Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs: What it was like to follow ‘the Pied Piper of partying’

Published

3 months ago

May 19, 2025

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In 1990s and early 2000s New York, Sean “Diddy” Combs was the person to be seen with.

Now on trial in Manhattan, his hair grey, his beard grown, it’s hard to imagine that he was “the Pied Piper… of the most elite level of partying of that time” – but that’s how Amy DuBois Barnett describes him.

She was the first Black-American woman to run a major mainstream magazine in the US, and based in Manhattan at a time when hip hop was at its zenith.

“Urban culture really ran the city,” she says. “That’s where so much of the money was… you had all the finance bros trying to get into Puffy (Combs) parties, all the fashion executives trying to get into Puffy parties.”

And while he was welcomed by the highest echelons of the arts and entertainment world, she says: “He was never known for being a calm kind of individual.”

Combs was “very dismissive” with her, and she admits: “Puff never particularly liked me that much.”

But DuBois Barnett would often get invited to his parties because she was able to feature his up-and-coming artists in her magazines.

From editor-in-chief of Ebony magazine, she’d go on to become the editor-in-chief of Honey and Teen People magazines, and then deputy editor of Harper’s Bazaar.

She says the man she met at those parties “lacked warmth” and seemed “complicated”.

“When he walked in the room, all of the energy changed. Puffy had his trusted individuals around him… immediately the area around him would become kind of crowded with everybody vying for his attention,” she says.

“I think that was also partially why he didn’t particularly like me because I wasn’t really vying for his attention.

“He really reserved that attention for the people that he was either attracted to… or the people that he thought were important enough to his business success.”

She says it was common knowledge that he wasn’t someone to cross due to “rumours… of what he could do”.

“There were a lot of people within journalism, within media, within other industries that were afraid of his influence and also afraid of his temper,” she adds.

“When things at parties would not go his way or somebody didn’t bring him something quickly enough, or… the conversation wasn’t going his way… he would just kind of snap and he was just not afraid to yell at whoever was there.

“There was not a lot of boundaries in his communication, let’s just put it that way.”

But she says it was a time when a tremendous amount of misogyny was running throughout music, things that in today’s culture would certainly give pause for thought.

“So many things happened to me, everything from getting groped at parties to getting locked in a limousine with music executives and having him refuse to let me out until I did whatever he thought I was going to do, which I didn’t.”

She insists: “We didn’t have the vocabulary to understand the degree to which it was problematic… it was a thread that ran throughout the culture.”

Star-studded parties were the ultimate invite

At the time, a ticket to one of Combs’s star-studded “white parties” was the ultimate invite.

She admits: “It was like nothing you’ve ever seen before… the dress code was very strict.

“No beige, no ecru, absolutely white, you would literally be turned away if your outfit was wrong. Puffy did not sort of tolerate people in his parties that didn’t look ‘grown and sexy’ as it were.”

She says people would mingle by the poolside listening to the best DJs in the world, while topless models posed dressed as mermaids and waiters handed out weed brownies from silver platters.

“It was every boldface name you could possibly imagine, just this gorgeous crowd.”

Behind the glamour, prosecutors now allege there was a man capable of sexual abuse and violence, and a serious abuse of power. Criminal charges which he’s already pleaded not guilty to and strenuously denies.

Without question, Combs had the golden touch. Expanding his music career into business enterprises that in 2022 reportedly took his net worth to around £1bn. For decades his success story was celebrated.

“I think that in the black community, there is a feeling that if a black man is successful you don’t want to bring him down because there are not that many… these are cultural forces that are rooted in the systemic racism that’s present in the United States… but I think that these were part of what potentially protected Puffy against people speaking out.”

Couple became ‘isolated and very unhappy’

While Combs had amassed a small fortune over the course of two decades which she encountered him, the former magazine editor says his behaviour had markedly changed from the first party she went to, to her last.

“The last was a post-Grammys party, in 2017 or 2018, and just the vibe was very different. He was really kind of isolated in a corner with Cassie, you know, looking very unhappy.”

For around 10 years, Combs had a relationship with the singer Cassie Ventura which ended in 2018.

Once over she filed a lawsuit that both parties eventually settled alleging she was trafficked, raped, drugged and beaten by the rapper on many occasions – which he denied. Last week she made similar claims in court.

“Cassie looked very glassy-eyed and there was a sadness about her energy. Whatever was happening between the two of them, I mean, it didn’t feel positive,” says DuBois Barnett.

“They were sort of holed up in the corner for almost the entire night… it did feel very different from the kind of jubilant of energy that he projected in his earlier incarnations.”

For Combs, his freedom depends on how these next few weeks go. His representatives claim he is the victim of “a reckless media circus”, saying he categorically denies he sexually abused anyone and wants to prove his innocence.

In particular, they say, he looks forward to establishing the “truth… based on evidence, not speculation”.

US

Donald Trump says he wants to meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un again – as soon as ‘this year’

Published

24 hours ago

August 26, 2025

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Donald Trump says he wants to meet North Korea's Kim Jong Un again - as soon as 'this year'

Donald Trump has said he wants to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un again.

Speaking at the White House as he held talks with the new South Korean president Lee Jae Myung, Mr Trump told reporters: “I’d like to meet him this year… I look forward to meeting with Kim Jong Un in the appropriate future.”

“I’d like to have a meeting. I got along great with him,” President Trump said, adding they “became very friendly” during his first term in office.

“We think we can do something in that regard,” he said, adding that he would like to help the relationship between the two Koreas.

Mr Trump and Mr Kim held three meetings between 2018 and 2019 during Mr Trump’s first term and exchanged a number of, what the president called, “beautiful” letters.

In June 2019, Mr Trump briefly stepped into North Korea from the demilitarized zone (DMZ) with South Korea.

The US president on Monday responded to a question about whether he would return to the DMZ by fondly recalling the last time he did so.

“Remember when I walked across the line and everyone went crazy?” especially the Secret Service, Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

But “I loved it”, Mr Trump said. He added he felt safe because he had a good relationship with Mr Kim.

Mr Trump became the first sitting American president to set foot on North Korean soil six years ago.

However, little progress was made in curbing North Korea’s nuclear programme, and Mr Trump acknowledged in March this year that Pyongyang is a “nuclear power”.

Kim possible: Is Trump seeking another ‘Hermit Kingdom’ handshake?

It was Donald Trump’s first meeting with the new president of South Korea.

A highly unconventional platform for glowing words about the North Korean one.

He said he got along “great” with Kim Jong Un and would like to meet him again “this year”.

The US president’s renewed interest in North Korea appears less about policy and more about theatrics.

The historic image of President Trump stepping on to North Korean soil in 2018 gave him global headlines.

The timing is curious – North Korea has been busy polishing its nuclear credentials and vowing not to disarm without serious concessions.

In other words, Pyongyang is holding the same cards it held four years ago, only now they’re shinier.

But Trump seems eager to revive his image as the only US president bold, or brash, enough to break bread with the ruler of the “Hermit Kingdom”.

Supporters call it visionary diplomacy; critics call it reality TV masquerading as foreign policy.

Either way, President Trump clearly sees value in the spectacle.

Whether Kim Jong Un does is another story.

Since Mr Trump’s first-term meetings with Mr Kim ended, North Korea has shown no interest in returning to talks.

The White House said in June that Mr Trump would welcome communications with Mr Kim.

The attempts at rapprochement come after the election in South Korea of Mr Lee, who has pledged to reopen dialogue with North Korea.

As a gesture of engagement in June, Mr Lee suspended South Korean loudspeakers blasting music and messages into the North at the DMZ along their shared border.

Analysts say, however, that engaging North Korea will likely be more difficult for both Mr Lee and Mr Trump than it was in the president’s first term.

Since then, North Korea has significantly expanded its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes.

And it has developed close ties with Russia through direct support for Moscow’s war in Ukraine, with Pyongyang providing both troops and weaponry.

Mr Kim told Russian President Vladimir Putin that his country will always stand with Moscow, state media reported in June.

US

Lil Nas X pleads not guilty after being charged with assaulting police officer

Published

24 hours ago

August 26, 2025

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Lil Nas X pleads not guilty after being charged with assaulting police officer

US rapper Lil Nas X has pleaded not guilty after being charged with assaulting a police officer while walking in downtown Los Angeles in his underwear.

The musician, real name Montero Lamar Hill, was taken to hospital and arrested after police responded to reports of a naked man shortly before 6am on Thursday.

The district attorney’s office said on Monday that Lil Nas X faces three counts of battery with injury on a police officer and one count of resisting an executive officer.

He was being held on a $75,000 (£55,457) bail, conditional on attending drug treatment. It is not immediately clear whether he had posted it and been released yet.

He is set to return to court on 15 September for his next pre-trial hearing.

During the hearing on Monday, Hill’s lawyer Christy O’Connor told the judge he had led a “remarkable” life, adding: “Assuming the allegations here are true, this is an absolute aberration in this person’s life.

“Nothing like this has ever happened to him.”

A law enforcement source told Sky’s US partner network, NBC News, on Thursday that the Old Town Road and Industry Baby hitmaker punched an officer twice in the face during the encounter.

The source added officers were unsure whether he was on any substances or in mental distress.

NBC News cited TMZ footage where Hill was seen walking down the middle of Ventura Boulevard at 4am on Thursday in a pair of white briefs and cowboy boots.

In the videos, Hill tells a driver to “come to the party” in one clip and in another tells the person: “Didn’t I tell you to put the phone down?”

“Uh oh, someone’s going to have to pay for that,” Hill says as he continues to walk away.

In some clips, Hill struts as if he’s on a catwalk, posing for onlookers, and at one point he places an orange traffic cone on his head.

US

Kilmar Abrego Garcia: Man wrongly deported from US to El Salvador detained by ICE again

Published

24 hours ago

August 26, 2025

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Kilmar Abrego Garcia: Man wrongly deported from US to El Salvador detained by ICE again

A man who was wrongly deported from the US to El Salvador has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) again.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 30-year-old originally from El Salvador, handed himself into the ICE field office in Baltimore, Maryland, for a check-in on Monday.

The visit was a mandatory condition of his release from federal custody earlier this weekend. However, in a court filing on Saturday, his lawyers said they expected Garcia would be detained again upon attending.

Garcia is charged in an indictment, filed in federal court in Tennessee, with conspiring to transport illegal immigrants into the US.

According to a court filing by his lawyers, immigration officials made an offer to Garcia to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for pleading guilty to the charges.

Otherwise, they would seek to deport him to Uganda.

Speaking at a news conference outside the ICE office on Monday morning, Garcia said via a translator: “This administration has hit us hard, but I want to tell you guys something: God is with us, and God will never leave us.

“God will bring justice to all the injustice we are suffering.”

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Garcia’s lawyers, also said: “There was no need to take him into ICE detention… the only reason they took him into detention was to punish him.”

A judge later ruled Garcia could not be deported after he filed a challenge asking to be allowed due process to fight any removal attempt.

Judge Paula Xinis ruled the 30-year-old must remain detained in the US until she can hold an evidentiary hearing – set for Wednesday.

She added there appeared to be “several grounds” for her to have jurisdiction to exercise relief, including that Uganda has not agreed to offer Garcia protections, such as being able to walk freely, being given refugee status, and not being re-deported to El Salvador.

After initially being detained in Maryland – where he lived with his American wife and children – by ICE in March, Garcia was sent to El Salvador, where he was then imprisoned in the country’s maximum security Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).

This was despite an immigration judge’s 2019 order granting him protection from deportation after finding he was likely to be persecuted by local gangs if he was returned to his native country.

The Trump administration admitted deporting Garcia was an “administrative error”, but said at the time they could not bring him back as they do not have jurisdiction over El Salvador.

After eventually returning him to the US in June, the Trump administration detained Garcia on criminal charges that were filed in May.

The criminal indictment alleges Garcia worked with at least five co-conspirators to bring immigrants to the US illegally and transport them from the border to other destinations in the country.

Minutes after his release on Friday, officials notified Garcia they intended to deport him to Uganda.

Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, US President Donald Trump, vice president JD Vance and other officials claim Garcia was a member of MS-13 – an international criminal gang formed by immigrants who had fled El Salvador‘s civil war to protect Salvadoran immigrants from rival gangs.

Garcia’s lawyers strongly deny the claims.