Article

Character

Comment

Justice

Music

2 July 2025

6 min read

A fan’s eye view of the fall of Sean Combs

We believed he was a good guy because we wanted to believe someone was

Giles Gough

Giles Gough is a writer and creative who hosts the God in Film podcast.

Sean Combs, 2019.

Justiceonthebeat, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

As the weeks-long trial of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs draws to an end, the world at large has seen an insight into his life that we wish we hadn’t. Combs has just been convicted of transportation to engage in prostitution. Combs had pleaded not guilty and vehemently denied all allegations against him.

Podcasters and influencers have kept us up to date with every twist and turn of the prosecution’s case, along with a jury member being dismissed and a bizarre visit from Kanye West. Trials of powerful, successful men (and it invariably is men) have become a semi-regular occurrence in the last few years. The #MeToo movement brought justice for victims of abusers like R. Kelly and Harvey Weinstein. But something about the Diddy trial feels different. For hip hop fans of a certain age, the accusations against Diddy were both shocking and hard to accept. Let’s take a deep dive into why that might be.

For fans who are forty or older, one night looms large in the history of hip hop; the 1995 Source Awards, which distilled the entirety of the East/West coast beef into one evening. West coast rap music was in the ascendence, and New York, the birthplace of rap music and hip hop culture, was not coping with it very well.

The atmosphere was further exacerbated when a red-shirted man, as big as a house and twice as broad, took to the stage. Marion ‘Suge’ Knight was the head of Death Row Records, a West coast label that had been hoovering up talent like Snoop Dogg, 2pac and Dr. Dre. Suge was an intimidating presence to say the least. His red shirt was a sign of his affiliation with the ‘Bloods’, the notorious L.A. street gang. It was an image of notoriety that Suge leaned into and it was well-earned. In his award acceptance speech, Suge said the most infamous lines he was ever to utter:

“Any artist out there wanna be a’ artist, and wanna stay a star, and don't wanna – and won't have to worry about the executive producer try’na be all in the videos, all on the records, dancin’ – come to Death Row!”

This was widely perceived as an attack against Sean Combs, ‘Puffy’ or ‘Puff Daddy’ as he was known back then. As the head of Bad Boy Records, Puffy was not content to simply be behind the scenes; he constantly interposed himself into the songs and videos of the musicians on his label. Whilst these interventions might seem annoying to some, the success that Bad Boy’s artists had achieved couldn’t be argued with, and as a New York native, the audience at the Source Awards saw Suge’s words as an attack on one of their own. So, when Puffy took to the stage later, a response to Suge’s barbs was hotly anticipated.

But on that occasion, Puffy took a different approach. He acknowledged that he was the executive producer in question, and added: “contrary to what other people may feel, I would like to say that I'm very proud of Dr. Dre, of Death Row and Suge Knight for their accomplishments... and all this East and West [conflict], that needs to stop. So give it up for everybody from the East and the West that won tonight. One love.”

In this interaction, we saw the aggressive antagonist Suge be met with nothing but love and respect from Puffy. It seemed like a refreshing antidote to the perception of rap music being only violent and misogynistic. Without wishing to overstate the point, Puffy showed that hip hop could be measured, mature and positive. This was an image that, until recently, had held for decades. Yes, there was a fair amount of hedonism thrown in to his public image, but that is priced-in to the cost of being a fan of famous rappers –the excess comes with the territory. For decades we have been dealing with this false dichotomy that Suge Knight was the ‘villain’, and Puffy was the ‘hero.’

This image of Puffy as, at the very least, a decent man, was further underscored following the deaths of Tupac ‘2pac’ Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. aka Christopher Wallace. The murders of those two impossibly talented, painfully young men, less than a year apart, represent the point from which all other historical events are judged as ‘before’ or ‘after’. One of the things that came after was Puffy’s release of I’ll Be Missing You, a song in honour of B.I.G, his most popular artist and friend. Sampling The Police’s Every Breath You Take and featuring Biggie’s widow, Faith Evans, on the chorus, Puffy evoked explicitly biblical language with lines like:

“It's kind of hard with you not around, / know you in heaven, smiling down / watching us while we pray for you / every day we pray for you.”

These combined with the images in the video, hands in prayer, candles, children dressed in white all served as a fitting tribute. It could have been mawkish, but it met the moment and consolidated Puffy’s good guy image in our heads. We believed he was a good guy because we wanted to believe someone was. Other hits followed, with videos filled with shiny suits and relentless dancing; it was fun, and served as a counterbalance to the grit and grime of gangsta rap. For over two decades, Puffy, now going by ‘Diddy’, had an image that fans still associated with lightness and positivity. Critics like Murs from HipHop DX led conversations painting Diddy as the Superman to Dr. Dre’s Batman. Rumours about Diddy would occasionally surface, but without the mainstream media devoting much time to them, they were easily dismissed. That was until Cassie Ventura, Diddy’s ex-girlfriend, filed a civil lawsuit.

If there are any lessons to be learned by his fans, they’re lessons that have sadly already been learned by fans of countless other powerful and successful men.

In late 2023, Cassie’s lawsuit accused Diddy of rape and sex trafficking. These allegations were explosive, but just one day later, both parties reached a settlement. The fire of Ventura’s accusations was dampened down by the release of the joint statement a day later. It seemed as if the whole thing was over and done with before many hip hop fans could even hear the news, let alone process it. Fans of Diddy clung to shreds of denial, whilst noticing that no-one else from the hip hop community seemed to be springing to his defence. Almost as if the people who knew him in person had a very different image from that of the persona he cultivated.

But Cassie’s lawsuit was the first crack in the dam. Law enforcement agencies began investigating, Diddy’s property was raided and by the time CNN got their hands on the surveillance video of Diddy attacking Cassie, the dam had well and truly burst. The video from a Los Angeles hotel dated March 2016, shows Miss Ventura attempting to leave one of Diddy’s freak offs 'parties'. Only to have Diddy chase her down the corridor, grab her and violently assault her. Each kick, drag and object thrown at her slammed another nail into Diddy’s reputation. The ensuing apology he posted on his Instagram was completely invalidated by his earlier statement that his accusers were making false claims in search of a “quick pay day.”

For those that loved Combs’ music and what it meant to us, it felt like something repellent had crawled into it and died, forever tainting those songs by association. If there are any lessons to be learned by his fans, they’re lessons that have sadly already been learned by fans of countless other powerful and successful men. Firstly, the more powerful a person is, the more they can hone and control their public image, and that they must be taken with a grain of salt. Secondly, always be ready to question a dichotomy. Is this really a hero versus a villain? Or in this case, an example of two demonstrably evil men, one with substantially better public relations.

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Article

Comment

Community

Politics

8 November 2024

10 min read

How to respond when politicians talk about “our way of life”

Alasdair MacIntyre’s thinking helps us understand what we share across society.

Joel Pierce

Joel Pierce is the administrator of Christ's College, University of Aberdeen. He has recently published his first book.

Four men in suits, sit next to each other smiling, in the House of Commons.

Reform MPs in the House of Commons.

House of Commons, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia.

What is “our way of life”? It’s a phrase which slides easily into the rhetoric of politicians of every stripe. It’s what the Reform Party says is threatened by multiculturalism, but what do they mean by it? What kind of politics is sustained by talk of “our way of life” and is there a better way of thinking about such politics?

This summer, we made an exception to the time limit rule for television in my house, mainly so that I could have the Olympics on from morning to night. It’s a habit I acquired growing up in the United States, where an obsession over the quadrennial medal count is one of the few remaining things which bridges political and regional divides. During the Cold War, the Olympics were a way for Americans to proudly affirm the superiority of our way of life over the rigid training schedules and alien ways of the rival Soviet Union.

Although my memories begin around the fall of the Berlin Wall, old habits die hard, and so the Olympics, to me, was endless coverage of plucky underdog Americans overcoming the odds to defeat the machine-like discipline of a new set of rivals–now Russia and China

I moved to Britain just before the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics at which Britain won exactly one medal. At first I was bemused by the BBC’s coverage, which, of necessity, had to focus on British Olympians with little chance of winning. I was invited to cheer on eighth or ninth place finishers who had committed their life to a craft which would never bring the rewards of lasting fame or financial security. For them the reward was the Olympics themselves, the chance to compete amongst peers, to push themselves to their highest level, enjoying their sport and their performance for what it was, not for any external reward. In the terms of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, what these Olympians displayed was dedication to the internal goods of their sport–those goods that make a particular activity worth doing for its own sake. The Olympics were not about medals for them, but about showing what could be achieved if, as Olympians must do, they made their sport their way of life, dedicating themselves to its unique forms of excellence.

Sports, for MacIntyre, are but one example of a broader category he labels ‘practices’. Although MacIntyre has a technical definition of what counts as a ‘practice’, the general idea can be conveyed through examples he gives such as farming, researching history, architecture, chess, and chemistry. Practices are human activities which are worth doing for their own sake, which require a degree of skill and excellence, and in which what counts as that skill and excellence is, in part, defined and discerned by the people who participate in the practice. This last criterion points at something important about practices for MacIntyre: they are inherently social.

This is obvious in the case of sport. For an individual athlete to compete in a race they need not just other competitors to race against, but also trainers and coaches to prepare them for it, governing bodies to organise it, and, hopefully, spectators to cheer them on. It is, perhaps, less obvious in the case of individual farmer, but even here, one has to be taught to farm and, if one is wise, continues to learn and adapt through consulting with other farmers. A different way of putting this is that practices are the kinds of things which it’s not absurd to call “a way of life”. For an Olympic curler, curling is a way of life, just as much as farming is for a farmer.

There are many ways of life, many modes of being British, as diverse as the professions, hobbies, and passions which we find to have inherent worth.

However, this seems to offer little help in defining “our way of life” if it is being used in the way our politicians like to talk about it. If there’s one thing that I learned from all those BBC features of British Olympians way back in 2010, it was that aside from geographic proximity, there was not much that their way of life had in common with mine. I may be within driving distance of the rink where Winter Olympian Eve Muirhead learned to curl, but my workdays of wrestling spreadsheets and answering emails have little in common with ones spent lifting weights, studying strategy with coaches, and perfecting the just right spin on a stone as it’s released.

And, of course that’s not just true of Olympic athletes. The investment banker who attends our church shares a way of life with his colleagues in Edinburgh, London, and Tokyo, that is completely opaque to my wife and I, immersed as we are in the worlds of ministry and academia. I glimpse some of the internal goods of the practices of our dentist watching her check my daughters’ teeth and our plumber as he fixes our leaking radiators, but their way of life, the rhythms of their days, and what gives them satisfaction in their work as they move from appointment to appointment, eludes my understanding.

Where does this leave the search for a British way of life? If practices are as important to forming us as MacIntyre thinks, then the quest for any singular British way of life will ultimately be fruitless. There are many ways of life, many modes of being British, as diverse as the professions, hobbies, and passions which we find to have inherent worth. And even this characterisation does not go quite far enough, because all of these practices have a way of bursting the boundaries of Britishness if they really are worthwhile. A century and a half ago, football, rugby, and cricket were quintessentially British sports. Now they belong to the world.

Similarly, valuing these practices well within Britain has a tendency to open us to accepting those from outside our borders who can help develop them. The best footballer in Britain is Norwegian. Many of the doctors who ensured my daughters arrived safely after complicated pregnancies were originally from India and Pakistan.

Still, one might wonder if thinking about community through the lens of practices, as MacIntyre does, is too much of a solvent. Isn’t it a way of imagining us living near each other, but not with each other; siloed in our practices, in each of our communities, not understanding what our neighbours are up to? Not necessarily. For MacIntyre, the familiarity that arise from living near someone, hearing their worries at planning permission hearings, arguing with them at the local school’s parent council meetings, organising a community fundraiser together, or, even, being part of a family with them, can help develop an understanding of the internal goods of practices which we do not take part in. I haven’t lifted a brush to paper to since my secondary school art class, but my mother-in-law’s virtuosity with acrylics has led me to acquire an increasing appreciation for painting. Part of what helps facilitate this recognition is that, as MacIntyre argues, although the internal goods and the skills required to achieve them tend to be different for each practice, the virtues which we develop while pursuing them–patience, honesty, courage, self-control–are universal. Part of what helps us recognise others’ activities as practices, as worth doing for their own sake, are the virtues we see them develop as they do them.

This sort of recognition requires familiarity, the sort I might have with my neighbours in our corner of rural Aberdeenshire, but that I am unlikely to have with fellow citizens in Cornwall, Cardiff, London, or Glasgow. How then are we to respond to national politicians talking about “our way of life”? One answer might be: with extreme scepticism. This is MacIntyre’s approach. He rejects the nation-state, which he calls “a dangerous and unmanageable institution”, as a potential channel of communal unity. Instead, he calls on us to admit that modern nation-states exist as a contradiction, being both “a bureaucratic supplier of goods and services” and yet also something treated as sacred, which we are asked, on occasion, to surrender our lives to preserve. He notes with characteristic acerbity, “it is like being asked to die for the telephone company.”

However, here I’d temper MacIntyre’s rhetoric somewhat. While my attachment to bankers in Canary Wharf is largely a happenstance of history, a contingent fact generated by long forgotten necessities of eighteenth century geopolitics, it has nevertheless resulted in both of us being issued the same passport, governed by the same tax regime, and having the same set of regulatory agencies to complain to when things go wrong. Those may be manifestations of what MacIntyre disparages as “a bureaucratic supplier of goods and services”, but they nevertheless do bind us together. As such we both have an interest in making sure this bureaucracy acts as justly as it can, not because it is the embodiment of all that is British, Britain is much too diverse and interesting to be fully embodied in our political institutions, but because we all have an interest in the institutions in which we are enmeshed, British or otherwise, being run as justly as possible.

Surely politics is all about securing as much money and resources as possible for the people most like oneself. That, it seems, is often the unstated assumption when the talk of “our way of life”

Because we find ourselves tied together by these institutions to a diverse collection of people, we have an interest in learning about those with whom we live. Even those who are far away. And to also celebrate when goods and services delivered by our institutions result in success to which we, in a remote way, have contributed. I may not share a way of life with Adam Peaty, but, thanks to the BBC, I can have a glimpse into what his way of life is and can be happy that through my taxes I have contributed, in a small way, to helping him win another medal. Since that 2010 Winter Olympics Britain has come quite a long way and there is nothing wrong with a little vicarious pride in our athlete’s accomplishments.

But I can also be proud of athletes who didn’t win. Ones like BMX rider Beth Shriever who handled her unexpected last place finish in her final with a kind of grace and maturity, the kind of virtue, which someone more dedicated to her practice than to just winning can demonstrate. It is the facilitating of this kind of moral achievement which is more valuable than any medal.

Similarly, I can rejoice when a new hospital gets built in a neglected area in London, or more council housing is supplied to people in need in Edinburgh, hopeful that these lead to my fellow citizens achieving the kind of flourishing lives they deserve. I can be angry, when I discover that the money I’ve paid towards postage has been used to prosecute innocent victims of a computer glitch, and pleased when the opening of a new rail line eases the otherwise stressful commute of tens of thousands in London. The state may be a bit like a telephone company, but a well-run utility can do a lot to supply people with the goods they need to make their lives. As long as I’m a subscriber, as long as I’m tied to people through national institutions like the state, I have a moral duty to ensure that they’re run as well as possible.

This way of thinking about politics may strike some as idealistic, the kind of view only a naive Christian ethicist could endorse. Surely politics is all about securing as much money and resources as possible for the people most like oneself. That, it seems, is often the unstated assumption when the talk of “our way of life” is deployed and why so much coalition building in our politics turns on finding a convenient other against which to define “our” similarity. Take your pick: immigrants, the EU, woke elites, the Tories, or Westminster (among a certain brand of politician here in Scotland).--. Growing up in the USA, the Soviets, and then the Chinese, and now, depending whether one lives in a Republican or Democratic district, the other political party, have served the same purpose. The problem is that we aren’t that similar, we are and always have been a diverse lot with diverse needs. Every nation is. There is no one British way of life and to allow our politicians to try to sustain the fiction that there is lets them off the hook. Solving deep seated economic and social inequality is hard. Blaming immigrants for not embracing our way of life is easy.

So, perhaps the sort of politics that I am talking about here is idealistic, nevertheless it is the only kind that can sustain a just government in the long term. Without acknowledging the importance of goods we only partly understand which are pursued by people whose ways of life are different from our own, we cannot hope to sustain the minor miracle of coordination and mutual aid that history has gifted us with in our united kingdom.