In 1990s and early 2000s New York, Sean “Diddy” Combs was the person to be seen with.
Now on trial in Manhattan, his hair grey, his beard grown, it’s hard to imagine that he was “the Pied Piper… of the most elite level of partying of that time” – but that’s how Amy DuBois Barnett describes him.
She was the first Black-American woman to run a major mainstream magazine in the US, and based in Manhattan at a time when hip hop was at its zenith.
“Urban culture really ran the city,” she says. “That’s where so much of the money was… you had all the finance bros trying to get into Puffy (Combs) parties, all the fashion executives trying to get into Puffy parties.”
And while he was welcomed by the highest echelons of the arts and entertainment world, she says: “He was never known for being a calm kind of individual.”
Combs was “very dismissive” with her, and she admits: “Puff never particularly liked me that much.”
But DuBois Barnett would often get invited to his parties because she was able to feature his up-and-coming artists in her magazines.
From editor-in-chief of Ebony magazine, she’d go on to become the editor-in-chief of Honey and Teen People magazines, and then deputy editor of Harper’s Bazaar.
She says the man she met at those parties “lacked warmth” and seemed “complicated”.
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“When he walked in the room, all of the energy changed. Puffy had his trusted individuals around him… immediately the area around him would become kind of crowded with everybody vying for his attention,” she says.
“I think that was also partially why he didn’t particularly like me because I wasn’t really vying for his attention.
“He really reserved that attention for the people that he was either attracted to… or the people that he thought were important enough to his business success.”
She says it was common knowledge that he wasn’t someone to cross due to “rumours… of what he could do”.
“There were a lot of people within journalism, within media, within other industries that were afraid of his influence and also afraid of his temper,” she adds.
“When things at parties would not go his way or somebody didn’t bring him something quickly enough, or… the conversation wasn’t going his way… he would just kind of snap and he was just not afraid to yell at whoever was there.
“There was not a lot of boundaries in his communication, let’s just put it that way.”
But she says it was a time when a tremendous amount of misogyny was running throughout music, things that in today’s culture would certainly give pause for thought.
“So many things happened to me, everything from getting groped at parties to getting locked in a limousine with music executives and having him refuse to let me out until I did whatever he thought I was going to do, which I didn’t.”
She insists: “We didn’t have the vocabulary to understand the degree to which it was problematic… it was a thread that ran throughout the culture.”
Star-studded parties were the ultimate invite
At the time, a ticket to one of Combs’s star-studded “white parties” was the ultimate invite.
She admits: “It was like nothing you’ve ever seen before… the dress code was very strict.
“No beige, no ecru, absolutely white, you would literally be turned away if your outfit was wrong. Puffy did not sort of tolerate people in his parties that didn’t look ‘grown and sexy’ as it were.”
She says people would mingle by the poolside listening to the best DJs in the world, while topless models posed dressed as mermaids and waiters handed out weed brownies from silver platters.
“It was every boldface name you could possibly imagine, just this gorgeous crowd.”
Behind the glamour, prosecutors now allege there was a man capable of sexual abuse and violence, and a serious abuse of power. Criminal charges which he’s already pleaded not guilty to and strenuously denies.
Without question, Combs had the golden touch. Expanding his music career into business enterprises that in 2022 reportedly took his net worth to around £1bn. For decades his success story was celebrated.
“I think that in the black community, there is a feeling that if a black man is successful you don’t want to bring him down because there are not that many… these are cultural forces that are rooted in the systemic racism that’s present in the United States… but I think that these were part of what potentially protected Puffy against people speaking out.”
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Couple became ‘isolated and very unhappy’
While Combs had amassed a small fortune over the course of two decades which she encountered him, the former magazine editor says his behaviour had markedly changed from the first party she went to, to her last.
“The last was a post-Grammys party, in 2017 or 2018, and just the vibe was very different. He was really kind of isolated in a corner with Cassie, you know, looking very unhappy.”
For around 10 years, Combs had a relationship with the singer Cassie Ventura which ended in 2018.
Once over she filed a lawsuit that both parties eventually settled alleging she was trafficked, raped, drugged and beaten by the rapper on many occasions – which he denied. Last week she made similar claims in court.
“Cassie looked very glassy-eyed and there was a sadness about her energy. Whatever was happening between the two of them, I mean, it didn’t feel positive,” says DuBois Barnett.
“They were sort of holed up in the corner for almost the entire night… it did feel very different from the kind of jubilant of energy that he projected in his earlier incarnations.”
For Combs, his freedom depends on how these next few weeks go. His representatives claim he is the victim of “a reckless media circus”, saying he categorically denies he sexually abused anyone and wants to prove his innocence.
In particular, they say, he looks forward to establishing the “truth… based on evidence, not speculation”.
