Most of us are waking up on January 1 and preparing to start fresh on the New Year. Clean slate! Let’s begin anew. There are others, however, who will have lingering effects of 2024 following them into the coming year. Rapper Jay-Z continues to deny rape allegations. Viral murder suspect Luigi Mangione will face accusations that he shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of New York City. And music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs awaits his pending trial for sex-trafficking charges, even suffering mental breakdowns thanks to the conditions he’s allegedly encountering in the Metropolitan Detention Center. While Diddy awaits trial, those that knew him are speaking out, and the sentiments aren’t great.
Sean “Diddy” Combs lived the bulk of his life in the public spotlight, creating his own music and producing albums for Mary J. Blige, The Notorious B.I.G., Mariah Carey and more. Working for Diddy, however, might not have been a walk in the park, according to those that toiled under him at Uptown Records in the early days of his career. In a profile filed to Fortune, Diddy’s former assistant Pam Lewis-Rudden spoke about the promoter’s time at Uptown, where he started as a record promoter but quickly climbed the ranks. Her memories weren’t flattering. As Lewis-Rudden explained:
He was always in a hurry, and you knew when he came in, it was like, all the fun would end. He was always really pissed off about something, and he’d blow in, get everybody all riled up, and leave. A couple months in, he started calling everybody a ‘bitch.’ ‘All bitches to the meeting room…’ I consider myself lucky to have gotten out when I did, because if I had stayed there, heaven only knows.
By no means is Pam Lewis-Rudden a one-and-done intern who tried the music industry for a month and realized that it wasn’t for her. Quite the contrary. The veteran music industry executive has more than 30 years in the business, with stints at RCA, MCA and Uptown Records, where she worked closely with Sean “Diddy” Combs. I’m willing to believe that she has seen a lot. And not that anyone is trying to excuse the behavior, but too much of Diddy’s behavior might have been overlooked or tolerated because of his success. As former record executive and journalist Naima Cochrane told Fortune:
The people who tend to be great artists and creative minds also tend to be boundary pushers. They’ve been told their whole lives that because they are special, the normal rules don’t apply to them.
Sean “Diddy” Combs is now discovering that the rules do apply to him. He’s currently facing a reality of life in prison based on the charges that have been leveled against him. And even if he were to be proven innocent in a court of law, Diddy will forever be associated with the details of the “Diddy parties” that allegedly took place over the years, tainting his reputation in the court of public opinion.
As we head into 2025, we anticipate a lot of legal back-and-forth with regard to Diddy’s imprisonment and trial, and probably more stories about the man he was from the people who knew him, so prepare yourself for that wave of information as it reaches shore.