My 1990s are feeling like a lie.
I watched the recent Netflix documentary “Sean Combs: The Reckoning” about the hip-hop music mogul who has tweaked his image over and over with new names and new business ventures. What stays the same is the decades-long vile behavior he managed to sanitize over dope beats. The four-part series pieces elements of Combs’ trajectory that actually existed in plain sight. It’s disgusting. Greed and proximity to power elevated him and kept too many people complicit.
From wunderkind intern to label executive, Combs developed and produced the ’90s hip-hop soul of Mary J. Blige, rugged R&B harmony of Jodeci and master lyricist The Notorious B.I.G. — artists who shaped my high school and college years. Faith Evans’ debut album is still one of my all-time faves. In fact, I have tickets to see Jodeci at the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana, next month in what I suspect will be a Motown-style revue for the middle-aged.
“The Reckoning,” directed by Alexandria Stapleton and produced by rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, caused me to rewind the record. Friends, associates and former employees recounted Combs’ violence, pettiness and jealousy. Stiffing artists he signed to his record label. High on drugs and drunk on Ciroc power. Slick as the drawers full of baby oil he kept on deck. One brave woman, Joi Dickerson-Neal, accused him of sexual assault in 1991 and recounted people she confided in at the time didn’t want to help her; red velvet rope party access mattered more.
Former employees liken Combs to a “paper gangster” who used fear to get his way. Cross or challenge him and kiss your career goodbye in the industry. Unadulterated capitalism fueled his drive. All-white Hampton parties, a fashion line, a media company and other businesses once catapulted him to billionaire status. Combs curated an image of Black excellence but he was as greedy as Mr. Potter.
Cassie Ventura, another brave woman, is a reason Combs’ descent tumbled into the public eye and courts. She settled a lawsuit in which she accused him of sexual assault and drugging her. Last year a video showed him dragging and beating her in a hotel hallway in 2016. A stream of lawsuits haunts Combs alleging sexual assault, including one from producer Rodney Jones, a Chicago native who feared retaliation from his boss.
The documentary shows a camera following Combs before his arrest in 2024. (50 Cent won’t reveal how he got his hands on the material.) Each episode features Comb camped out in a New York City hotel room strategizing with lawyers on the phone or workshopping the public yarn he wants to spin. This is hardly the first expose on Combs, but the footage allows viewers to witness his hubris, because money and fame had consistently shielded him. He joins a long line of wealthy public-facing men in politics and entertainment. If you watch the series, I’m sure names will immediately jump to mind.
Combs morphed into crisis communications mode to salvage his reputation and business interests. Son Justin — named in one of the lawsuits for rape — tells his father on tape that his father is being torn down because he is a Black man. Ah, of course. No better way to counter misogyny than cry racism. Earlier this year, a jury convicted Sean Combs of transportation for prostitution but acquitted him of sex trafficking and racketeering. Two starstruck jurors in “The Reckoning” reveal how much further we have to go in society to stop victim-blaming.
This holiday season Combs, 56, is serving 50 months in prison, and his team has spoken out against the documentary. I don’t expect a metamorphosis from behind bars, because he would need to hold himself accountable — a true reckoning with self.
Natalie Y. Moore is a senior lecturer at Northwestern University.