There's a new documentary about Diddy in the wake of his recent criminal trial, in which he was sentenced to 50 months in prison after being found guilty of procuring sex workers. The documentary, titled Sean Combs: The Reckoning, has gotten a lot of buzz due to the fact that it was executive produced by Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, who has had a longstanding public beef with Diddy. How we get to a point where a documentary account of Diddy's criminal behavior gets produced by fellow rap mogul 50 Cent is quite convoluted. There's women involved, business interests, and competition mixed in, and maybe just a hint of gay panic.
Regardless, 50 Cent has been open about his personal disdain of Diddy for years. That animus, and 50 Cent's well-known trollishness, makes it easy to dismiss the documentary out of hand as a hit job from one rapper against another. But is that actually the case? The Reckoning is a four-part docuseries on the ascent and fall of Diddy and his empire, and all the women and men who were abused and discarded in the process. The actual filmmaker, Alex Stapleton, talks to a number of people who were around during Diddy's rise and fall, some with real grievances and some with just a lot of contempt. While there's plenty of footage and verifiable facts to support the doc's dark portrait of Diddy, it's a work full of conjecture and insinuations. Did Diddy pay the Crips to kill Suge Knight and 2Pac? Did he play a role in Notorious B.I.G.'s murder? Did he make Biggie's estate pay for his own funeral? Was he abusing the mother of his own children? Did he kidnap his assistant so they could try to murder Kid Cudi? The doc doesn't prove any of it, but simply posing the questions in this format is suggestive. Listen to that music, he's evil!
It's not that the speculation is out of bounds or raised recklessly, but more that none of it is backed by anything beyond your own trust of people's stories. Some of the people telling their stories now, like Kirk Burrowes and Aubrey O'Day, have been public about the abuse they suffered for years, though they've gone largely ignored until recently. Other tales of Diddy's behavior have mostly proliferated as rumors and conjecture, and are now being presented more forthrightly since Diddy's fame no longer offers him the same protection as before. In fact, Diddy's history of narcissism, violence, and greed runs so deep that in four parts, the doc still misses several notable instances of it, including Lil Kim's prison stint, the mismanagement of Mase and The Lox, and the time he choked out a UCLA football coach.
As a documentary, The Reckoning is basically just a well-produced version of a TMZ or 20/20 news report. The one thing that makes it truly worthwhile is the personal footage Diddy himself shot during the height of his court cases. Presumably Diddy had it filmed because, ever the marketer, he planned to make his own documentary should the rulings go in his favor. How Stapleton was able to get her hands on it is an interesting, open question, as the footage is very revealing of Diddy's nature, from yelling at his attorneys to get control of the courtroom narrative, to planning out ways to discredit one of his accusers, to him walking around Harlem shaking hands with the people and then privately announcing that he needs a scalding hot shower to get all that "people" off of him. It's a shame that such a revealing look at a famous sociopath risks being overshadowed by the ultimately irrelevant casting of the doc as just another point 50 Cent has scored in his beef with Diddy.
Sean Combs: The Reckoning is worth your time if for no other reason than to see the pattern of behavior laid out in detail. It's not exactly rigorous journalism, but particularly in Part 4, the harrowing stories of the people who have had their lives destroyed by Diddy really hit home. Especially telling is the testimony of two of the jurors from his criminal trial, who clearly regarded Diddy with some kind of favor. One man felt that Diddy and Cassie's relationship was tumultuous in a typical way, and seemed to lack empathy for a woman living a life of luxury while also getting the shit beat out of her. The other juror, a young woman, seemed enthralled by Diddy as a mogul and the architect of the music of her youth, magnetized by his celebrity and therefore hesitant to accept any framing of him as some kind of supervillain.
I feel confident that if the hotel video of Diddy kicking Cassie and grabbing her by the hair was never leaked, the general public wouldn't have had much trouble dismissing her claims of abuse for many of the same reasons that the two jurors gave. The story would've been that Cassie was just after money, and if her claims were real then why she didn't say anything sooner, and all the rest of the nonsense people come up with to avoid believing survivors. Even in our present reality, where the video did get out, some are still quick to block out the idea that domestic violence often speaks to a violent nature that manifests in other ways too. If you've seen Diddy beat up his girlfriend and believe her when she says he sexually abused and humiliated her, why is it a stretch to think that he could do the same or worse to multiple people? Particularly when he has had the money and power to get away with anything for about 30 years now.
These are the better questions to come out of this documentary, rather than gossiping about two middle-aged rappers and what their issues are with each other. Certainly a Netflix documentary can't give the answers, but at least we can start asking them. And while 50 Cent's involvement can allow Diddy supporters to scapegoat someone and obscure the darker truth, we shouldn't allow them to.
