His team was very good. They won
Speaker 2: the division title in nineteen eighty six. I think when
Speaker 2: he's a junior, so like, he does play on a
Speaker 2: very good team. I'm sure he was not bad at it.
Speaker 2: I just don't know that he was in the NFL.
Speaker 2: That said, he does break his leg in his last
Speaker 2: year of high school badly on the field, which ruins
Speaker 2: his pro dreams. Now Man, As a fun aside, will Well,
Speaker 2: I was read here and I love this.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 2: I was researching these articles. I found an old twenty
Speaker 2: twelve interview in The New York Times with Diddy. This
Speaker 2: is back during his you know mogul, you know, generally
Speaker 2: popular phase, and the the article was about a movie
Speaker 2: that he had helped produce called Undefeated. This was based
Speaker 2: on an Oscar nominated documentary about a real life high
Speaker 2: school football coach named Bill Courtney, who was apparently pretty good.
Speaker 2: I don't know much about high school football coaches.
Speaker 4: You're from Texas. How do you not know much about
Speaker 4: high school?
Speaker 2: Like I developed, I fucking played high school football for
Speaker 2: middle school. I forget which year I was in football,
Speaker 2: but I played football.
Speaker 4: I did a sport once.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was not almost in the NFL.
Speaker 4: It wasn't as fun as drugs.
Speaker 2: So now that I could have gone pro in will
Speaker 2: yet I could have been. I really could have been
Speaker 2: in the in the NFL of drugs.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I still feel like I have a chance.
Speaker 5: Like I feel like I got like a field of
Speaker 5: dreams chance in fact, you know, like.
Speaker 2: I do, I do want to see the field of
Speaker 2: dreams of drugs. It's like they put up a table
Speaker 2: in a field and just like drugs start materializing. Fucking
Speaker 2: John Belushi walks out of a cloud.
Speaker 5: Willie Nelson is like he's not even dead, but he's
Speaker 5: the guy that gets to walk back on the field
Speaker 5: and get younger.
Speaker 4: He's the Ray Liota and he.
Speaker 2: Dick pulls himself off out of a sewer.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, they will come.
Speaker 4: The biggest bong ever and just like a table of cocaine.
Speaker 2: Oh, we could make this movie.
Speaker 4: So I feel like someone is going to rip this
Speaker 4: off from us. We better act quickly.
Speaker 2: Back to this story, So did he produces this movie
Speaker 2: or helps to produce this movie about this high school
Speaker 2: football's coach named Bill Courtney, And he's interviewed in the
Speaker 2: Times about it. And in the interview, Colmes talks about
Speaker 2: his own football experiences in high school, and he laments
Speaker 2: I didn't have a coach like Bill Courtney who stood
Speaker 2: by me and helped motivate me in everything I was envious.
Speaker 2: To be honest, he's kind of insinuating that a better
Speaker 2: of coach might have helped him overcome his broken leg
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 4: Anyway he could have healed me with his witch doctor. Ways, right, right,
Speaker 4: right anyway.
Speaker 2: The best part of that interview, though, is that Colmes
Speaker 2: was working as a producer on the remake of that
Speaker 2: documentary with the Weinstein Company, and the interview with him
Speaker 2: in the Times includes this line. Next quote, Combe said,
Speaker 2: he and Harvey Weinstein had been trying.
Speaker 4: To do something together for seven years.
Speaker 2: And yeah, bro, bet you guys were Yeah, I bet
Speaker 2: you projects you were in on.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 5: It is almost like I hate whenever people start like
Speaker 5: because like every time some of this stuff comes out,
Speaker 5: you know that like a certain person's like a grease back,
Speaker 5: then every person that's ever been in a picture with
Speaker 5: them is suspect, you know, And it's like this, and
Speaker 5: it's like, yeah, but like not all those people are
Speaker 5: actually doing bad shits, are just taking advantage of somebody's
Speaker 5: like status to up themselves a little bit or meet
Speaker 5: people or what.
Speaker 4: But also, yeah, a lot of times they are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of times the whole Harvey Weinstein connection
Speaker 2: maybe should have been a sign.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a lot of times they're absolutely running a fucking
Speaker 5: little circle jerk over there with each other.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now it was during Shawn's high school years that
Speaker 2: he first actually you know what, speaking of Shawn's high
Speaker 2: school years, you know it'll help you get through high
Speaker 2: school drugs well and the backs and services that support
Speaker 2: this podcast. Fair enough, uh, and we're back. I hope
Speaker 2: you've all graduated and you are ready for the rest
Speaker 2: of the pod.
Speaker 5: And don't join the military like I did, because it
Speaker 5: is not going to be a good idea.
Speaker 4: When you graduate, man, do anything else.
Speaker 2: But the recruiter says, I can even pick my mos.
Speaker 4: Did I ever tell you that.
Speaker 5: I had a friend that thought he was joining the
Speaker 5: Marine Corps snowboarding team. His recruiter literally showed him pictures
Speaker 5: of dudes on snowboards and was like, yeah, man, if
Speaker 5: you he was like from Colorado and he thought he
Speaker 5: was joining it.
Speaker 4: Like he was like two weeks into being in the fleet,
Speaker 4: and he was like, so, when does the snowboarding guy.
Speaker 5: From the snowboarding team gonna like hit me up? Or
Speaker 5: like how do I get over there? Like, bro, we
Speaker 5: are deploying for our recket, like seven minutes.
Speaker 4: You are not going to the Marine Corps. There isn't
Speaker 4: even a Marine Corps snowboarding team.
Speaker 2: There ought to be like an Olympic for a military
Speaker 2: recruiter lies, Oh my god, one's up there.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, there's so many hoops.
Speaker 5: I had another friend who literally the recruiter he came
Speaker 5: in and he was like, yeah, man, I want to
Speaker 5: be the in infantry.
Speaker 4: He's like, and the recruiter like like slow played, and
Speaker 4: he's like, well, I don't know, man, it's it's pretty exclusive.
Speaker 4: And he got on the phone with like his master
Speaker 4: sergeant in the back room.
Speaker 2: He's like a car dealer being like my boss agreed,
Speaker 2: we're gonna we never do this.
Speaker 4: We're gonna do what we can for you. We're gonna,
Speaker 4: you know, we're gonna hook you up. Man.
Speaker 5: You seem like a pretty pretty wise individual, you know, really,
Speaker 5: you you belong up in infantry.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we can get you in man.
Speaker 1: Fuck.
Speaker 2: So it was during Sean's high school years that he
Speaker 2: first acquired the nickname Puffy, and we have two different
Speaker 2: stories for how that happened. Here's the first, as related
Speaker 2: in an article on Hip Hop Insider. He used to
Speaker 2: puff out his chest to make his body seem bigger,
Speaker 2: which is where the name originated.
Speaker 4: Maybe that's true, that's what his mom said.
Speaker 5: I remember seeing his mom in an interview that said
Speaker 5: the same thing that that's where it came from.
Speaker 4: That he used to because he wasn't a big dude.
Speaker 4: Back to the point earlier.
Speaker 2: And there's a slightly different story that he told in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight to Jet magazine. Whenever I got mad
Speaker 2: as a kid, I used to always huff and puff.
Speaker 2: I had a temper. That's when my friend started calling
Speaker 2: me Puffy. Yeah, but you know they're not necessarily.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, they're not at odds with each other.
Speaker 5: That might be like, yeah, yeah, it's like.
Speaker 4: He's like one of those fish.
Speaker 5: Yeah, anytime he's threatened, he gets.
Speaker 2: Big oh Man and puffer fish. Infamous sex criminals. Do
Speaker 2: not let your friends go home alone with a puffer fish.
Speaker 5: I remember that in Finding Nemo. That was one of
Speaker 5: the subplots of Finding You. Was that puffer fish for
Speaker 5: sex criminals?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I used past. There's sex past, sex pests.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So with football out of the way, young Sean leaned
Speaker 2: into the other less discussed aspect of his personality, which
Speaker 2: was that he was kind of an artsy theater kid.
Speaker 2: Did He had a reputation at his private school for
Speaker 2: being neatly dressed, and in college for wearing designer clothes,
Speaker 2: which he funded through a variety of legal entrepreneurial ventures.
Speaker 2: For example, in between classes this is again when he's
Speaker 2: at college. He's at Howard University, he would operate a
Speaker 2: shuttle service to the airport, and he would also sell
Speaker 2: his old term papers, t shirts and soda to his classmates.
Speaker 2: So again entrepreneur but not exactly a gangster. Roe Ronan's
Speaker 2: book Bad Boy, which covers Ditty's influence on the hip
Speaker 2: hop industry paints a picture of a young man who
Speaker 2: was beyond everything else an opportunist. At one point, while
Speaker 2: he's in at Howard, there's this massive protest campaign on
Speaker 2: the campus over the presence of Lee Atwater on the
Speaker 2: university board of trustees. And again, Howard is a historically
Speaker 2: black university. Lee Atwater is the author of the Republican
Speaker 2: Party's infamous Southern strategy, which I cannot run late directly
Speaker 2: to you without using the N word repeatedly, like.
Speaker 5: You had me at a Republican party.
Speaker 4: I was there, I was there already. You're just edging
Speaker 4: me from there.
Speaker 2: The basic idea of the strategy that Lee Atwater helps
Speaker 2: put together is that you can't campaign in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 2: Before sixty eight, you can campaign by just screaming about
Speaker 2: black people and saying you want to hurt them. Right
Speaker 2: by sixty eight, you can't do that, So you have
Speaker 2: to instead campaign on issues that will hurt black people,
Speaker 2: but you can pretend aren't racist, like fiscal conservatism cutting
Speaker 2: programs that help Black Americans without calling them slurs. Right,
Speaker 2: that's Lee Atwater. So obviously Howard University students are like,
Speaker 2: the fuck is this guy doing on the board of trustees.
Speaker 5: Hey, bro, you you've got your hood many Yeah, that.
Speaker 2: Is essentially the tenor of the protest campaign. Now, Sean's
Speaker 2: peers rightly thought it was fucked up for this guy
Speaker 2: to have a seat on the Howard board, and they
Speaker 2: do win. I'm going a spoiler heat. He winds up
Speaker 2: leap stepping down.
Speaker 4: Man every now and then plugging a CEO and broad
Speaker 4: daylight the city street does something right. Protest work.
Speaker 2: Protests can work. So there's this big protest campaign. There's
Speaker 2: like clashes with riot police, they occupy buildings on campus.
Speaker 4: It's a whole thing.
Speaker 5: How far you have to go to get one white
Speaker 5: man fired from right fired?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In the book it was all a dream. Culture journalist
Speaker 2: Justin Tinsley writes this of sophomore Sean Colmes's involvement in
Speaker 2: this protest campaign. For Colmes, the student protests in the
Speaker 2: spring of eighty nine presented an opportunity to unite the
Speaker 2: student body and put some money in his pockets. At
Speaker 2: the same time, Colmes took images from the protests, photos
Speaker 2: of students and police clashing and students being whisked away,
Speaker 2: and printed up some posters and he like sells posters
Speaker 2: based on this. He's like, he's a profiteer.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: A write up by Chris Malone goes further. Future producer
Speaker 2: and co worker of Ditty's Derek d Dot Angeletti was
Speaker 2: at Howard at the same time as Ditty and saw
Speaker 2: how he made a quick buck from the protests. In
Speaker 2: the two thousand and three Notorious Big documentary Unbelievable, he
Speaker 2: spoke about Diddy's photo enterprise during the protests. He made
Speaker 2: hundreds of them and sold them for ten and fifteen
Speaker 2: dollars a piece. Angeletti said, that's the type of guy.
Speaker 2: I saw all this protest shit as well and good,
Speaker 2: but he was getting paid off it.
Speaker 4: He was ready. Yeah, this is the eighties. Yeah, eighty nine.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I mean yeah, so ten to fifteen bucks,
Speaker 5: that's that's a lot of money too. That's that's not
Speaker 5: cheat Like we think of ten teen to fifteen bucks now,
Speaker 5: but in eighty nine, ten to fifteen bucks, Like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like seven hundred, eight hundred dollars.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a lot more money, whatever the math works
Speaker 4: out to.
Speaker 2: But yes, absolutely, yeah, this was back when a dimebag
Speaker 2: cost ten dollars.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that wasn't cheat.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it used to be iron We used to be
Speaker 5: a country.
Speaker 4: We had onions and our belts.
Speaker 2: It was his style at the top of yeah. Amusingly enough,
Speaker 2: in two thousand and nine, did he made statements in
Speaker 2: support of another protest movement at Howard, promising I got
Speaker 2: y'all back and saying, do what we did and take
Speaker 2: it over. Let's go and do it in a peaceful way,
Speaker 2: but do it. And again, you did not take anything over.
Speaker 2: You sold pictures of people doing that.
Speaker 4: Like we were.
Speaker 5: Looking back through a lens, so it's easy to like
Speaker 5: see like like, oh, he probably was kind of but
Speaker 5: you want to believe that. Like any when you heard
Speaker 5: this earlier, you know, did he telling this story, you
Speaker 5: were like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Good for you speaking up for the kids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you.
Speaker 5: Did it, man, But like and then like hearing it
Speaker 5: in retrospect, he's just like you know, you know, everything
Speaker 5: that he did was slimy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's just always pulling an angle.
Speaker 2: He was almost facing a riot line to get at
Speaker 2: water fucking fired.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: If you're one of those, if you or your parents
Speaker 2: did good for them, that's.
Speaker 4: Pretty cool man. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So a good deal of our knowledge of college age.
Speaker 2: Did He comes from Derek Angeletti, who I quoted earlier.
Speaker 2: He's the guy who described young Puffy as a flashy guy.
Speaker 2: Quote he was always out at the clubs and the
Speaker 2: young girls loved him. That's a creepier line in modern context.
Speaker 2: He'd be in the middle of the floor doing all
Speaker 2: the new dance moves, and his style of dress was
Speaker 2: a little more colorful Boulder. Everyone took notice of this cool,
Speaker 2: overconfident young dude. I was DJing at the time, and
Speaker 2: one night he came up to me and said, I'd
Speaker 2: like to throw a party with you. You're pretty popular, And
Speaker 2: that's kind of how did he did. He's really good
Speaker 2: at recognizing people that other people like. That's his primary talent.
Speaker 2: He becomes a billionaire off the basis of that.
Speaker 5: You will definitely see, especially in the music industry, there's
Speaker 5: so many there's such a wide ranging culture of that
Speaker 5: being the thing.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: It's like the lou Pearlman or the or the or
Speaker 5: you know, or the Ditty or the jay Z with Rockefeller,
Speaker 5: you know' rock Nation. You know, it's like all these
Speaker 5: different organizations that's what they're looking for. All the time
Speaker 5: is like who is the thing that other people can
Speaker 5: look at? And because like that's what it takes you
Speaker 5: have to have. You have to have a stable of
Speaker 5: people for everything. To have a party, you got to
Speaker 5: have the best caterer in the world, but you also
Speaker 5: got to have the best DJ, and you also got
Speaker 5: to have you know, it's like that's what all those
Speaker 5: people are the best at, is collecting a whole bunch
Speaker 5: of the best ofs that they know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's like, I mean, honestly, like that's that's
Speaker 2: also just an entertainment industry thing, Like you know, Sophie
Speaker 2: and I that's a skill we have in a different way, right,
Speaker 2: Like you.
Speaker 4: Got a stable of really cool podcasts.
Speaker 2: A year or so ago, I'm reading this ed Zitron
Speaker 2: guy and I'm like, I bet he could be a podcaster,
Speaker 2: you know, Like that's just that is just kind of
Speaker 2: the industry too. That's like how you you know, and
Speaker 2: and he's going did He's gonna be one of the best.
Speaker 5: Day you will unify the entirety of all podcasters in
Speaker 5: the world takeovers.
Speaker 2: So we're starting the East Coast West Coast podcast rivalry.
Speaker 2: Get d and shot in a fucking conflict with one
Speaker 2: of the NPR guys.
Speaker 5: Oh man, another movie idea.
Speaker 2: You guys are great movie. I'm making ed the Biggie
Speaker 2: Smalls of podcasts. Sorry man, you cooked enjoy the next
Speaker 2: couple of years. Buddy so Combs took things a few
Speaker 2: steps further than most people who throw popular parties on
Speaker 2: campus by sometimes successfully convincing or paying celebrities to show up.
Speaker 2: He included his name on flyers with their name, which
Speaker 2: is part of how he would brand himself. Right, you're
Speaker 2: attaching yourself to celebrity. You're also just making sure everyone
Speaker 2: who goes to this huge party with like fifteen hundred
Speaker 2: people knows that's a diddy party.
Speaker 4: Right. Yeah, Reputation is everything.
Speaker 2: That and he he's good at reputation management. He prints
Speaker 2: business cards for himself that he hands out. They have
Speaker 2: his name engraved on them as Sean in parentheses puff
Speaker 2: Combs just one fu. So he's still working on the nickname.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: That's a bad that's a bad process.
Speaker 2: It's a process.
Speaker 4: Some stuff here, I knew you before you were greasy.
Speaker 2: Well, his friends are like puff puff PuF.
Speaker 4: There should at least be two f's.
Speaker 5: It's like, damn near poof bro like, I don't know, man,
Speaker 5: it's gonna be confusing.
Speaker 2: Just a boardroom of guys. Yeah. Oh and that's one
Speaker 2: of my one of my By the way, speaking of
Speaker 2: like wasted o people are lying, one of my because
Speaker 2: this this comes up periodically when people will like lie
Speaker 2: about having been in the military or special forces. If
Speaker 2: anyone ever tells you they served and they had a
Speaker 2: really cool nickname.
Speaker 4: Full of shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nobody gets called the like the Avenger, your fucking
Speaker 2: killer or whatever, like, no, it's always like sack.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like yeah, we're like two thumbs, yeah shit stained.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you're like, oh man, there's there's nothing about thumbs
Speaker 5: that could have been a good story here.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So uh.
Speaker 2: These parties with Diddy grow to be sizable affairs, but
Speaker 2: the biggest of them was a homecoming event at a
Speaker 2: Masonic temple fifteen hundred, which actually does sound pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 2: fifteen hundred attendees were expected, but Sean's marketing of the
Speaker 2: event was so successful more than forty five hundred people
Speaker 2: showed up, which causes a problem when three times as
Speaker 2: many people show up, and this is going to be
Speaker 2: a continuing problem for him. Angeletti later claimed, the DC
Speaker 2: police shut down the whole block and brought out the dogs.
Speaker 2: We had to get on our knees and beg them
Speaker 2: not to lock us up, which again not super gangster.
Speaker 5: Yeah, getting on your knees and begging is exactly fuck
Speaker 5: the police.
Speaker 4: No, Biggie wouldn't have done that. I'll tell you that
Speaker 4: Tupac would have shot those cops. Tupac would have shot
Speaker 4: those cups.
Speaker 5: And he wasn't even that gangster man, but he would
Speaker 5: have shot them Cups.
Speaker 4: Would have shot them cups. Man. We forget man.
Speaker 5: This guy's hosting New Year's celebrationsanship, but that guy would
Speaker 5: shoot some cops.
Speaker 2: That guy was hardcore. Martha Stewart's friend Weekly parties were
Speaker 2: all well and good for getting attention, but Sean wanted
Speaker 2: much more out of life, and he quickly decided a
Speaker 2: business administration degree from Howard wasn't going to get it
Speaker 2: for him. So he drops out and he starts begging
Speaker 2: record executives in New York for jobs, using his party
Speaker 2: planning career as a resume. This did not work, but
Speaker 2: when he reduced the request from job to unpaid internship,
Speaker 2: he got a yes from Uptown Records's Andre Harrel. Now
Speaker 2: this is not a guy I'd heard of before, but
Speaker 2: Sheila Flynn for The Independent describes him as the man
Speaker 2: who quote famously coined the term ghetto fabulous. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's Andre Harrold. He's a big guy in the industry.
Speaker 2: She describes his time interning for Uptown this way. Combs
Speaker 2: initially commuted weekly between college and his hometown, working eighty
Speaker 2: hour weeks as he literally ran to complete errands for
Speaker 2: his record superiors, and it wasn't long before he quit
Speaker 2: Howard altogether. By nineteen ninety one, Harold had installed him
Speaker 2: as an A and R executive, and Colmes was forging
Speaker 2: a reputation for identifying and molding top tier talent. So
Speaker 2: he goes very quickly from unpaid intern to paid executive.
Speaker 2: He's very good at this. He works like crazy, and
Speaker 2: he's got an incredible eye for talent. And this is
Speaker 2: also ninety one rap is exploding.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, and perfect timing for it all. Well there.
Speaker 5: So just for there's an actual term for that in
Speaker 5: the interest, called a runner. It's literally because you are,
Speaker 5: in fact running for everything you do. You go and
Speaker 5: get things all throughout the day. It's the first job
Speaker 5: you do in almost any like music industry position. So
Speaker 5: it's like, this is what I did. I was an
Speaker 5: intern and then I became a runner, and then an
Speaker 5: assistant engineer and then an engineer. But that's how you
Speaker 5: like work up with and and it's crazy something that
Speaker 5: people don't like. It's not like it's not like being
Speaker 5: an actor, right, like doing some of these jobs, like
Speaker 5: like what did he did here? Some of these jobs,
Speaker 5: it's not like being an actor.
Speaker 4: You get out here and.
Speaker 5: You're competing against just like everybody working at every diner
Speaker 5: in all of Los Angeles, right Like, doing some of
Speaker 5: these specific jobs like a and rs or producers or engineers,
Speaker 5: you can get into the industry and be one step
Speaker 5: away from the top immediately. There's so many stories of that.
Speaker 5: Is like you get it your first my first job,
Speaker 5: I lived in Texas where we met. In Texas, I
Speaker 5: was playing in a metal band and then I I
Speaker 5: was like, oh, I should maybe like do music for
Speaker 5: a career. I went to school for nine months, graduated
Speaker 5: from a tech school, and started at the biggest studio
Speaker 5: in the world as a runner. But I was so
Speaker 5: good because my background in the military and all this
Speaker 5: stuff that I was in.
Speaker 4: I was a runner for.
Speaker 5: Like three weeks before I was like working for the
Speaker 5: studio as an engineer, So it was like you're only
Speaker 5: a very very short insert. It's like attacking the industry
Speaker 5: from a secret angle because you can do things like
Speaker 5: it's so fast. It's like your first job might be
Speaker 5: working for the president of a label. You know, if
Speaker 5: you have the right aptitude for the type of stuff,
Speaker 5: it could happen just like that. Now, it's still competitive
Speaker 5: in everything you know, and it's really hard, but it's
Speaker 5: it's a different thing from like being like an actor
Speaker 5: or a musician, where you're competing against thousands and thousands
Speaker 5: of people in the same proximity trying to do that job.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like a hack to get into the industry.
Speaker 2: Well there you go, folks. You could have your own Grammy.
Speaker 2: Well maybe even be a guest on this podcast.
Speaker 5: More tips like this on my TikTok Greasy Wheel Music.
Speaker 2: I don't have any tips for becoming a journalist or
Speaker 2: a writer.
Speaker 4: It's it's very.
Speaker 2: Hard and it seems like no one's doing it anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know how it worked for us.
Speaker 5: Get chat, GPT and just plug a subject in and
Speaker 5: then post that.
Speaker 4: On a website. That's there you go.
Speaker 2: You're a type of the Lord of the Rings into
Speaker 2: chat GPT and you too could be a novelist or
Speaker 2: sued by the Tolkien estate either way, same def.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So he's you know, by ninety one, he's an A
Speaker 2: and R executive, So he's he's doing he like. While
Speaker 2: he does that, he continues throwing parties. He understands that
Speaker 2: that's number one, that's how'm going to meet people. That's
Speaker 2: I'm gonna run into DJs, the people that I'm going
Speaker 2: to like poach, you know, as talent. He would throw
Speaker 2: what is described in one source as racially mixed daddy's
Speaker 2: house parties for street kids and preppiest students from Columbia
Speaker 2: University and New York University. And this is where that's
Speaker 2: a Ronan who wrote a book about, you know, his
Speaker 2: role in hip hop says quote that's where he saw
Speaker 2: what fans were dancing to when wearing So this is
Speaker 2: also how he stays plugged in. Now you know it's
Speaker 2: I should say it's also how he's going to be
Speaker 2: committing a lot of his sex crimes.
Speaker 4: But we'll get to that in a minute.
Speaker 2: So yeah, daddy's house parties don't go great for a
Speaker 2: lot of people. Oh yeah, you brought your soundboard. Two choices,
Speaker 2: and he makes the choice next to kill nine people.
Speaker 4: So he's twenty two years old.
Speaker 2: He's going as puff with one F. He's a college
Speaker 2: drop out and an employed record executive. And one of
Speaker 2: the acts that Sean helps bring to prominence is Jordikey
Speaker 2: j O R D E C. I.
Speaker 4: I don't know if jordanash the Gene company. Yes, yes,
Speaker 4: he discovers that enough.
Speaker 2: Jordikee is a an R and B duo who were
Speaker 2: blowing up by ninety one.
Speaker 4: Joas, Wait, what are you saying? Is it Jodasy?
Speaker 2: It's jail Oh you're saying Jodasy.
Speaker 4: I'll look it up. No, no, no, I can't No, no, no,
Speaker 4: it's it's not it's not okay. So what's the name
Speaker 4: j O R D No, No, no.
Speaker 6: The way that Robert has it spelled, there's an R
Speaker 6: in there. But I think I think Will is right
Speaker 6: that it's Jodasy.
Speaker 2: Is it Jodasy? Okay, Well we'll say it's Jodasy because
Speaker 2: there's a duo duo. Yes, then that's then it's called look,
Speaker 2: I don't know these but you know me and fucking
Speaker 2: not sure it's a there's a D in there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean you know it could be.
Speaker 2: I don't know Joasy so no, no, no, it is
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Combs decided a good way to increase Jodas's visibility was
Speaker 2: to throw a charity basketball game pitting two teams of
Speaker 2: rappers against each other while fans watched. The event was
Speaker 2: to be held in the City College of New York.
Speaker 2: Jim once again did He did what he does best,
Speaker 2: which is promote, and so a shitload of people show up,
Speaker 2: in fact, several times as many people as can fit
Speaker 2: in the actual gym itself. This becomes a problem because
Speaker 2: Sean doesn't do anything but promote the event, and he's.
Speaker 5: Set up any of the safety measures, any of the staff,
Speaker 5: any of the bathrooms, none of that.
Speaker 2: Now he has two of his assistants, who have never
Speaker 2: run large gatherings do that, and he does not inform them.
Speaker 2: By the way, every time I do something several times
Speaker 2: as many people as we can actually support show up
Speaker 2: could be a problem. He just has it, tells his
Speaker 2: assistance to handle it, and then forgets all about it.
Speaker 2: Largely because his attention is occupied by executing fraud at
Speaker 2: the tune of tens of thousands of dollars because the
Speaker 2: game had been advertised as a charitable event, but like
Speaker 2: he hadn't told anyone what charity and actuality charity?
Speaker 4: Yeah, what kind of charity? You know?
Speaker 2: As a kid with stuff that needs stuff, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: kid problems.
Speaker 5: As someone who has been that assistant that had to organize,
Speaker 5: like like I've been this guy. I've been this guy
Speaker 5: that had to put together a house party with three
Speaker 5: bands and like five hundred people show up and the
Speaker 5: lapd is circling with a helicopter, and then I have
Speaker 5: to be the representative of white people to go out
Speaker 5: and talk to cops so that it's okay. You know,
Speaker 5: one of the artists I used to work with, but
Speaker 5: he used to always be like, yo, hey, the cops
Speaker 5: are here, so yeah, you want to go You'll go
Speaker 5: talk to him? Oh yeah, man, He's like, you know,
Speaker 5: you speak like cops and like white people and stead of.
Speaker 4: Like all right, I got it, I gotta go go
Speaker 4: outside like skits.
Speaker 5: Hey, gentlemen, how are you doing tonight? Oh yes, sir, absolutely, sir.
Speaker 5: You know, like, oh, the dogs. You don't need those.
Speaker 2: So there's no beneficiary actually selected for this party, and
Speaker 2: for the more than twenty four thousand dollars in nineteen
Speaker 2: nineties money that had been raised for the event. Further
Speaker 2: blame for what's about to happen goes to the police
Speaker 2: on duty. Sean's assistance had only coordinated with Pinkerton's security
Speaker 2: guards hired by the university. Yeah, there's Pinkertons and everybody
Speaker 2: legendarily protective of people.
Speaker 4: They're safe and never hurt nobody them Pinkertons.
Speaker 2: And the university had increased to the number of security
Speaker 2: guards to twenty three because they started getting worried before
Speaker 2: the event. But the NYPD just sends a few guys,
Speaker 2: and when it becomes clear that more than twice as
Speaker 2: many people as expected showed up, the sergeant on scene
Speaker 2: doesn't call for backup until it's too late. Eventually there
Speaker 2: are like sixty something officers in attendance, but it takes
Speaker 2: a while, and the sergeant on duty also ignores repeated
Speaker 2: calls by the university, being like, there's way too many people.
Speaker 2: There's way too many people. You need to do something.
Speaker 2: There's going to be a riot, And in fact there is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they ignored the neighbors at our parties too, man,
Speaker 4: they just did not listen to them.
Speaker 2: So once it becomes clear because they have to tell
Speaker 2: this huge crowd most of you are not getting in,
Speaker 2: and then the crowd gets rowdy and violent and a
Speaker 2: riot begins. The NYPD officers who are there are as
Speaker 2: useless as the NYPD tends to be when therever they're
Speaker 2: actually needed for something, and things go very badly. At
Speaker 2: seven pm, with far too many people crowded into the venue,
Speaker 2: the single door they had been using to funnel people
Speaker 2: in was shut. Since that door was steel and at
Speaker 2: the bottom of a stairwell, with the crowd basically pushed
Speaker 2: up against it, it creates a solid barrier in a
Speaker 2: room that has four more people than are supposed to
Speaker 2: be in it. People panic and a crush develops. Dozens
Speaker 2: are injured, and nine young people are crushed to death,
Speaker 2: literally asphyxiated by the weight of the crowd. Medical exammers
Speaker 2: will note that like none of them had broken bones,
Speaker 2: they are just suffocated by the mass.
Speaker 5: I mean, for those of you know, like I have
Speaker 5: been to a lot of concerts, I've been into metal
Speaker 5: music like the Sometimes it feels kind of you know,
Speaker 5: like how could you be killed by a bunch of people?
Speaker 4: But like, if you have never seen a.
Speaker 5: Crowd or been in a crowd, like even I is like,
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm a fairly large person myself, Like I'm
Speaker 5: not huge or anything, but like and I'm pretty okay
Speaker 5: with like bad situations. I've been in some crowd crush
Speaker 5: situations that have terrified me, wherea like this is like scary,
Speaker 5: like this has been If you've never been in those situations,
Speaker 5: it's really easy to understand if you have like what
Speaker 5: that's like. It's like it's like even a few hundred
Speaker 5: people can be like that, and you're talking about three
Speaker 5: times the capacity of a venue. You know, that's like
Speaker 5: so easy for a crowd to just crush the shit
Speaker 5: out of some people.
Speaker 2: It is like one of the best survival advice pieces
Speaker 2: I can give you is if you are ever in
Speaker 2: any kind of event and upon entering, you're like, your
Speaker 2: only way to get in is to push through a
Speaker 2: crowd of people with absolutely no gaps in it, and
Speaker 2: you immediately have like the hair stand up on the
Speaker 2: back of your neck and wonder, are there too many
Speaker 2: people in this room?
Speaker 4: Fucking back the hell out. Yeah, get out there is
Speaker 4: go absolutely is, and it's not a good idea.
Speaker 2: Don't fuck around with situations like that.
Speaker 5: Next thing, you know you're gonna be surrounded by a
Speaker 5: bunch of Juggalos and an ICP concert at the Electric
Speaker 5: Factory and feel really uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: So this is a horrible say again, nine people die
Speaker 2: because of this thing that Diddy has orchestrated.
Speaker 4: One e MT. This this is early, this.
Speaker 5: Is this is where more than one episode of this are.
Speaker 2: We there's two episodes. There's more deaths to come.
Speaker 4: There's two, there's two.
Speaker 6: But Robert, I kind of feel like we can do
Speaker 6: this as a three parter.
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe we'll see one happened. Yeah. One
Speaker 2: e MT, who showed up on scene, described the result
Speaker 2: as a plane crash without a plane. There were bodies
Speaker 2: all over, people calling for help. That's a very bad
Speaker 2: way for your party to be. Although you and I
Speaker 2: have both thrown parties that I would describe as looking
Speaker 2: like a plane.
Speaker 4: Crash after its h for sure, cool plane crash.
Speaker 5: It's a very cool pane crash. You just feel like
Speaker 5: you're dead, like where people are like, man, that was
Speaker 5: the best night of my life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like the plane crash in Yellow Jackets. I
Speaker 2: haven't finished Yellow Jackets. I assume it goes well for
Speaker 2: those well.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: This would mark the first time that Sean Colmes drew
Speaker 2: media attention.
Speaker 4: In a big way.
Speaker 2: New York news Day was one of the papers who
Speaker 2: first got reporters on scene, and years later one of
Speaker 2: them are called being told by a colleague the organizer
Speaker 2: was some guy called puff Daddy. In the days that followed,
Speaker 2: it became clear that a substantial amount of the blame
Speaker 2: for this disaster lay with puff Daddy, Puff Daddy, Puff Daddy.
Speaker 2: A report compiled afterwards by the Mayor's office read mister
Speaker 2: Colem spent little time making the actual preparation for the
Speaker 2: game and delegated most, if not all, of the arrangements
Speaker 2: to Lewis Tucker and Ta Getter, both of them claimed
Speaker 2: to have no prior experience with such events. I found
Speaker 2: a fun article in the Columbia Journalism Review by one
Speaker 2: of the reporters who covered the crush, and this is
Speaker 2: you know him writing after Diddy has been disgraced. His
Speaker 2: piece ended with this line, I do remember thinking, man,
Speaker 2: this puffy guy can't have much of a future after this.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you about America, my brother.
Speaker 5: This is the thing though, too, is like it's like,
Speaker 5: you know, that happened, right, But I can't tell you
Speaker 5: how many events, how many things I've been to that
Speaker 5: have been like, you know, thrown like this.
Speaker 4: A concert.
Speaker 5: It's like, dude, I've been at a fest which is
Speaker 5: like a major concert that has felt like this, where
Speaker 5: it's like they didn't plan this very well.
Speaker 4: There's not enough things here. It seems dangerous.
Speaker 5: And the fine line between man, we just pulled off
Speaker 5: this crazy party, nine people died, is it's razor thin.
Speaker 5: You know, there is sometimes where it's like this is
Speaker 5: the coolest party I've ever been to, and then and
Speaker 5: it doesn't go completely wrong, but it could have at
Speaker 5: any time. One of those house parties we had, we
Speaker 5: had two hundred people and they're raging in the living room,
Speaker 5: and I thought for I started standing closer to the
Speaker 5: wall because I was.
Speaker 4: Like, this floor is gonna give out. Man, there's no
Speaker 4: way it's get in bad life.
Speaker 5: This house could not be designed to have this many
Speaker 5: people jumping up and down like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, a lot of being happy, especially
Speaker 2: like being happy about how you spent your twenties. Is
Speaker 2: getting as close to that line as you can get
Speaker 2: without crossing over into the killing nine people at City College.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so yeah, yeah, risking it. Yeah, I've been on
Speaker 4: the edge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the edge is a place, but it's also place
Speaker 2: that's called the edge for a reason because sometimes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, hey man, you know sometimes you gotta
Speaker 5: get rid up to the edge and just.
Speaker 4: Leave and laugh. Man. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Hunter Thompson wrote eloquently about the edge and also diet
Speaker 2: unable to hold in his bowls.
Speaker 4: So you know that is the consequence. It's not a
Speaker 4: long life.
Speaker 2: It's not a long life. So because this is America,
Speaker 2: getting a bunch of people killed due to your own
Speaker 2: staggering negligence does not mean that you don't have it yet,
Speaker 2: none at all. And puff Daddy proves immune to consequences
Speaker 2: for his actions, even though again, every review of the
Speaker 2: disaster is like he he's to blame for a lot
Speaker 2: of this. Now again, I don't want to say all
Speaker 2: of it, because let's not forget the NYPD. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: also got those kids killed.
Speaker 5: Look, there's never a time where the NYPD hasn't been
Speaker 5: a little bit negligent in some people dying in New
Speaker 5: York City.
Speaker 4: You know, it's what they do best. That's part of
Speaker 4: their that's what they get paid for. Of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the NYPD operates one of the largest surveillance apparatuses
Speaker 2: on the planet so that they can know more places
Speaker 2: to get kids killed. So puff Daddy winds up testifying
Speaker 2: in court about the disaster when the families of the
Speaker 2: dead and the survivors sued the college after a nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight court appearance.
Speaker 4: So they didn't go after him at all, They just
Speaker 4: went to college. No, go after the college.
Speaker 2: I think at this point the college is who has money?
Speaker 4: He's not right, Yeah, he's a kid. Yeah, yeah, good point. Yeah,
Speaker 4: no reason to go after him. He's got Yeah, what's
Speaker 4: he gonna do for you.
Speaker 2: After a nineteen ninety eight court appearance, he told reporters that, like,
Speaker 2: I think about it every day. I think about, you know,
Speaker 2: the dead every single day. You know, I'm always my
Speaker 2: thoughts are always with them.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 2: But the things that I deal with can in no
Speaker 2: way measure up to the pain that the families deal with.
Speaker 2: I just pray for the families and pray for the
Speaker 2: children who lost their lives every day.
Speaker 4: So he literally wrote I'll be missing you like I'll
Speaker 4: be about the.
Speaker 2: People he got crushed to day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, all the every day man. Every time I pray, man,
Speaker 4: I'm missing you. Yeah. He hit him early with that,
Speaker 4: he did right away. That always works for him. Get
Speaker 4: the hits, man, play the hits.
Speaker 2: I can't wait till we have our first dictator who
Speaker 2: takes a note data, who like fucking like uses chemical
Speaker 2: weapons on a crowd of protesters and is that then
Speaker 2: gets in like a studio and sings I'll be missing you.
Speaker 2: Pro tip for the future dictators who listen to this podcast,
Speaker 2: there's gotta be one of you and the bang are
Speaker 2: ready to go, have a banger, ready to go, and
Speaker 2: look if you do succeed in becoming a dictator, just
Speaker 2: give me a province. Just one province, is all I asked.
Speaker 2: Hell you, I mean let me you know, I'll make
Speaker 2: a golden house for my of course I'm gonna make
Speaker 2: a golden house, you know, but like it'll be it'll
Speaker 2: be gold plated. I'm not that much, does everyone does?
Speaker 2: You can bring your grammy over to my gold plated house.
Speaker 4: Whoa man, it'll take shots out of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now speaking of I'll be missing you. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: be missing you all because this is the end of
Speaker 2: part one. But don't worry, folks, we have a lot
Speaker 2: more coming. This is this, This whole week is gonna
Speaker 2: be Diddy Week here at behind the Bastard. Yeah, Diddy,
Speaker 2: will my friend. You have a TikTok to plug.
Speaker 4: I have a TikTok. I am Greasy Wheel Music. I
Speaker 4: have a podcast it's called that sounds about right. I
Speaker 4: have a Instagram that you can find me Greasy. I'm
Speaker 4: Greasy Wheel g r e A z y W.
Speaker 5: I L one L because the second one wasn't pulling
Speaker 5: any heavyweight and I decided I was wasting time doing it.
Speaker 4: But no, so yeah, fuck that L. But I am
Speaker 4: highly googleable.
Speaker 5: I am all over the internet. I can be found
Speaker 5: almost anywhere. You could even send a telegram to me. Still,
Speaker 5: I accept telegrams as long as they are Western Union
Speaker 5: and contain money as well.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, I send you telegrams, but entirely about
Speaker 2: our oil business down in the eras Zona territory.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I drank your milkshake. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: That's how you and I spend our free time. Old
Speaker 2: timey oilmen. It's a great time everybody. Well until next week, folks,
Speaker 2: become an old timey oil man yourself, you know, start
Speaker 2: a start an oil rig.
Speaker 4: Somewhere next week.
Speaker 2: Next part, next.
Speaker 4: Part, yeah, next part. Not next week. We'll be back
Speaker 4: tomorrow probably anyway, minutes from now, just a minute. We're
Speaker 4: gonna keep recording.
Speaker 2: Yes, anyway, I love you all, go to hell.
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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