Netflix is releasing “Sean Combs: The Reckoning,” a four-part documentary miniseries following the trajectory of Sean “Diddy” Combs, also known as Puff Daddy or P. Diddy, a singer, songwriter and music executive who was one of the dominant names in the hip-hop and R&B industry in the 1990s and was sentenced in 2025 to 50 months in prison for transporting people for prostitution.
The series was produced by another prominent name in black music, rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, and directed by Alex Stapleton, an accomplished filmmaker who has made documentaries about film producer Roger Corman and baseball star Reggie Jackson. “Sean Combs: The Reckoning” is a well-crafted work of journalism, with revealing interviews and archival footage that illustrate remarkable passages from Combs’ life and career.
For many people, Sean “Diddy” Combs is just a music star, a singer and songwriter with several hit albums, a clothing brand – Sean John – and an accumulated fortune of around half a billion dollars (in the list of the world’s richest artists compiled by “Forbes” magazine, Combs is in 16th place, behind Jay-Z and Taylor Swift and ahead of stars like Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey). But Combs’ career brings an element beyond music that the general public remembers less: his impressive propensity to be close to cases of violence, but which never affects his credibility.
Sean Combs was born in 1969 in Harlem, New York, the son of a social worker and nightclub receptionist named Janice and a pimp, Melvin, a tough guy associated with heroin dealer Frank Lucas (a character played by Denzel Washington in the film “The Gangster”). Melvin was shot and killed when his son was just two years old.
In 1990, Combs got an internship at the Uptown label and became a favorite of manager Andre Harrell, who gave his protégé two emerging artists: Mary J. Blige and Jodeci. Combs’ rise in Uptown is devastating, as are his troubles with the law. In 1991, he and rapper Heavy D organized a charity basketball game at a New York university. Thousands of people invade the event and nine people are trampled to death. Combs blamed police for the tragedy and was not accused of negligence.
Uptown was too small for Combs’ ambitions. In 1993, after being fired by Andre Harrell, he immediately created his own label in New York, Bad Boy, modeled after a rival Los Angeles label, Death Row, founded by Suge Knight and which boasted such rap heavyweights as Dr. Dre, Tupac Shakur and Snoop Doggy Dogg.
Combs assembles a terrific cast, with Notorious B.I.G., Usher, Faith Evans, and Carl Thomas, among others. Bad Boy and Death Row began a rivalry between the east and west coasts of the United States, which would culminate in the most violent and controversial incidents in rap history: the murders of Tupac Shakur (September 13, 1996) and Notorious B.I.G. (March 9, 1997). Combs was never officially charged with Shakur’s death, although the entire hip-hop scene suspected that the murder was the result of the rivalry between Bad Boy and Death Row.
In “Sean Combs: The Reckoning,” several interviewees tell lurid stories about Combs: ex-girlfriends and employees accuse him of harassment and sexual violence, co-workers recount how they received defaults from the mogul, and former partners recall bloody incidents involving shootings and beatings. The miniseries shows brutal scenes of Combs beating his then-girlfriend, singer Cassie Ventura.
After four episodes full of incriminating statements, the 50 months in prison imposed by a New York court seem more like a treat than a punishment.
The miniseries features revealing testimony from jury members, which makes it clear that the jurors themselves were influenced by Combs’ charisma: “To every witness statement, Diddy reacted with facial expressions that I had seen in music videos,” says one of the jurors, “And I think he managed to establish a connection with the jury.” Another juror said he believed the defense thesis that Combs’ romantic relationships were all consensual: “The women who accused him were not prisoners and could very well have left the relationship whenever they wanted,” he said.
The miniseries works well as a retrospective of Combs’ life and career and as an account of the explosion of the hip-hop scene in the 1990s, but it lingers a bit on depicting Combs’ problems with girlfriends and ex-partners, which ends up making some episodes – notably the third – somewhat repetitive.
But the result is a well-done and important documentary work. Sean Combs leaves the show as a cold and manipulative character, who has managed to remain virtually unscathed after more than three decades of a “crazy life” in hip-hop. Everyone around him – girlfriends, partners, artists – seem to have suffered much more than him.
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