Sean Combs made a $1billion fortune by the time he turned 50 – but the rap mogul was already making $1,000-a-week from his paper round aged 12.
The former altar boy – aka P. Diddy, Puff Daddy, Diddy or just Sean – had a tough start in life where his drug dealer father was shot dead when he was a toddler.
Rap impresario, singer, songwriter and seller of vodka and clothing, Sean Combs is also a noted ladies man, never marrying but dating famous faces including Cameron Diaz and Naomi Campbell.
The rap bachelor’s most famous lover was Jennifer Lopez, who he was with at the height of his fame from 1999 until 2001 – once declaring her bottom will go down as the most beautiful in history – before quickly adding that her music would too.
The father of seven is believed to be currently single after splitting with musician and actress Yung Miami last year, who at 29 was 24 years his junior.
Combs also has seven children from four different mothers, has palatial homes all over the world, including New York, LA and Miami, several yachts and so many luxury cars he can’t remember them all.
To the outside world it would appear the perfect life – and while he was seen smiling in LA a week ago he is in the midst of a legal storm facing lawsuits from three women and has lost a host of commercial deals in the wake of the claims.
Diddy’s Los Angeles and Florida mansions were raided by the Department of Homeland Security yesterday. Diddy has not been seen in public since officers turned up and his private jet was tracked to Antigua but he wasn’t on it.
Sean Combs (right) with his friends Biggie Smalls (far left), Nate Dogg (centre left) and Snoop Dogg (centre right) in around 1995. As well as being a musician himself, he has made a fortune from all sorts of businesses
Jennifer Lopez and Sean “Puffy” Combs at the 2000 Grammy Awards in Los Angeles
Diddy pictured a week ago out in Los Angeles meeting one of his sons for sushi, apparently unfazed by court cases and other investigations
A young Sean Combs, who has gone on to make $1billion
Diddy with his father Melvin, who was shot dead when he was just two or three years old
Being arrested after a shooting incident at a club 20 years ago and two loaded guns were found in his limo. He was cleared but this seemed only to enhance his reputation
Where the court cases and criminal investigations will lead, it is not yet known, but the star denies all the claims against him, calling them ‘pure fiction’.
P Diddy’s career began in the early ’90s. He got his start in the music industry as an intern at Uptown Records. He was fired in 1993.
He then created Bad Boy Entertainment with Arista Records and brought on Notorious B.I.G., who turned out to be a major player in the rap game. The label’s roster continued to grow and so did P Diddy’s bank account.
Such was the piles of cash he makes, the rapper and producer, 53, still pays $5,000 a day in royalties for sampling Sting’s iconic 1983 single Every Breath You Take on his 1997 single, I’ll Be Missing You.
With Dr Dre and Jay Z, Diddy is the most successful person in rap history.
His father, a drug dealer called Melvin, was shot dead in his car after a party when Combs was just a toddler.
Nine years later, his mother Janice had scraped together enough money to move to upstate Mount Vernon, where her young son attended a fee-paying, highly academic Catholic school. Diddy calls himself a Christian and was an altar boy at his local church.
Around the same time he was making $1,000 a week from paper rounds, and before he hit the big time he worked in a diner, a petrol station and cleaned toilets to make ends meet.
He said two years ago: ‘I was raised in Harlem and my father was killed when I was two.
‘My mother had five jobs. I’m from the roots of hustle. I was a paperboy, the first entrepreneurial thing I did.
‘I would reach out to the boys about to go to college. I asked if I could do their round and send them half the money. I was making $1,000 a week as I kept all the other rounds on.
‘I was a busboy in a restaurant, I pumped gas at a gas station, I also had to keep the bathrooms clean. They are the worst but I was proud to make them clean and see people’s faces when they came out’.
American rapper, record producer and record executive Diddy with his mother Janice, who brought him up alone
The rapper and music industry mogul Sean Combs was sued November 16 by the singer Cassie, who accused him of rape and physical abuse before the case was settled out of court
Cassie filed a lawsuit against Combs for ‘rape, and of repeated physical abuse over about a decade’ on November 16, 2023
Misa Hylton-Brim and Diddy welcomed their son Justin Combs (centre with his parents) in 1993
Jennifer Lopez and Diddy were caught up in drama on Valentine’s Day, 2001, due to a nightclub shootout
Kim Porter and Diddy at his birthday celebration in Los Angeles on November 21, 2015
Model Lori Harvey has been linked to rapper Diddy in the past
The singer Yung Miami is believed to be his most recent lover
20 years ago he was acquitted on charges stemming from a nightclub shootout 20 years ago, when he was known as Puff Daddy.
Being arrested after a shooting incident at a club – two loaded guns were found in his limo – seemed only to enhance his reputation.
Today he has a business empire that stretches from music, to clothing and premium drinks and even bottled water.
Combs founded the record label Bad Boy in 1992, propelling himself to become one of the leading figures in hip-hop, working with the Notorious B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige.
It was his first big business and has since sold over 500 million records, produced 38 platinum singles, earned multiple Grammy Awards.
The music mogul was born in New York City and raised in Mount Vernon, New York.
P Diddy’s music career actually began in the early ’90s. He got his start in the music industry as an intern at Uptown Records. He was fired in 1993.
At that time, he created Bad Boy Entertainment with Arista Records and brought on Notorious B.I.G., who turned out to be a major player in the rap game. The label’s roster continued to grow and so did P Diddy’s bank account.
Biggie was murdered on March 9, 1997 – and his tribute I’ll Be Missing You with Faith Evans made him famous all over the world.
With that fame and fortune came money and women – and he has never married or settled down.
Homeland Security agents have descended on rapper Diddy ‘s homes in Los Angeles and Miami as part of an ongoing sex trafficking investigation
Dozens of agents are seen on video advancing on the massive Los Angeles estate. Diddy faces multiple sex abuse allegations
Homeland Security at Diddy’s Miami home during a raid yesterday
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ private jet (pictured circa 2013) was tracked to the Caribbean island of Antigua, just as his homes in Los Angeles and Miami were raided
He has had a colourful dating history, which has seen the musician romantically linked to the likes supermodel Naomi Campbell and model Lori Harvey.
His most famous love, and perhaps his greatest, was with Jennifer Lopez.
J-Lo has found happiness with Ben Affleck – but her ex insists he is ‘lucky’ to count her among his exes.
He once hailed her famous derriere and body as a ‘work of art’ that will go down in history.
He later added: ‘But also her talent, her drive, her determination, she will never give up. She’s a great friend of mine, always will be my friend, and I mean that thing is just incredible, man.’
The rapper also slammed Kim Kardashian’s famous backside and added that it is ‘no way’ comparable to Jennifer’s.
Best known as Puff Daddy – he later insisted on being called P. Diddy, Diddy, Sean John, Swag and Sea.
He said once: ‘I am in the love era now. I answer to all the names. Call me whatever you like. I will answer to all of them’.
Combs started his clothing brand, Sean John, in 1998 and partnered with Macy’s in 2010 – he sold part of the brand in 2016 but then bought it back in 2022 for $7.5 million after the brand filed for bankruptcy.
The brand was making $450 million in sales in 2016.
Macy’s announced the end of their partnership with Combs saying they were going to ‘phase-out’ the collection.
A source told RadarOnline.com that they had been evaluating the brand for a while now and the decision pre-dated the allegations, noting it hasn’t been selling like it used to in the late ’90s and early ’00s.
They said: ‘As part of our ongoing review of our brand portfolio, the Sean John collection has started to phase out of assortment since early fall 2023’.
They added that his products were ‘being removed’ and ‘won’t be available on the site’.
Combs set up his drinks company, Combs Spirits, in the early 2000s. The company began working with beverage giant Diageo in 2007, taking over the marketing and promotion of Cîroc for a share of the profits.
Then in 2013, the two companies co-purchased DeLeon tequila.
He is reported to have made $60million a year from the drinks brands and by 2014 more than two million cases of Ciroc were sold a year.
But in June last year, before allegations about his conduct emerged, the spirits’ parent company, Diageo, started the process to cut ties with the mogul, accusing him of using threats and acting in bad faith to get his own way.
It followed a lawsuit lodged by Combs that claimed his vodka and tequila brands didn’t receive promised investments and were treated as inferior ‘urban’ products.
The rapper, who is facing mounting harassment and rape lawsuits, was nowhere to be seen yesterday as agents combed through his properties in Los Angeles and Miami.
At least two men, believed to be Combs’s sons, were put in handcuffs at his Holmby Hills property. It comes just weeks after one of Combs’s accusers in a sexual assault lawsuit was ordered to reveal her identity.
He has been fighting various legal battles, including one against an unnamed woman who claimed he and two friends sexually assaulted her when she was 17.
Combs has filed a motion to have the woman’s case thrown out and she will remain anonymous until the judge makes a ruling.
The accuser was the fourth woman to accuse Combs, pictured, of sexual assault last year after his former girlfriend, the singer Cassie, sued him in November last year.
Combs denied Cassie’s claims and the two sides reached an out-of-court settlement that month.
The rapper, 54, has vehemently denied all of the accusations and claims the women are ‘looking for a quick payday’.
It was alleged that after supplying the 17-year-old with ‘copious amounts of drugs and alcohol’, Combs and two friends took turns raping her, leaving her in so much pain that she could barely stand or remember how she got home.
