Okay, cards on the table, I have next to no knowledge or appreciation of rap / hip-hop music. It never has and never will come within my hearing plus I know next to nothing about any of its major players. Probably the only reason I recognise the name P Diddy is through his recent notoriety which, with his case up for trial right now, piqued my curiosity and encouraged me to watch in full this five-part documentary. I say 5-part but in reality it's really just four episodes with a tell-all half-hour interview with Diddy's one-time executive PA tagged on as an extra.
The programme does the needful in introducing and explaining P Diddy to unknowing viewers like me, where we track his rise to billionaire status, initially through his musical career but then through other high-powered corporate deals he's engineered, in particular setting up his own fashion label. We learn that after he lost his father when he was still a child, his mother then became the driving force in his life. Bullied at school, he seems to have had an archetypal hard-knock life until he enters the music business and finds huge success, first as a recording artist himself and then as a producer where he helped launch the careers of Notorious B. I. G. And Mary J Blige. He then morphs into a business mogul setting up a record label and fashion house which makes him incredibly rich and powerful, even hobnobbing with a young Barack Obama at one point.
But for Diddy with great power comes great irresponsibility as he enters headlong into a hedonistic lifestyle which brings accusations of drug-use and of course of rape, sex-trafficking and abuse for which he is now on trial.
The documentary presents news footage of Diddy down the years, supported by the testimony of past friends, associates and employees who all seem to have their own stories of witnessing at first hand some truly appalling behaviour by Combs, including his aforementioned PA being forced into a sex-act with a willing female at one of his boss's notorious wild parties. And of course, we've all seen the footage of Diddy, dressed in just a towel and socks lashing out at and dragging across the floor his girlfriend who's trying to walk out on him.
The programme offers pretty much nothing in his defence and time will tell as to whether he will be judged innocent or guilty for what he's alleged to have done. Certainly he's presented here as a thoroughly disreputable individual with a God complex, addicted it would appear to sex and drugs, money no object. Whether he's now run out of road, we'll see in the next few weeks, although there's no doubt as to what verdict this very tabloid-style series anticipates.
