The epic rise and fall of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs
There was unbridled delight – and more than a little trepidation – across the face of a man who built his image on swagger as Sean Combs took to the stage at Howard University’s May 2014 commencement. He’d dropped out of the renowned institution decades earlier, taking a gamble on a record label internship that spawned an empire touching the spheres of music, fashion, dining, business and, ultimately, pop culture near-ubiquity.
The world of higher education, however, was one that Combs had never conquered in the same way. He grinned like a child in thrilled disbelief as he accepted his honorary degree, then took off his tasselled cap, wiped the sweat from his brow and composed himself before launching into an uncharacteristically humble speech.
“You cannot achieve success without failure,” said Combs, a master of reinvention who’d already changed his name from Puffy to Puff Daddy to P. Diddy to Diddy. “Some of my biggest successes come from my biggest failures.”
In the audience were a cast of this-is-your-life characters who had figured largely in Combs’ rise: The record label bigwig who’d hired him, fired him, then become an executive at one of Combs’s new companies. The women who’d borne his children. The mother who’d raised him. He looked out at those faces as he described learning, while searching through microfiche headlines in the Howard library during his early days on campus, that his father had been murdered in a drug deal gone bad – as opposed to being killed in a car accident, as his mother had told him. So Combs, then 44, also spoke about breaking patterns.
“I decided to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit of my father, but in an honest way … in a legal way,” he told those gathered.
It was a statement that likely sparked raised-eyebrow incredulity among those in the audience who’d opposed the selection of Combs for commencement speaker; not only had he dropped out of Howard, but he’d also courted controversy for almost the entirety of his career – much of it legal.
Now, Combs is embroiled in lawsuits and criminal investigations of an entirely new level. His homes have been raided, an associate arrested, and he’s stepped down as chairman of Revolt, the media company he co-founded, amidst allegations of sex abuse and sex trafficking.
For a man who un-self-consciously likes to define his life by “eras,” this may be the most challenging one yet. And it may be one from which even his trademark tunnel-vision determination can’t save him.
Combs, born in 1969, has spent more than 50 years displaying a single-minded drive for power, success and recognition – and a refusal to back down, instilled in him from childhood. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree; he has described his parents as the “fly guy” and “fly girl” of their Harlem neighbourhood, and both were go-getters in their own right.
His father worked for the Board of Education and as a driver before his 1972 murder, after which Combs’ mother Janice, a former model, worked four jobs to support her son and daughter, Keisha. She emphasised education but also the importance of establishing dominance – a lesson she hammered home to Combs aged nine when another child stole his money.
“My mother wouldn’t let me in the house,” Combs told Oprah in a 2006 interview. “She said, ‘Go back out there and get that money — and if anyone ever puts their hands on you, make sure they never do it again.’ She knew the reality — if people smell weakness, they take advantage of you. You have to defend yourself.”
Janice’s lesson may also have aligned with his natural inclinations, though; his future “Puffy” moniker stemmed from childhood tantrums.
“Whenever I got mad as a kid, I used to always huff and puff,” Combs told Jet magazine in 1998. “I had a temper. That’s why my friend started calling me Puffy.”
While Combs clearly took his mother’s advice to heart, he also mirrored her work ethic; he got his first job at 12 – a paper route – then worked at a gas station and a Mexican restaurant, in addition to selling lemonade, he told Forbes. He spent a a childhood summer with an Amish family in Pennsylvania through the non-profit Fresh Air Fund for inner-city kids – and it wasn’t long before his mother moved the family from crowded uptown Manhattan to Mount Vernon, a suburb of Westchester County.
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