One thing that doesn’t surprise me, though, are the number of accusations piling up against Sean ‘Diddy‘ Combs.
The rapper is in a US jail awaiting trial, accused of a litany of crimes, chief among them sex trafficking and racketeering, but also claims of rape, sexual assault and sex with minors including, it is alleged, a nine-year-old boy.
Why anyone is remotely shocked is beyond me. From the moment Combs became a mainstream music figure in the 1990s, it was clear to anyone with half a brain that he was no choirboy. He founded a label called Bad Boy Records and he had a reputation for being ruthless and intimidating.
Indeed, the 1990s ‘gangsta rap’ culture of which he was an integral part was a cesspit of drug use, misogyny, violence and criminality – all played out in a seemingly endless series of gun-fuelled feuds and referenced in vicious, abusive lyrics.
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Rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is in a US jail awaiting trial, accused of a litany of crimes, chief among them sex trafficking and racketeering
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A court sketch showing Diddy in court with his attorney Anthony Ricco and mother sitting in the back last week
Listening to the Mail’s forensic new podcast series, The Trial Of Diddy (which I highly recommend), the mind boggles at the extent of the accusations against him.
It’s obvious that his behaviour was an open secret in the music industry, and yet – like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein were allowed to carry on unchecked in their respective worlds – no one dared challenge Diddy.
Why? Because, like all the other big players in the gangsta rap genre, from Dr Dre and Suge Knight (founders of Death Row Records) to Snoop Dogg, the Notorious B.I.G. and beyond, he was not only a source of money for many people – he was also part of a scene that, for all its dangerous flaws, was considered ‘cool’.
Anyone who dared to question the toxic masculinity portrayed in their songs and videos, or objected to women being referred to as ‘h**s’ and ‘b*****s’, was derided as square and prudish.
One exception, famously, was the singer Dionne Warwick who, fed up with the proliferation of misogynist lyrics in rap music, summoned prominent rappers, including Snoop, to her house for a meeting.
She then dared them to call her a ‘b****’ to her face. ‘You guys are all going to grow up,’ she told the group. ‘You’re going to have families. You’re going to have children. You’re going to have little girls, and one day that little girl is going to look at you and say: ‘Daddy, did you really say that? Is that really you?’ What are you going to say?’
According to Snoop, she stopped them dead in their tracks. ‘We were the most gangsta you could be,’ he later said, ‘but, that day, at Dionne Warwick’s house, I believe we got out-gangstered.’
To his credit, he decided to turn his life around. Not everyone did.
If only more people with power and influence back then had been like Warwick, fearlessly calling out these arrogant young men. Instead, the opposite seems to have been true.
They all wanted to worship at the altar of gangsta rap, and that is presumably why so many accepted invitations to Diddy’s infamous White Parties and his even more debauched Freak Offs, where he would allegedly delight in watching others perform drug-fuelled sex acts.
In the same way the proliferation of online pornography ‘normalises’ abusive and misogynistic sexual behaviour, the lionisation of Diddy gave him a veneer of respectability.
It is as it should be that he is now behind bars, facing more than 100 accusers. But there are plenty of others – from brands to individuals – who must also bear a portion of responsibility for failing to stand up to Diddy and, in some cases, encouraging him by endorsing him.
The music industry’s worship of this toxic culture is the reason why bullies such as Diddy have spawned so many imitators.
Men, for example, like the British YouTuber and rapper Yung Filly, 29, who has just been charged in Australia with sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel after a concert. He faces four counts of rape, three of ‘assault occasioning bodily harm’ and one of ‘impeding a person’s breathing or circulation by applying pressure to their neck’. In the context of the Diddy allegations, this is all too familiar.
Diddy’s victims deserve justice, and hopefully they will get it. But there is also another crime going on here: the glorification of a vicious gang culture that allowed, and still allows, so many men like Diddy to flourish.
This Labour government isn’t great when it comes to optics, but which idiot at No10 allowed the Budget to be on October 30 – meaning all the analysis will be published on Halloween? It’s inevitable that Chancellor Rachel Reeves will be pictured on every front page in a witch’s hat. Come to think of it, that gives me a great idea for a costume…
The BBC’s Clive Myrie spoke for many when, heckled by a pro-Palestinian protester, he called him a ‘f****** idiot’ and rebuked him for not staying to hear his response. An unwise choice of language but an excellent sentiment.
Emily in… London?
Emily In Paris has been a huge hit for Netflix. But with its fifth series heading to Rome, I can’t help but wonder how Emily In London might work. Emily (played by Lily Collins) trying to get the Tube to work, only to find the District Line is out of action? She orders an Uber (3x surge pricing, naturally), but while she waits, a balaclava-clad 12-year-old rides past on a scooter and steals her phone from her hand.
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Emily In Paris has been a huge hit for Netflix with its fifth series heading to Rome. The title character Emily is played by Lily Collins
Elon Musk’s new Optimus robots – which can do tasks such as pouring drinks and dancing (badly) – look uncomfortably like the stormtroopers from Star Wars. The tech mogul claims: ‘The vision is for them to serve millions of households, by cooking, mowing lawns and caring for the elderly.’ If that’s my future, perhaps the Assisted Dying Bill isn’t such a bad idea.
Actor Tom Hardy’s reputation as a roughty-toughty man of action takes a bit of a beating from the revelation that he insists on having a lavender diffuser in his trailer on film sets. Surely his alien alter-ego, Venom, would say ‘You’re a loser, Eddie’?
Au pair affairs were a dad’s sleazy ‘perk’
John le Carre was such a prodigious philanderer that he told his first wife he ‘slept with every nanny they ever had’. Boris Johnson’s father, Stanley, also allegedly had an eye for the family’s au pair.
Both men were part of that generation of males brought up to believe that wives were for children and mistresses were for fun. If both could be located under the same roof, so much the easier.
For years, under the Tory government, Sue Gray had a key say in appointments to the Lords. If – or more likely when (as no one in Westminster knows the location of more bodies than her) – she is ennobled, one thing’s for sure: she’ll be among friends.
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Sue Gray served as Downing Street Chief of Staff under Prime Minister Keir Starmer from July to October 2024
Tui’s stupidity won’t fly
A shout-out for the airline Tui, which delayed my daughter’s flight from Manchester on Friday by 11 hours because of ‘technical issues’.
Despite several other available flights, the airline refused to let her, or anyone else, leave the departure area, meaning families with children and disabled passengers were trapped. Rank stupidity, or a cynical attempt to force people to spend money in overpriced airport shops?
