Five ex-employees of Sean “Diddy” Combs’ companies reveal that the rapper’s allegedly abusive tendencies extended to the workplace, including face-grabbing and violent threats.
This month, the world witnessed surveillance video that would forever change whatever reputation remained for Sean “Diddy” Combs. The undeniable imagery of Combs beating his ex-girlfriend Cassie in a hotel hallway left no doubt in the minds of anyone who watched it that the hip-hop superstar was, at the very least, an abuser.
Combs had already been accused of a slew of horrifically violent behaviors after Cassie first alleged that she suffered beatings, psychological torment, and more at his hands in a lawsuit against him last November. Since then, six more suits have emerged, alleging the rapper and former brand mogul engaged in rape, assault, forcible drugging, and even a sex trafficking operation.
Now, five former Combs employees told The Daily Beast that the rapper’s allegedly abusive tendencies in his personal life extended to a disturbingly toxic work environment.
Former employees of Combs’ lifestyle brand Sean John and Blue Flame, his now-shuttered advertising agency, recalled “erratic” behavior while in Combs’ employ, including instances where he grabbed, berated, and threatened them. These former staffers spoke to The Daily Beast under condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.
One female Sean John ex-employee shared a harrowing account about a time Combs grabbed her face following a disagreement about a creative decision. “He didn’t like that I wasn’t agreeing with him, and he wasn’t interested in hearing my point of view,” the former employee recalled.
Instead, Combs allegedly began to yell and compared himself to a renowned fashion designer. “When you speak to me, you should imagine that you’re talking to Karl Lagerfeld,” she recalled Combs telling her. “Anything I say, assume that it’s coming from Karl Lagerfeld.”
“At that point, I didn’t have a response to that, and he reaches out and he grabs my face,” she added. “He puts one hand on both sides of my cheeks and says ‘Stick out your tongue,’ and then he squeezes my face harder and yells at me to stick out my tongue, forces his hands on my face.”
She recounted how Combs then told her he “just wanted to see” if her tongue was bleeding, because she was clearly biting it. “I started looking for a job immediately after that moment,” she said. “I just wasn’t interested in being there to deal with that kind of treatment. You have to really idolize him and see him as an icon. I didn’t. I was just there to do my job.”
This former staffer was one of several who told The Daily Beast that they weren’t shocked by the disturbing surveillance video released earlier this month showing Combs assaulting Cassie in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel in 2016. After CNN published the footage, the rapper apologized, telling fans, “I hit rock bottom. I make no excuses. My behavior on that video is inexcusable. I take full responsibility for my actions in that video.” (Page Six later reported that Combs was “incensed” that the hotel footage “doesn’t tell the full story,” according to an “insider.”)
“I’m sorry that it took this long,” the ex-staffer said. “I hope he gets what’s coming to him.”
Another former employee told The Daily Beast that he was fired after making eye contact with Combs, visibly expressing disappointment when the mogul showed up hours late for a meeting. From the employee’s perspective, Combs “took the look that I gave him personally.”
“There was erratic behavior, there was definitely what I would consider mental abuse, [with] how he spoke to us as employees,” the person said, adding that he often worked from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. because of Combs’ demands and the “culture of fear” the rapper had created in the workplace. There was “a lot of profanity, kind of aggressive, in your face—physically in your face—kind of stuff,” the employee said.
This former employee said the work environment was like Game of Thrones, with everyone walking on eggshells, and some colleagues throwing others under the bus to stay in Combs’ good graces.
Another former Sean John employee said of their time at the company: “When people ask me about it, I always tell them it was the worst experience I ever had in my life.”
In one meeting, this employee recalled, a designer informed Combs his team was “inundated” with work and couldn’t complete a specific project. Combs, then known as “Puffy,” “stopped in the middle of my presentation, told him he wasn’t inundated with shyt, and to say it one more fukking time, and walked up to him face to face, lip to lip, and said, ‘Say it one more time, motherfukker.’”
The ex-employee continued: “He felt as though he should never be questioned and what he says is what it is.”
During one episode at Fashion Week, his relationship with his boss changed for good. After inquiring with Sean John’s CEO Jeffrey Tweedy about whether an unidentified woman at an event was Combs’ girlfriend, the employee said the rapper seemed “possessive” over his gal pal. He said Tweedy replied in a huff, “You can’t ask questions like that… What are you doing?”
“Then Puff came over and didn’t even look at me and said, ‘What did he say?’ And then Jeff said to Puff, ‘He was asking about your girl.’” Combs, the employee claimed, glared at him, shook his head, and walked away.
That night, before the employee left, he thanked Combs for the invitation. He claimed the rapper grabbed him “very forcefully,” walked him to the elevator, and declared, “We want this to work out. You can’t ask questions like that… This is New York.”
While this employee said he didn’t see Cassie at the office often enough to witness any of the violent treatment she described in her lawsuit, he said the infamous hotel video was “not a shock at all.”
Yet another former Sean John employee recalled how Combs oversaw the company through fear. One company director was so terrified of the rapper-turned-mogul that he’d leave the building every time Combs arrived, this former staffer claimed. Turnover at the company was high; a marketing director might have lasted only six months.
This ex-employee also echoed the toxic work culture that others described firsthand. In fact, they said, there was a specific term used around the office—“catching a brick”—for when a staffer became a target for Combs’ ire.
“It was as if you’re walking down the street and someone randomly threw a brick at your head out of the blue,” this former Combs employee said. “Out of the blue, if he was unhappy with something that you might not have done but he thought you did, you ‘caught a brick,’” they continued, recounting how Combs verbally attacked him until “I was surrounded by security guards, [who] rushed over—while he’s six inches from my face, screaming at me, telling me I fukked up.”
That gif alone....he did that shyt, guilty as fukk.
