It’s All Starting To Make Sense As To Why P Diddy Gave His Artists Their Publishing Rights Back, Clear Out Of The Blue, Six Months Ago For No Reason. And It’s Not Because He Was “Doing The Right Thing”. (Alt Title “R. Kelly Meets Jeffrey Epstein”)
Variety - Sean “Puff Daddy/Diddy” Combs’ decision to give artists and songwriters the publishing rights that he owns on songs from his 1990s powerhouse label Bad Boy, confirmed last week, was surprising, to put it mildly, and possibly unprecedented in its scale. At a time when music catalogs are routinely selling for nine figures and awareness of publishing’s value is at an all-time high, the decision to reassign his rights on those songs — many of which were hits — to the artists and songwriters is highly unusual, even for a man whose net worth was estimated by Forbes last year to be nearly a billion dollars.
“It’s just doing the right thing,” Combs told Variety last week. “I think that we as an industry, and as a people, have to look in the mirror and make a shift forward. It’s about evolving, leading by example and reforming an industry that needs it, in a world that needs reform
Advertisement
6 months ago when this story broke, I remember thinking to myself, "wait, what? Why on fucking Earth would Puff Daddy do such a thing?" Because it made absolutely zero point zero (that's 0.000) percent sense.
The real wax on the envelope to seal the deal came from his slithering attorney, who doubled down on what a “heartfelt guy” Puff is-
“He had the opportunity to sell it for millions of dollars,” Meiselas continues. “He chose not to. He wanted to give it back as a thank-you for the writers who helped him get where he is. It’s very simple: He did something nice because he wanted to do something nice.” Meiselas conceded, without giving specifics, that Combs’ legal fees for the two-year process of reassigning those rights were not inconsiderable.
This wasn't a guy like Dave Grohl, who is universally celebrated for his genuine kindness throughout the entertainment industry. This was the anti-thesis of Dave Grohl. Sean "Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, Diddy, Love" Combs. One of the most notorious and ruthless gangsters the music industry has ever known.
People like Sean Combs don't do nice things for people out of the goodness of their hearts. There HAD to be an ulterior motive here…
Before I was able to blog anything on the subject, music/rap guru Gay Pat was all over it, taking the story at face value and falling for it, hook, line, and sinker.
Gullible Gay Pat - Standing ovation for Mr. Sean P. Diddy Combs! Years after his roster of stars including the Notorious B.I.G., Cam'ron, Ma$e, Mary J Blige, Lil' Kim, and Faith Evans made him a literal billionaire, he has finally given them their publishing back. Meaning Ma$e can finally leave the congregation and get back to doing what he does best - rapping about Ma$e. As for the other artists, I don't know. The only one we've heard from on social is Cam'ron who seems to be very excited…
But again, it's probably too little too late for most of these guys. The money has already been made on their music and it's sitting firmly in Diddy's pocket. I'm sure there's still some left to be made, but not at much as their was when Bad Boy was in its heyday. Which is why he gave them their publishing back in the first place. PR 101. Everybody writes about what a hero Diddy is while ignoring the fact that he ruined these peoples lives for so many years. Oh well. Not my problem.
According to TMZ, here's why he did it…
Again, we're told the rationale for this boils down to wanting to revolutionize the industry with this to empower artists and to switch up the dynamic -- which has been a certain way for a long time. As part of his legacy, Diddy's hoping to enrich others in his community. This is a big part of Diddy's identity lately -- as seen with other charitable efforts he's taken -- and now … he's mirroring that same energy here as a label exec, choosing people over personal wealth. Our sources say he hopes others in the music biz will follow suit. Diddy's empire is already as big as they come, so the fact he's breaking a small piece of it off and giving back to those who helped him build this is a pretty awesome thing to see.
It's always easy to "choose people over wealth" when you already have wealth. Funny how that works. Who knows, maybe this will result in some new music. Otherwise it's pretty much a non-story. That's it for this one. Thanks for reading.
No Pat, I’m sorry. This move wasn’t out of the kindness of Diddy's heart. The guy doesn't even have a heart. It was to cover his ass. It was a half-assed, gasping, last-ditch effort to buy any loyalty he could. From a collective of people who made him rich beyond even his wildest dreams through their talents and hard work. Who he then rode the coattails of, milked as much as he could, and then put on the shelf with the rest of his toys, to be forgotten about.
From the looks of that blog Pat wrote, and the text he cited from TMZ I'm not sure who's more gullible here. He or Harvey Levinson's Kardashian-backed propaganda machine.
Full disclosure here, I was as hardcore of a Bad Boy, Puff Daddy fan as you'll ever meet.
Sad. I fully realize trust me.
Back in middle school and high school, I was what the adults called, "a wigger".
Advertisement
My closet looked like the Tommy Hilfiger department at Filene's. I swapped out my love for Aerosmith, Nirvana, Offspring, and Bush, for Puff Daddy, Notorious B.I.G., Mobb Deep, Nas, and whoever else was fighting on the front lines of for the East Coast in their beef vs. the West Coast.
I have no idea how or where this came from, but I'm going to stick to blaming MTV for indoctrinating my young and impressionable mind.
When Notorious B.I.G. died, I went all in on Puff Daddy.
When Puff Daddy and the Family embarked on the No Way Out Tour, I followed it to Boston, Providence, and NYC with friends for all the shows.
I wrote to Bad Boy's offices begging to become a member of their "street team", and telling them how I could be trusted to hold down the city of Worcester for the label. (I actually got a call back from a female representative because I think they saw my name and thought I was black. And not 13 years old. My dream ended there when I informed her of the truth.)
I made Bad Boy mixtapes.
When I DJ'd, every other song was from a Bad Boy record.
I fucking idolized this guy and looked past every single warning sign, and red flag of what a truly garbage human being he was. For decades.
I'm not proud of it.
When Shyne was introduced to the world, I declared him the next coming of the Notorious B.I.G.
"Puff did it again!"
Even though he outbid Irv Gotti, Jay-Z and Lyor Cohen, and G-Unit, we chalked it up as just another Bad Boy win. Diddy discovered raps next big thing, and Shyne signed with the best over the rest because Bad Boy was like the Yankees of hip hop music. All Diddy did was make stars.
Shyne achieved decent success with his self-titled debut album, but it seemed like just as he was getting started, his flame was extinguished.
This was at the height of the Puffy and J Lo melodrama where they were out and about acting like club rats every night.
KMazur. Getty Images.There was a shooting at a nightclub they were at one night, where numerous witnesses claimed Puffy and an instigator exchanged words, got very heated, and then Combs pulled a gun and fired it into the ceiling. Bullets ricocheted and struck innocent bystanders, including a woman who was rushed to the hospital, where they saved her life.
New York Daily News Archive. Getty Images.Advertisement
(Sidebar- totally random, but J Lo originally cut a version of her hit "Love Don't Cost A Thing" with Puff Daddy that got scrapped (thank God) and replaced with the version we all know. Here it is)
Somehow, Shyne ended up taking the fall for ALL of this, and ended up doing serious prison time. 10 years. Diddy stayed a free man.
While in prison he found God, converted to Judaism, swore to never speak to Combs again, turned his life around, and when he got out was deported back to Belize. He and Combs have since made up (no telling how or why those terms came about), but Shyne is now a high-ranking politician in his home country and has made a really good life for himself.
The guy has seemed to have had 20 lives up until this point.
Back when he was just a promoter, before his music days, people died at a basketball game he put together. The arena he had it in held 2,500 people. He packed in 5,000. A stampede occurred and 9 people died. He faced no charges.
Tupac was assassinated by a hitman, after he was set up and shot leaving Bad Boy recording studios a few months prior.
Diddy never faced charges.
Notorious B.I.G. was murdered in LA, a place he was warned by authorities, friends, and family not to travel to, but went because Combs encouraged him to.
The rest is history as they say.
If Combs had TRULY, TRULY wanted to be the biggest music industry head honcho/star of all time, he could have been. All he needed to do was focus on actual music.
Except he didn't.
Instead he worried about everything in the world besides music.
There was the Sean John clothing brand. The shitty vodka and tequila brands. The pointless television network. The numerous realty TV shows (Shout out Making The Band, that show was fucking awesome). The failed Atlanta-based restaurant chain (Justin's). The spin-off clothing brands.
This guy was so obsessed with building an empire, which encompassed all of these different things that had absolutely nothing to do with music, when he owed everything to music to begin with.
Advertisement
Say what you want about the guy, (there's a lot to say), but he knows music.
You can't take away the fact that he discovered the potential in, and hitched his wagon to, the greatest rapper of all time, Christopher Wallace, at a very young age.
He basically "invented the remix".
And he's responsible for a playlist and catalog that many of us who grew up in the late 90s and early 2000s would call a soundtrack to our adolescence.
Which is honestly the shittiest part of all of this for me personally.
All the great memories I have, where music this guy made, or had a hand in producing, over years and years and years, are now tainted, due to the fact that he's a grade-A level piece of shit, vile human being. It's hard not to feel like a moron. You want to say you were duped, but you can't because again, you know you're smarter than that and all the warning signs have been there.
It sucks.
Aside from all the lives of the ALLEGEDLY young people Combs is ALLEGED to have destroyed- and again, tying it back into this blog- one of the big things that never sat right with me, and I can't help but think about being overshadowed in all of this, are the lives and careers of the ridiculous amount of artists Combs destroyed.
While building his empire, and worrying about everything under the sun except for actual music, this guy collected some of the worlds most talented R&B and hip-hop artists in the world like they were trading cards. Except rather than showcase them to the world, he would hoard them. Sticking them in a shoebox where he kept on a shelf in his office for nobody to be able to look at.
We are talking more "one-and-dones" than John Calipari. More "never-was"'s than Coach Gordon Bombay.
So many artists that I would hear on b-side Bad Boy records, remixes, or mixtapes who were fucking amazing. That never ended up doing anything because Diddy was too busy trying to make "Ciroc" a premium brand vodka.
Guys like G-Dep
Advertisement
Black Rob
(Who Diddy nearly let die homeless until it became a huge news story. But that's a whole other blog I already wrote)
Mark Curry (who by the way has been screaming to anybody who would listen about Diddy's true nature for years now!)
Curry, for instance, dared to speak out against Combs when this whole thing about publishing broke. He likened the return of rights to songs from nearly 30 years ago to getting your ex back after they've moved on and started a family.
Loon (who has also gone on the record saying the same)
Craig Mack
Advertisement
8 Ball & MJG
Yung Joc
and 112 who was really big for a minute, but came nowhere near reaching their potential
Girls like -
Cassie (who you could argue set this entire downfall in motion with her VERY PUBLIC civil suit against Combs)
Advertisement
Total
and Dream
and sadly the list goes on and on and on with a bunch of names 99.9% of people would never recognize the names of like Donnie Klang, B5, Choppa, etc. because Diddy just signed these people and ran them deeper into obscurity.
It's fucked.
So the second he decided to (check notes) "pass on 9 figures to "do the right thing"" and give Bad Boy artists back the rights to their publishing, you just had to know it reeked of bullshit.
Bad people don't do that.
Hell, do good people even do that?
There was always an ulterior motive at play. Diddy never gave a single fuck about any of these people. And in my opinion, it was because he sensed a groundswell rising of people who actually knew him, who had stories, and were planning to make everything known, and he was attempting to curtail it all.
I would fucking LOVE for TMZ, Variety, and the other bullshit PR rags in Hollywood who disguise themselves as journalism outlets to actually dig deeper into, and put more emphasis on the fact that when Diddy "offered" these artists their publishing back, he also required them to sign NDA's upon receiving their rights contracts back.
Artists like Aubrey O'Day of Danity Kane fame refused to sign on the dotted line thanks to a shady non-disclosure agreement that would muzzle any criticism of Puff or his empire.
Dont these “journalists” watch GB’s Only Stans??? Glenny had this tea months ago! Straight from the horses mouth herself!
In aninterview with Only Stans that aired after this article first published, Aubrey O’Day — a singer with Danity Kane, the all-girl group that starred in Diddy’s MTV series “Making the Band” — said she refused to take the offer because of the restrictions in a mandatory non-disclosure agreement. “I have to release him for any claims or wrongdoings or actions prior to the date of the release,” she said. “I have to sign an NDA that I will never disparage Puff, Bad Boy, Janice Combs or Justin Combs’ music, or EMI, or Sony ever in public.”
Advertisement
Shocker.
Then there's the saga of Ma$e, who claims he was offered a measly $20k for rights that are now worth millions. Yet, Combs brushes it off as a mere sibling spat. Yeah, sure, Puff, because nothing says brotherly love like shortchanging your own.
I really hope that Diddy does what he's always done best his whole life, and that's not be able to shut his fucking mouth (take that take that take that), and that while he's going down, he takes everybody else involved with him.
I won't be the least bit surprised if he ends up Epstein'd.
Or if we find out, or don't find out, that that private plane that was allowed to leave for Antigua the other day was filled with blackmail and incriminating evidence.
Or if this thing goes even more vast and wide in terms of who's involved.
If there's one thing we've learned over the past 5 years, it's that people in control in the entertainment industry are very fucked up sexual deviants.
p.s. - may have to pen another one of these coming from another angle if I'm able to. Until then, I'll be patiently waiting for 50 Cent's documentary to release.