Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we discuss the recent documentary Sean the Reckoning and break down some key themes that were emphasized in it.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to the Call I Can See it podcast. I'm James Keys, and joining me today is a man who's been patiently waiting to explode on this podcast, Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde, are you ready for me to set you up with the first of what may be 21 questions today?
[00:00:39] Speaker B: I guess I'm patiently waiting to explode. So yes.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: Yeah, if you're patiently waiting, then I must mean you're ready.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: I know I didn't know I could be patient and explode at the same time, but we'll see how this goes.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: All right, now before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you subscribe and like the show on YouTube or your podcast, appreciate doing so really helps the show out. Now we're recording on December 9, 2025. And Tunde, last week we saw the documentary Sean Combs the Reckoning drop on Netflix and it has been the talk of the town, so to speak. Now the four part documentary, which has been promoted extensively by 50 Cent, who is an executive producer on it and also a longtime Diddy antagonist. But one thing about the documentary, I'll say though, is that it was directed by Alex Stapleton, who's a serious showrunner and documentary maker in the business. And it shows because one thing that stands out immediately when you watch the Thing is how well made it is. But of course, it's not necessarily the talk of the town because of how well made it is. You know, the documentary puts together a lot of eye popping content, you know, including unseen footage and lots of interviews with people who have been very close to Diddy over the years.
And generally speaking, it paints an unflattering portrait, you know, to say the least, of Sean Combs, Diddy, Puff Daddy and how he's been operating on over the last few decades, several things like wild sexual escapades and extreme violence come up over and over again. But Tunde, one of the themes that we saw over and over again also was how Diddy was very manipulative, both generally, but also manipulative in a controlling sense with the people who were very close to him, not just for the people who were his quote unquote enemies or something like that, but the people who he relied on and were his, quote unquote, whether it be friends or close associates.
What stood out to you in that theme? Just looking at how he was able to either marinate, look at how he did with public narratives and Manipulate public narratives, like showing himself as a nice guy and stuff like that. Whereas maybe a Suge or Tupac were the wild crazy guys and Diddy was the stand up guys. So that's played a role in creating those type of narratives and manipulating the public in that sense. Whereas he might have been doing as much or more dirt than these other people. And also how he controlled and manipulated people closest to him. So. So you could take either one first, but I want to hit both.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: And I will kind of follow on your theme that the documentary was very well made, whatever we think of the subject, you know, the people in it who are the subjects, and especially Mr. Sean Cones.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: But no. So I say this, yes, the idea of his ability to manipulate those around him.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: I'd say to meet the short term goals that he had at the time. Because long term, clearly we're talking about the negative side of this. So it didn't work out maybe the way he thought it would 20 years ago, 15 years ago.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: But yeah, there was a lot of upset people left in his wake that were happy to talk on a documentary. Yeah.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: People that were great, I think.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: And to me, that's the interesting thing with a lot of these topics that we see, which is kind of the human part, the part of, you know, and I think you said it well, that, that in this, in this, in. In the way that marketing it has become in our current entertainment, I guess, ecosystem over the last, you know, couple generations, it is like the wwe, the baby faces and heels.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: And in a certain way, you're right that other people kind of were portrayed as maybe more gangster, more negative, you know, traditional kind of society where Sean Combs was kind of able to ride through that in the late 90s, early 2000s, and come out. And I'd say this, James, a term we don't hear as much anymore because hip hop as a culture and a phenomenon is now mature in our society. But when you and I were younger, there was a real term called crossing over.
And at the time, only a few artists were able to, what was considered truly crossover from what was still a bit of a fringe culture, hip hop, to what was considered mainstream kind of pop culture and all that. And I think Diddy was one of the people who was able to really do that at the tail end of that period when hip hop was still making its entrance onto the kind of the mainstream world stage. So I think he benefited a lot from that.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: He did that, though, by maintaining this, this clean, almost squeaky clean image, despite him being Involved in so many things. You know, like, it wasn't like he never was involved in anything, you know, even his first, his first being known was with the stampede. And you know, that happened at a charity basketball game in New York where people died. That's, that's where he first gained notoriety, so to speak. But he, throughout all these things happening when he's connected to or in charge of, he always was able to maintain a, the kind of image that then. Yeah, like you, like you said, he could take to a pop kind of audience and still be seen as this kind of clean, upstanding guy, so to speak.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think. But that's why I say we see this pattern with other powerful men.
I'm sure it could be, we could say it's been throughout history, but I would say in my lifetime. Right. In recent decades where it's the same thing. They have a. They're, they're very focused on maintaining and curating almost this image to the outside world of how wholesome they are, how much they help their society. And they're good guys. And you're right behind the scenes that, you know, we learned that they're monsters. And so.
And I feel like it's just interesting that, you know, since the kind of the start of this Me Too movement in, let's say the last seven, eight years, we've learned a lot about this, you know, household names who are famous TV stars. When you and I were kids, you know, like Bill Cosby, people like that, that on one side showed a certain face. Yeah. And behind the scenes seems to be very different. And I think Puffy, he's, he's in that lane. I think the other part, that's why this documentary to me was interesting and reminding me of this Game of Thrones of humanity. Because then the other, on the other side, part of the reason why I think things were allowed to go away when the these negative things that keep coming up, you know, every few years in this man's life is also because he was making money for people. So I feel like there's that double edged sword, which is he was within an industry that was a cash cow. And there were those who said, okay, this guy might be a POS or not, but he's there. And we're, you know, people like Clive Davis and some of those that weren't mentioned as much as documentary, but a part of the system, the machine of entertainment. And then you've got the other side of the people that it seems that they relied on him financially and so I think that it's this combination and then you have his personality, which was a manipulator. So, you know, I think that the documentary did a great job summing a.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Lot of that up. Yeah, I mean, to me, one of the things that really stood out and looking at it from the public, facing part of it, because, like I said, I was really fascinated by. Because I, you know, this is time. This is coming of age time for. For myself. You know, I'm born in 1979, so I'm a teenager in the 90s and so forth. You know, I became a teenager in the 90s and a lot of that and then, you know, go to college and all that early 2000s, and Diddy did kind of have that. I'm glad you put it in kind of like the. The pro wrestling kind of mindset, because Diddy did have. Try to maintain this kind of baby face kind of image in public. But the documentary, like, I remember all of the things in isolation happening that the documentary covered, as far as, you know, where he's involved in, you know, violence, where he's involved in, you know, like, death, all this type of stuff. I remember all of these things happening, but it was really, it was still jarring for me to see them all lined up one after one after one after one. I'm like, oh, my gosh, this. How did, How. How did we not look at this guy as a bad guy then with all of this, like, all this smoke around him all the time, and he's like, oh, no, he's. And, And I. They. When they showed like clips of, you know, him talking back then or, you know, like him facing the music, so to speak, I have to say, like, whether it be manipulative or whether he just knew how to. To deal with these kind of things from a public standpoint, like, he showed contrition where it needed to be happen, or, you know, we would like very, very much. You know, we've seen how denials can go a long way, particularly if people want to side with you or want to believe with you. And so he was always out in front trying to deny, trying to make sure that things didn't stick to him. And apparently it worked because I was surprised, even though I remember all the events in isolation. You know, like I said, the charity basketball game or obviously, you know, the hip hop beef and all that, or just all the other. The shooting that gets shined locked up. And so I remember all these things in isolation. But seeing all lined up, I'm like, man, this dude was involved in a lot of crazy stuff. How. How did we not? Or how did I not, by implication of just somebody who's always adjacent to something terrible happening to somebody. How did I not look at this guy more look differently than I did at that time? So it's just. It's the sheer volume, you know, and then obviously, you get into the stuff, you know, in the 2000s and so forth, where it's. We start hearing other, you know, other types of things, but still the violence still around, you know, all that kind of stuff, you hear more about the sexual, you know, things, you know, as you get later on. But, you know, so that, to me, was one. And I also. But, like, so that's general kind of public pr, you know, public manipulation. I don't know if it's manipulation or just kind of maintaining a public image. The other piece, though, was. And, like, you touched on it slightly, but I want to hit it directly, is the people around him. And, you know, one of the things we spoke about online or offline, excuse me, about this, was how he made a point and a habit of. And you see this throughout the documentary, the people who were closest to him to manipulate them, keep them on a string when he was good at keeping something over their head, oh, you need me for this. You need me for this album release. You need money from me because you did something and now I owe you money or whatever. And keeping these people strung along and just waiting for the other shoe to drop, but invested in him. They, like, they want him to succeed because then they think that's when it's going to work out for him. Which to me was really interesting, because the example I gave you when we spoke offline about this, it was just kind of surprising to me was like, I look at kind of like the powerful figure in a way that's like, okay, yeah, the powerful figure is going to be the guy oftentimes who takes care of the people who's closest to him, because he wants those people to be able to ride for him when needs be and not, you know, he's not like, when. When things get tight. The example I gave you, when things get tight, you know, Don Corleone doesn't go start, you know, shooting at Luca Brasi. You know, he's like, no, no, Luka, I need you to go handle for this for me. But he made sure he takes care of Luka, and Luka feels valued and everything like that. So to me, it was really surprising to see this, because I was just surprised how much stuff People would put up with, in that sense, like, oh, man. Like, at what point will they turn on these people? And apparently from the documentary, we can see that this is the point where they turned on him. But what were your thoughts as far as that? As far as how he.
The manipulation, the treatment, the negative treatment towards the people that were closest to him?
[00:11:41] Speaker B: I mean, look, as you say it, I'm a big fan of the Godfather, and so I can tell you the reason why.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: You know, Don Corleone died of a heart attack in his tomato garden playing with his grandson. Right. At old age. So that's why. Because he took care of his people. He didn't go to jail, and he didn't get people snitching on him. So that's. That's a big part of it, too, is that I'm sure there's. Look, let's keep Don Corleone out of salacious stuff. He seemed like a nice.
But, you know, him and Heimer Roth were in the olive oil business. Remember, he told Michael down in Cuba, I mean, come on, he was a good dad. He had to.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: Allegedly, man.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: Allegedly. And he did the orange peel thing with his grandson before he died with a smile, remember? So that meant that was a nice old man to me. I'll give Don Corleone his flowers.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: But.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: But I almost wish he wasn't a fictitious character after saying that.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: But. But no.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: So I think that's. I think some of this. That's why it's interesting, is kind of primal. It's about how we relate to other humans, you know, and all this kind of stuff. And I think you're right. Like.
[00:12:46] Speaker B: P. Diddy's downfall, like many of the men who we could mention in this last decade, who we've learned about, some of them have had downfalls. Some of them have slipped and almost fell down. But then maybe there was levers in the system or people that kind of helped them get back up and they. They're limping now. Right. They're. They're wobbling, but they're still up. So I think that.
That there's just something to be said with all of it. It's a very human thing that sometimes we. I know we could say this with the televangelist community. You know, there's people that help sometimes powerful men continue to do negative things. And you said it well, because in their mind, they think that they're going to get something out of it at the end.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: Maybe they also agree with it, maybe that they're also.
I Guess in my eyes, broken people, maybe to other people, they're not.
And so I think there's just a lot of reasons why this happens. We can't diagnose at all.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: But it's a very interesting though, like, just a couple specific examples and I know we want to keep moving, but like, like Kirk Burrows, the guy who was a co founder of Bad Boy, and he's like, yeah, like during. While he's still at Bad Boy working, you know, he initially has a 25% stake. Diddy walks in with a bat, makes him sign over his 20, 25% stake. And like, yeah, I'll get it back to you at some point. And he never gets it back. He never gets anything out of it. And it's like, okay. But then that guy continues to still work for him, you know. And I guess on the idea that I keep working and eventually I'll get something back as something out of this or Lil Rod, that was at the beginning and then you got towards the end, in the late 2018, you know, Lil Rod, the guy who worked on the Love album with him, you know, is like. Like, I'm sitting here trying to get paid for my work here and dealing with all this other stuff, but he's sticking around because he's like, okay, well, I got to finish this so I can get paid. He's still not going to get paid. Is it like. It just.
There isn't a lot of cutting your losses, you know, And I guess maybe that's the psychology. If you're a manipulator, maybe you can find people. You. You know how to find people like that. Or at minimum, it sorts itself out because the people who aren't. We don't see the story of the person that saw this was coming and was like, yo, man, I'm out. Did he. Man, I can see you're trying to play me here. I'm not going to stick around. Like, those dudes, those people left quickly. And so we don't see their story here, but we see the story of the people who stuck around. So it's kind of like a selection thing, you know, that. That happens with that. One of the other things I wanted to ask you about or talk to you about with this was how at least as the documentary portrayed it, you know. And again, all of this is through the eyes of the documentary. And the documentary is a, Is. Is a film. It's. It's based on, you know, real, real video, real interviews and so forth, but it is put together in narrative form. So but one of the things in that was it gave us the impression that Diddy became worse in certain ways over time that, you know, like it made it a point several times to point out, oh, well, when he first got into the, into the business working at Uptown, he, he didn't drink, he didn't do drugs. You know, he was, he was clean with that. He was, you know, he was a hard charger, but he wasn't into any of that stuff. And then, you know, at the end of the documentary they show this progression and at the end of the documentary it's like, oh man, we think this guy's addicted to drugs, you know, and he's doing, you know, he's staying on, you know, having benders of 14 days and so forth like that. It's the impression that they're giving, you know, again, and that's, that, that's part of kind of the filmmaking. But I mean, this is just what was there. And then also, you know, the violence, you know, seemed to progress, you know, to more brazen and more brazen things.
You know, the sexual activities seem to get more brazen and more brazen, at least again, how it's portrayed.
Do you, what do you, do you think, you know, like. Or does it appear to you or what's your take on how this appearance of how things got worse over time? And what does that say you more about him or more about maybe society, you know, and how people like. And people in society may, you know, with their, if their worst impulses aren't checked, how things may go.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: That's a good question. So let me start with the last part. The Himmer Society, I think there it's a bit of both.
One thing that I recognize is the influence of technology in this because the technology allows us to see things that maybe we wouldn't have seen in prior generations. So, for example, the famous hotel hallway footage of, of Sean Combs, you know, beating up Cassie. Right?
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: 50 years ago, 100 years ago, the public just wouldn't have seen a man behave like that towards a woman unless they physically were right there. So I think that we have a history. I mean, I, I learned stuff about historical figures like George S. Patten, that there's a strong, strong credible evidence, especially from his niece's diary, that he had an inappropriate relationship with his own niece from the time she was a young teenager and he was an adult. We know about stuff like Thomas Jefferson in his 50s being a married man having relations with a 16 year old girl named Sally Hemings. So like this isn't the first time history has seen men in power behave certain ways, but the technology allows us to now get almost a play by play because there's text messages, there's emails, there's all that kind of stuff. So I think, well, the thing I got to be careful was that I.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: Was gonna say let me throw something in there, because it's a really good point. The visual, though, affects us differently because I remember not too, you know, I guess 10, 10, 15 years ago in the NFL, you know, there was a NFL player, Ray Rice for the Baltimore Ravens, got accused of domestic violence and, you know, like, okay, yeah, maybe, you know, we'll. We'll, you know, suspend him for a game or something like that and, you know, just kind of sit him down. And it didn't really catch on as a big news story. And then an elevator video gets released where she's like, cold cocking.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: And the whole story blows up. Then once people see what. Even though people had heard what happened, once they actually saw it, the reaction from the general public, and then he's like, banned from the NFL. We're not, you know, he's shadow banned from the NFL after that. Like, nobody's bringing that guy aboard after people saw him, you know, take that fist to her face like that. So, you know, like. So the visual matters, though, even with, you know, the example you give, like with the Sally, like, we can read about this stuff, but it doesn't affect us apparently, as much as, like seeing something.
Correct.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: And so that's what I'm saying is, so I think that warps us. That's a good point of we think it. People like someone like him may have behaved worse later on because we see things. But you made a good point. I mean, the first real thing that that was negative, that was he was around was that basketball game in 1991 where seven kids were killed, I think, or something like that. So. So because of a stampede. So who knows, if we had all kind of cell phone cameras and text messaging back then, maybe we'd find out something different. Right. That he was more involved or something was going on that we could have said back then, wow, this guy's not, you know, he's not the type of person we want to. We want to kind of associate with as a public figure. So I could say that's part of it. And I think the other part, James, is.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: It seems like men like this.
It's a. I think there's a combination. I mean, we're not going to diagnose all of it here on this discussion. But a certain personality type, when given certain levels of power and they're increasing, they increase their levels of power and influence in their marketplace or society.
And they're kind of rewarded every time they do something where they're not like otherwise would have been punished.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: So.
[00:20:00] Speaker B: And then I think you make a great point when you add the drugs in. I started thinking as you talked about that, believe it or not, this association is only for. What we're talking about here is Adolf Hitler. I thought the same thing in 1944, 45. He was a much different guy than 33. Not that I'm saying he was a better guy in 33. What I'm saying is a lot of history that he was on methamphetamines, all that. In the later part of the war, his ability to make decisions, to deal with those around him totally deteriorated compared to where it was before. And remember, as much as some people try and make him out to be such a love figure now, he survived three assassination attempts. So it's an example that it's not just hip hop, it's not just puffy, it's not just America, that we have global examples of men that are kind of megalomaniacs, narcissists, grandiose, whatever it is. When you mix that with drugs and heavy drug use, you get these kind of really weird and kind of gross outcomes.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: Yeah. So I think as well, yeah.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: Your care to not let him off the hook is a fair and good kind of impulse because I think that ultimately you have to be responsible for what you do. But I do think that what we see here is the outgrowth of one. When there aren't consequences for actions, then many personalities, probably most personalities, your actions will get increasingly, increasingly more brazen and more extreme. And I think that's what we observed here. Like he's response, like there's. It's not. There's no. There's no saying that it's a society's fault that this guy is or became a monster. But society would be able to nip this in the bud more often if people had consequences for their actions. And I think the fact that he was able to avoid consequence for so many different things. You know, one of the things that it's been, you know, they're really explosive. All over the Internet is the documentary paints a picture that Diddy is kind of intimately involved with both Tupac dying and then ultimately, as a result, Biggie dying and then Biggie. Not necessarily. He had Biggie killed. But then once Biggie's killed, he takes on this role and is going to use that to springboard himself, you know, so it really makes him look bad in terms of the East Coast, west coast rap beef.
And like, this guy's the center of the whole thing, and it's all because of him.
It gives that appearance, so to speak, which was crazy to me.
Not crazy in that it couldn't be the case, but just crazy. Like, again, going back into my memory and then putting this new information on top of that is like, oh, my gosh. But like, if you get. If. Let's just say for the purposes of my illustration here, that Diddy did hire the Crips in LA to kill Tupac and he succeeded. Well, if he. Then, if he gets away with that, then later on in life he's going to be conceivably have less of a concern of, hey, if I want to get somebody else killed, I'll just do this or I'll just do that. And so when you get away with things, you naturally are going to become emboldened to do either the same thing or even go a step further. So I think that this is why we have to have consequences for people's actions. You know, like the. Even the. If you're looking at the charity basketball game where the fault there conceivably was that they had all these people come in, but they didn't have the security in place, and this is like the headline that they had $500 worth of security for 20,000 people or something like that. I'm paraphrasing, that's not exactly it, but it was something to that effect. Like, they did not take the steps to be able to handle as many people as this came. And so when the crowd got out of control, there was no way to get back control over the crowd. And so that's more of a negligence thing. But nonetheless, if you then get away with that, then you will have less of a concern about taking risky behaviors, about not really taking precautions on things. And so it can make you a colder, more kind of just, hey, I've just got to got it. I got a skate. I got to skate no matter what. So to me, that's really what I see more than anything there is that whether he actually got worse as a person or his impulses that he would have already, he just had less of a governor on them, like, oh, I'm tired of this person. Man, I wish somebody would kill this person. And then some people who were just in there or somebody who was afraid that if they tried to kill somebody, they would get caught, and then it would all go to go to, you know, go. Go down for them. This a person who's gotten away with that a couple of times, be like, you know what? Let me call up this guy and make this happen. And so I think it's. It. That's what. That's how you can see a progression, you know, and then the same kind of thing with the drugs. Like, if you're able to do drugs all the time without consequence, then, you know, maybe you can either develop dependency or you just learn that that's okay for you to do, and it kind of warps your mind in that sense.
Yeah.
[00:24:37] Speaker B: The. The one thing I want to hit on man is, is because you.
You put here. Let him off the hook. That's what I wrote down. And I think that's a very important.
Because, you know, there's something that I couldn't escape me. You know, I. I didn't know about the thing. What that guy, Little Rod, who was being interviewed when he mentioned about the shooting that happened in the studio.
[00:24:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:59] Speaker B: And he said that he saw Puff Daddy, Sean Combs and his son Justin walk into a room.
He heard two gunshots.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: When they're walking to a room with this guy. Third guy.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:11] Speaker A: He walked in with that guy.
[00:25:13] Speaker B: Yeah. So there's two people. Sorry, three people walking in a room. He hears two gunshots, and then two people walk. Sean and Justin walk out. Yeah. And there's a third guy in the room who's bleeding out. So let's just say it that way.
[00:25:26] Speaker A: So. And Little Watt is in, trying to, you know, help him stop the.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: I'm not making any allegations here, but.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: That'S what Little Rod said.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So. But then he. They don't get into it in too much detail, but they talk about how they were told to behave when the police showed up and all that. And that's what really reminded me of other stories and documentaries I've seen about some of, like I said, his recent happenings in the last decade. Like, R. Kelly had reminded me that in watching some of those documentaries, he was. Had people on payroll in Chicago pd.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: This wasn't in the documentary, James, but I remember in the. In the trial, when I was paying attention to the Diddy trial, it was. It was well discussed that as part of the Kid Cudi issue, there was evidence that went missing in the LAPD evidence locker room that could have, you know, that could have told the legal establishment who was actually in kid Cootie's house from P. Diddisha, because there was fingerprints. And I thought to myself back then, you got to have a lot of influence to make some go missing in an LAPD locker room. And so it goes back to Jeffrey Epstein that he had people on Palm Beach Police.
Well, yeah, but that's what I'm saying. If you look back at all this, like, like I said, Epstein had people in Palm Beach Police, or Alex Acosta, who was the prosecutor that lost his job in the first Trump administration term because of his coddling and kid glove handling of Jeffrey Epstein. So, again, these powerful men do come into the crosshairs of the system, and I think we can't ignore that, that there's those in the system that let them get away with this stuff and they keep going. And like you said, once a man gets away with enough, I. I can understand that probably there's this attitude that, well, I'm untouchable. I'm going to keep going. And, and like you say, when you add drugs to that, like, like really heavy drug use, not just recreation, I. You create these monsters.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: And I think, well, you don't create the monster, but you basically let the monster off their. Their chain, basically. You know, like, everybody has certain level of restrictions in walking around in a society. And so if you let them off of all those restrictions, like, I don't. I'm not let off of those restrictions. You know, like, you're not. Like, if you go, if you, if you walk into a room with one other person, then you walk out and that guy's sitting there shot, you're not going to just skate, you know, so you. So guess what? You probably wouldn't do that. You know, I guess I shouldn't use you as an example here, but, you.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: Know, I wouldn't smirk you with anyone.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: I wouldn't do that anyway. Yeah, but the. But so when we take off kind of the normal chain or the normal shackles of living in society from people because they're famous or because they're rich, then.
Then they start acting on these impulses or these thoughts that they want to have, then it's like, well, it's their fault again. We got to be careful to not say it's society's fault. But where society had a chance to intervene, to at least limit the damage here, society's dropping the ball, and so we have to. We have to try to do better. Again, not to say that it's our fault that this is happening, but once it does start to happen, we don't let it continue to happen because we're starstruck or because, you know, somebody's getting paid off. I mean, I think it's really the. The bigger thing with that. I want. There's one other thing I want to get to you with this real quick. And that was it's a documentary, right? And so, you know, and it has a. Documentaries are going to have a point of view. And like, this documentary, you know, it. It paints, you know, Puff Daddy Diddy, you know, like Sean Combs. It paints him like, with cartoon level villain. Like, this guy's a villain. You know, in this documentary, there were a few people that spoke, oh, I never saw this or I never saw that. And that's cool, you know, like that. That's what the doc. But that's how it was presented. I'm not saying it's printed that way unfairly. In fact, I want to analyze that real quick and look at that. Like, do you think from what you know. And again, you don't know what you don't know here. None of us do, you know, so, you know, we don't know what we don't know. We don't know what was not put in, you know, other than, okay, we. We've heard news stories or allegations, claims or testimony about this and that through. Through the news. But do you think that. Did this strike you? I guess, you know, more than anything because again, you can't say definitively.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: But.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: But did this strike you as more of a hit piece or was this kind of. Did you think it at least tried to present more of a fair approach? And I asked this because 50 Cent is an executive producer here, meaning he probably put up some or all the money, and he is a longtime antagonist of Diddy and he to this day takes shots at Diddy from time to time. So if his name's on one as executive producer, then you might have the impression. A person might have the impression, like, oh, he just paid for this to do a hit on Diddy. You know, like public. Public assassination, so to speak, assassinate his character to the extent that that can still be done. So what are your. What are your thoughts on that as far as evaluating maybe the perception that you may have going in, like, oh, yeah, 50 is trying to really let Diddy have it versus what you actually saw?
[00:30:25] Speaker B: I think, actually, that's a good question, because I think there was a bit of some of the.
A lot of things I saw. So did I think it was a hit piece?
Personally, I didn't think of it. As a hit piece, but I could see how people would see that. So I'm not going to argue with the point. I also think that there is some truth to the fact that anytime we see any of these things about these celebrities, we're already coming in with our own.
[00:30:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:48] Speaker B: Mental Soup with whatever we thought about them.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:51] Speaker B: So, yeah, I'm generally a fan of that type of hip hop from the 90s, early 2000s. So, you know, and Puffy's story has been going on for a while. Right. So it's not like. Like I said, I was. I was paying attention to the trial earlier this year.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: So this came in differently if it came out in 2015, for example. If this came out. Yeah.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: So, exactly.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: Because it was more like it's kind of like watching the R. Kelly and Epstein stuff after the fact. It's kind of like, all right, we.
[00:31:16] Speaker A: Already know about some of this. Crazy. Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: You already. You're kind of expecting to see something this. This negative in a sense. So that. In that way. That's why I say I didn't see it as a hit piece. But I will say this.
I found the end of the documentary very interesting for many reasons, and I want to share why. And I wrote a couple notes here.
One is the one they talked about the jury. That's what made me appreciate certain things where I felt like.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: There was a bit of a balancing of some of the earlier stuff because it showed me. It reminded me a bit of the OJ Case, where no matter what we think about it from the outside, some of this stuff is also just about strategy, about reality. Meaning just like with O.J. the jury, you know, they're dealing with a guy that. You cannot know who Puffy is. I mean, they interviewed a couple of the jurors, and I thought that was it. I'm glad they did that, because I remember the gentleman who talked about, you can only. You can't clap with one hand.
Again, he. He was sharing his opinion. And. And there's things we didn't get to see in the public during the trial thing and that they didn't show much during the documentary, which, to your point, I could see that being considered biased, that they didn't show some of the things that the jurors.
[00:32:25] Speaker A: I don't know that all of would have been for them to show. You know, like that some of that's like they're able to show what they're able to show.
[00:32:31] Speaker B: But what the juror made a comment is he said, you Know what we saw in the trial was, yeah, all this bad stuff about, you know, Sean Combs over here. But then literally on the next date, we're being read that the text message from Cassie or someone else says, hey, I really had fun last night. I want to come back for more. So I was like, all right, like, I get it. And I'm not here to be a psychologist because I understand the concepts of trauma bonding and all those kind of things that victims of trauma, you know, Stockholm syndrome and all that. But in the end, we got a jury of his peers and this is the system. And that's what I thought found interesting at the end, just analyzing that, because then the other jury, the young lady, because I think the person interviewing asked her the question, well, what about the video from the hotel when he was actually, we saw him physically assaulting her. And she made a very interesting comment. She goes, well, we couldn't use that in determining any of, you know, thing for the, you know, the prison sentencing or anything like that, because the prosecution never included domestic violence as one of the things that they're prosecuting him for. So the video was of no use to us in the jury room. And I thought that was an interesting point. I go, okay, well, the, the prosecution, why didn't they not add that when you got a video of him beating up the young lady? So that's, to me, James, I found a bit.
[00:33:47] Speaker A: But what does that have to do with the documentary and the portrait that the documentary paints? Because that's very, very limited to like this isn't covering just the trial. So how do you connect What I'm saying is indicative of the documentary?
[00:34:00] Speaker B: Because what I'm saying is that it shows that at the end, no matter what he did or how he behaved, the outcome of all of this. And maybe this is me more saying that I know that they made, you know, they had the writing in that documentary. And I remember during the trial there was a lot of mixed feelings about the 50 month sentence that he was given.
And I guess that's the point that I, that I got at the end there, is that we're all looking at it from an entertainment standpoint and the thing he's a celebrity and all that. But in the end, there's also just the reality of legal strategy, how people interpret things in the room, meaning the jury and all that stuff.
[00:34:34] Speaker A: So.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: Well, but that's what I'm saying is.
[00:34:36] Speaker A: I. Yeah, well, I would say that that's different though. I mean like the, the court, the stuff that happened in Court is the stuff that's happened in court. We're not being. We're not watching this documentary and then ask whether or not we're going to convict this guy of something. Like so that was separate. This is for the court of public opinion. That's it. You know, like so.
[00:34:52] Speaker B: But that's my point is that's what made me feel like it wasn't a hit piece. All that stuff at the end.
[00:34:57] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
That's what I was trying.
Okay. So. Because they included that kind of information and just kind of showed how from a legal standpoint, it's not so cut and dry because remember, they also showed how some of the. There were several accounts brought.
[00:35:11] Speaker B: Thanks for helping me clean it up.
[00:35:13] Speaker A: Some of them beat. No, some of them he didn't beat. So they didn't omit that information. That so. Yeah, I get that. So you're saying that they gave. And some of the. They had one of the ditty Dirty Money girls talking about how. No, I never saw this part. So they did include some people that were saying that, you know, that the stuff that I've seen. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I. Or that stuff that I've seen in the papers or, you know, whatever. I didn't see that personally. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but, you know, so forth. So, yeah, that's kind of like, you know, they included some mitigating things. To me. Yeah. It's the timing of it. And I kind of, I guess, kind of shot this shot already, you know, and interjecting. But coming out now, I find it as less of a hit piece because this guy's already gone to trial. This guy's already been convicted of something and is in jail, you know, so the idea that he had a squeaky clean image as that ship has sailed. So this is kind of exploring more in a. More in more depth and in more. Kind of more breadth too. Like more different things. It's exploring different things and going more deep into just a portrait of this guy. And so from that standpoint, it shouldn't. It's not going to be 5050 because the, you know, again, the director has a point of view that the director is then trying to tell this story the re. But I thought on balance it was not a hit piece in the sense that I didn't come out of it thinking that they were like, they want all of us to hate this man. That wasn't the feeling I got coming out now. Maybe that's because I Went in with a lot. And so I was going to kind of have my thoughts no matter what.
And I was just interested in actual learning more stuff, you know. But, yeah, I didn't find it as a hit piece as much as, in fact, I went in thinking it was going to be a hit piece. You know, I was less excited about watching it initially because I was like, oh, so they're just going to, you know, just make fun, mock this guy and make fun of this guy, you know, I got it. He's a bad guy, you know, But. But actually, I thought it was very well made in terms of the information. In terms of the information as far as how, you know, Bad Boy and the Kirk Burrow stuff was fascinating to me with the co founder of Bad Boy, you know, and then again, that was that part where it just brought me like, man, this was his. His guy, you know, shoulder to shoulder, founding Bad Boy. And he did this guy so dirty, you know, like, we were talking the other day about the assistant Capricorn Clark. Like, that's his assistant for eight years. And it's like, that's, you know, you leave that person, you know, like, feeling like you. You betrayed him. So it was just like the fact that there are so many people who are so willing to talk.
Say it again.
[00:37:37] Speaker B: Can I share my favorite part?
[00:37:39] Speaker A: Yeah, go ahead. Well, let me say this. And then, because I want to wrap us up. The fact that there were so many people who were willing to talk to me said more than the framing of everything. Just like, there were people and they had a lot to say. It was like, man, you know, like, oh, this guy didn't pay his artist. This guy didn't do this. This guy didn't do this. Like, man, this is a lot. So I didn't feel it was a hit piece. I thought it was fair, but I just thought that there was a lot of content, a lot of material that, you know, just that you could go wild with. And again, we're not getting into it. But the East Coast, west coast thing, that. That second episode was fascinating to me. You know, it was like, oh, man, this is a lot of information that I didn't have yet then. So, yeah, you're your favorite part and let's get out of here.
[00:38:14] Speaker B: No, that's true. And so, and I'll say this, my favorite part comes from what I'm going to say, which is part of the reason why it is less of a hit piece is also because there was so much footage of himself, like, you know, just in the Camera behaving certain ways and talking to people certain ways and all that. So one of them was footage that we were shown that is my favorite part, which was they showed a picture of a bunch of baby oil. And I noticed when I. The box it was in was a humidor, like a cigar humidor, because I had the little thing for the temperature control.
And I thought to myself, because the baby oil is all in plastic bottles. And I thought, man, these guys are just like, bougie as hell. Put baby oil into a humidor.
[00:38:58] Speaker A: Hey, I guess they had to maintain the right temperature.
[00:39:01] Speaker B: It's like a nine grand in the fanny pack. Like, hold on. But it's in a fanny pack. Like, you know what I mean?
[00:39:06] Speaker A: It's just these little.
[00:39:06] Speaker B: Little nuances. Like, come on, man.
[00:39:10] Speaker B: That was my favorite part of the humidor.
[00:39:14] Speaker A: That was the night. And we'll get out with this. That was very interesting to me also, that so much footage of him like.
Like, for 20, 24, you know, like. And that was because, from what I understand, he had people following him around in that time. He was going to make a documentary. Yeah, he was going to make his own documentary. And then that footage then has been acquired from the filmmakers there and used in this documentary. That is the reckoning of him.
[00:39:38] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's like a Boss move by 50. Let me take this stuff you filmed yourself, which you thought was going to make you all look good, and let me actually show the world what's on there, what you probably didn't want people to see, like baby oil or just.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: Presented in a way that doesn't make you look good, you know, like, that's really what it is, because, again, everything can be framed in different ways. So. But I think we can get out of here. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call. Like I see it, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, Send it to a friend. Till next time. I'm James Keys.
[00:40:06] Speaker B: I'm Toondevin Lyon.
[00:40:07] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk soon.
