Is Black America Reckoning With End of Hip-Hop’s ‘Diddy Era’?

It’s taken Netflix by storm, hovering previous 1000’s of choices to achieve the streaming platform’s prime spot simply days after its launch. It’s renewed curiosity within the East Coast-West Coast rap feud, the still-unsolved 1997 homicide of Biggie, and the proof in opposition to the person accused of gunning down Tupac a yr earlier.

And chances are high, if you happen to’ve seen 5 Black individuals hanging out collectively within the final week or so, at the least three of them have been in all probability speaking about “Sean Combs: The Reckoning.” 

Since its launch on Dec. 2, the Alex Stapleton-directed, 50 Cent-produced documentary tracing the exceptional rise and spectacular fall of the music mogul often known as Diddy has hijacked conversations about and round Black tradition.  

Open Secrets and techniques, Unvarnished Truths

“Considering of all of the Black Xennials coming to the horrible realization after the Puffy Doc that the complete tradition of our childhoods was formed by apex predators — Invoice Cosby, R. Kelly, and Puff Daddy,” feminist scholar Dr. Brittney Cooper, a professor of ladies’s, gender, and sexuality research and Africana research at Rutgers College, wrote on Threads. “What a world.”

“Reminder,” @finalgirlboss wrote on Bluesky, ”that you don’t want to observe a documentary to know that Sean Combs is a monster and jail is already too good for him.”

Writer Mat Johnson, one other Bluesky consumer, wrote, “Over the break, I will probably be drafting laws to take away Sean Combs from the intro to Craig Mack’s ‘Flava In Ya Ear (Remix)’.”

Ouch. 

One may not anticipate a four-hour documentary on a widely known public determine who, for many years, has been the topic of scandalous open secrets and techniques, conspiracy theories, and at the least two different documentaries would make a lot of a splash. That appears very true on condition that Combs was simply sentenced to 4 years in jail in October — after a high-profile prison investigation over the summer season and a weeks-long trial that aired sufficient soiled laundry to fill the Grand Canyon. 

But “Sean Combs: The Reckoning” hit Black America like a bombshell, with new, behind-the-scenes footage of Diddy yelling at his attorneys, plotting a post-trial technique to rehab his picture, and grousing that he wants a sizzling tub after interacting with commoners in Harlem. There’s disturbing testimony about Combs’ traumatic upbringing, unflinching discussions about sexual abuse he allegedly perpetrated, and powerful insinuations he might have greater than a bit of blood on his arms. 

Nonetheless, by laying naked the allegations, figuring out the enablers, and inspecting the ecosystem that allowed Combs to indulge each whim, the movie tapped straight into Black America’s zeitgeist, forcing a communal reckoning with the tales we’ve accepted and those we’ve been too afraid to inform.

The documentary additionally landed arduous in no small half due to 50, a.ok.a. Curtis Jackson, Diddy’s long-time hip-hop nemesis. A rapper who by no means met a grudge he couldn’t carry, Jackson’s personal problematic conduct, together with purported abuse of ladies, makes him an imperfect messenger, to say the least. However he stands by the documentary, arguing he’s merely exposing hip-hop’s darkish aspect — and the way a really highly effective, extremely flawed man thrived in it.

Diddy’s Rise and Fall

“It’s not private,” Jackson stated in an interview with Robin Roberts of ABC Information’ “Good Morning America.” 

Stapleton concurred. She advised Roberts that the purpose of the movie is “to let the viewers type of are available in to ask questions like, ‘Have been there choices that have been coloured by sure issues?’ and ‘Who obtained the good thing about the doubt?’” 

Advised in 4 hour-long episodes, the sequence chronicles how Combs amassed fortune and fame within the music business, ruthlessly created an empire, and appeared to instigate the lethal East Coast-West Coast feud of the Nineties. It additionally traces how Combs bullied, abused, or exploited almost everybody in his orbit: enterprise companions and assistants, signed artists and proteges, romantic companions and objects of his want. 

“Allegations within the documentary vary from drugging and raping unconscious victims and exhibiting movies of the assaults on huge screens at his events to orchestrating the murders of Tupac Shakur and Christopher ‘Biggie’ Wallace,” Brooke Obie, a popular culture journalist, wrote for the “Contraband Camp” Substack. “Endearing moments in historical past, like Combs throwing his ‘greatest good friend’ Wallace a lavish funeral in Brooklyn, get revealed as lies since Combs allegedly charged the funeral prices to the Wallace property to cowl, then arrange ‘freak-off’ celebrations each March 9 on Wallace’s demise anniversary.”

Holes ‘Apparent and Obvious’

Whereas the unhealthy conduct of Dangerous Boy Leisure’s founder is prone to reverberate in the neighborhood for some time, some popular culture customers consider “Sean Combs: The Reckoning” misses a a lot greater, extra problematic goal: how misogyny, sexism, and sexual abuse dominate hip-hop tradition.

“Folks preserve saying they wish to hear from different individuals in Diddy’s life,” writer and theologian Candice Marie Benbow wrote on Threads. “We don’t want any extra tales to know he’s a horrible human being.”

As an alternative, she wrote, what’s wanted is “a documentary that explores Hip Hop, rape tradition, the parable of tearing down Black males and the disposability of Black women and girls. This doc was by no means going to be that as a result of it could have implicated 50 [Cent], too. For as highly effective because the doc is, the holes are apparent and obtrusive.”

Obie was extra succinct.

“As a historical past of Diddy’s vile character, the docuseries is thorough,” she wrote. “As a ‘reckoning’ for the pile of victims, our bodies, and carnage in his wake, it’s woefully incomplete.”