AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
One of the biggest music stories of 2025 was the federal trial of Sean Diddy Combs, which ended about six months ago when a jury acquitted the hip-hop mogul of the most serious sex trafficking and racketeering charges that he faced. Combs was convicted on two lesser counts and sentenced to serve a little over four years in prison.
Maybe because of the lack of a definitive conclusion, interest in the trial continued through the rest of the year. Netflix released an explosive docuseries in December, "Sean Combs: The Reckoning." It was produced by one of Combs' peers and rivals, Curtis Jackson, better known as the rapper 50 Cent. NPR Music's hip-hop correspondent Rodney Carmichael, who joins us now, says the documentary appears to try to do what prosecutors couldn't, convict Combs in the court of public opinion. Rodney, welcome to the program.
RODNEY CARMICHAEL, BYLINE: Hey, Ayesha, how you doing?
RASCOE: I'm doing all right. The subtitle of this documentary is carrying a lot of weight here. Even six months after the trial ended and Combs received his sentence, why did a reckoning still feel necessary?
CARMICHAEL: Well, for much of his career, Sean Combs has been the impresario, who dressed hip-hop up in shiny suits, but he was really made of Teflon. And his path to success has been full of trials and tragedies, accusations of bad behavior that really never stopped his rise until now. Just listen to how Andre Harrell, who was a mentor, and Kirk Burrowes, a former executive at Combs' Bad Boy Records, characterize Combs in this clip.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "SEAN COMBS: THE RECKONING")
KIRK BURROWES: With Sean, sometimes you're humiliated. Sometimes you're made an example of. Sometimes violent things happen to you. Through the years, a lot of bad things happened to good friends.
ANDRE HARRELL: As bottomless as the hole as you think he's in, he comes up out like a whirlwind and like a shooting star into the sky.
CARMICHAEL: Yeah, the documentary really filled a void left by the split results of the federal trial. And prosecutors failed to convince the jury - and honestly, it appears, much of the public - that he was guilty of actual sex trafficking or any sort of larger racketeering conspiracy. And he wasn't on trial over the allegations of abuse that were leveled against him by federal prosecutors and by dozens of people in civil complaints. So really, any hope that his trial would lead to a larger conversation about rampant sexual abuse, whether in hip-hop or the music industry at large - it felt like it got shut down, too.
RASCOE: Well, what kind of impact has the documentary had? Is it really changing people's minds about Combs or the overall culture?
CARMICHAEL: OK, so Ayesha, the last time we talked, when the trial concluded in June, we discussed some of the toxic, misogynistic responses to the trial. And we listened to a show clip from hip-hop podcaster Joe Budden, who often expressed way more empathy for Combs than he did for the victims of Combs' alleged abuse. But listen to how much his position on Combs has flipped in this clip after he watched the documentary three weeks ago.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JOE BUDDEN: It's a lot of facts. It's a lot of footage. However they got the footage, it certainly helped in this story they were telling. It did.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Right.
BUDDEN: It did. It did make you feel like, at the end, he didn't get enough time.
CARMICHAEL: He didn't get enough time, is what Joe Budden says. And this is largely because of what the documentary insinuates because a documentary isn't subject to the burden of proof of a criminal trial. And "Sean Combs: The Reckoning" - it's also faced criticism from hip-hop journalists for unsubstantiated reporting regarding a lot of the details of his life and its reliance on insinuation and speculation.
But what it does do is construct a narrative in which all of the successes of his career seem to come at the tragic expense of others, whether it's lives lost, people allegedly abused and discarded, and Combs allegedly exploiting and profiting off of tragedy that he's often in the middle of whether or not he's directly responsible.
RASCOE: A large part of the documentary's success is going to 50 Cent, who's listed as an executive producer. He's also credited with breaking the silence or the man code in hip-hop by exposing so much of Combs' alleged abuse. But, I mean, the fact is, 50 also is thought to have had a long-standing beef with Combs. Do his motives matter? And what does his participation say about hip-hop's cultural role in all of this?
CARMICHAEL: Well, 50 denies that there's ever been any real beef between him and Sean Combs. They've even collaborated creatively in the past. But 50's also long expressed, you know, just a general distaste for Combs in ways that have played out professionally and personally. Now, when Robin Roberts asked 50 on ABC's "Good Morning America" if hip-hop was also on trial in this case, 50's response was that if he hadn't made the documentary, it could easily be interpreted as hip-hop being, quote, "fine with his behavior."
I think the real credit, though, for making this documentary belongs to the director, Alexandria Stapleton, who said that she had full creative control and has defended their use of certain footage of Combs filmed just days before his arrest, saying that they obtained it legally. Combs' legal team sent a cease and desist to Netflix, demanding that they pull the series because the footage contained privileged communication with their client.
RASCOE: Combs still has dozens of civil sexual abuse cases pending while he serves out the remainder of his federal sentence. But what can we expect in the future from the documentary?
CARMICHAEL: Well, 50 has teased the idea of a part two, due to so much unused footage and the hype around the documentary, as well as storylines that they weren't able to include in the first four episodes. But there's also been a recent announcement of another documentary to air on the on-demand Zeus Network, featuring two of Sean Combs' sons, Justin and Christian. Now, both of them were regularly in attendance during their dad's federal trial. So even though Combs has had his day in federal court, and he and his lawyers continue to deny civil and criminal allegations of sexual assault, the case is really far from closed in the court of public opinion.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Rodney Carmichael. Thanks so much for your reporting on this story.
CARMICHAEL: Thanks, Ayesha.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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