Diddy Is Going Down
I'm not sure he can escape with an acquittal
Early in the Diddy case a CNN host asked me what this said about hiphop and I said nothing. The Diddy trial is not a comment on hiphop, it’s not symbolic of hiphop, it’s not endemic of the culture’s problems, but it is I think an outgrowth of the wildness of the music business in general.
In 30 years covering the industry I have seen a world where almost anything goes. Artists are allowed any excess and some creative execs also take those same sorts of liberties. It’s an industry where the hours can be long because most studio sessions and concerts and parties and clubs are late night but other sorts of businesses that they also connect with operate during the day so it can be a kindof 18 hour a day thing.
It can be like living at the party and the wildness of the party spills over into real life. Drugs are common. Guns, too. In the 80s in the music biz it was common to do cocaine in the middle of the day at your desk. That was true in other industries, sure, but that’s just part of the wildness of the music biz.
In the 90s we saw a lot of the street come into the business, not just in hiphop, and we also saw the business go into the street. I mean, people who were accustomed to the ways of the underground economy were coming into the industry and some people in the industry who had not come from the street were adopting those tactics. So we saw executives physically intimidating others. We saw all kinds of excess—the things that typically happen at parties—and this was a world where the party seemed to never end.
I think Diddy was taught that the music biz is a big party where anything goes, especially if you’re making hits and making money. He was a man of hyper-excess and he took all of that way farther that most. People in the industry were having wild sex but he jacked it up to constant Freak Offs. Execs had artists trapped but he put Cassie an all but literal cage. People had hammers, he had AR-15s. People were smoking weed all day, he was injecting horse tranquilizer. He took the excesses of the industry and went all the way. But don’t make the mistake of thinking he’s being tried for his sex life. He’s not…