Review: ‘Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy,’ starring Al B. Sure!, Gene Deal, Sara Rivers, Tim Patterson, Ariel Mitchell, Lisa Bloom and Mylah Morales

January 17, 2025

by Carla Hay

“Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy”

Culture Representation: The documentary film “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” features a predominantly black group of people (with some white people and one Asian person) talking about the rise and fall of disgraced mogul/entertainer Sean Combs.

Culture Clash: Several of the people who are interviewed claim that Combs abuses his fame and power to commit crimes that allegedly include assaults, various sex crimes, racketeering, attempted murder and murder.

Culture Audience: “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries about celebrities and can tolerate graphic details in sex scandals.

“Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” can be recommended to watch only for some of the revealing interviews and previously unreleased footage. However, the tabloid-ish format lowers the quality of this documentary, which needed more cohesive timeline editing. Depending on how much a viewer knows about disgraced mogul/entertainer Sean Combs’ previously reported scandals, “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” will either be shocking or substantiating when it comes to his very troubled life.

There is no director credited for “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy,” which is a production of AMPLE Entertainment, Blink Films and FGW Productions. The executive producers are Ari Mark, Phil Lott, Sumit David, Stephanie Frederic, Laura Jones and Justine Kershaw. There is a very good variety of people interviewed who have had contact with Combs in some way, including childhood friends, former employees, ex-colleagues, journalists and attorneys. However, the documentary isn’t comprehensive and leaves out or sidelines some details.

Through captions, “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” shows multiple statements from Combs’ attorneys denying all the accusations that have been made against Combs in the documentary and elsewhere. At the time this documentary was released, Combs was being held without bail in a New York City jail on federal charges of racketeering and sex trafficking, after being arrested in September 2024. He is also facing several civil lawsuits, most having to do with sex crimes—including accusations of raping women, men and children—with some of these alleged crimes going as far back as the 1990s. Many of the accusers say that Combs drugged them without their consent.

Combs (who was born in New York City on November 4, 1969) is known for being a mogul in entertainment, fashion and alcoholic beverages, as well as being a recording artist, music producer and occasional actor. Over the years, he has had several nicknames, including Puff Daddy, Puffy, P. Diddy, Diddy and Love. He has a long list of celebrity associates who have said they are his close friends, including Jay-Z, Ashton Kutcher and Mary J. Blige. Some of the artists whom Combs has mentored include Justin Bieber and Usher. As of this writing, these celebrities have not publicly commented on Combs’ legal problems that have landed him in jail.

Out of all the people interviewed in “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy,” R&B singer/producer Al B. Sure! makes the most explosive allegations, by claiming that Combs was involved in a conspiracy to murder Sure, who was hospitalized and in a coma in 2022 for renal failure and a liver transplant. Sure also claims that his ex-girlfriend Kim Porter (the mother of their son Quincy) was murdered and did not die of pneumonia (the official cause of her death) in 2018. According to Sure, Porter was murdered because she was about to go public about Combs abusing her and committing other crimes.

Sure (whose real name is Albert Joseph Brown III) was one of the first artists at Uptown Records, the company founded by Andre Harrell, who died of heart failure at age 59, in 2020. Combs started as an intern at Uptown in 1990, and he eventually became a high-ranking A&R executive at Uptown until he was fired in 1993. Not long after Combs was fired from Uptown, he launched Bad Boy Entertainment, which started as a record company and expanded into other business ventures.

Combs and Sure were connected not just for business reasons but also for personal reasons. According to Sure, he was in a committed relationship with Porter (a model who used to work as Uptown’s receptionist), and they were raising their son Quincy (born in 1991), when Combs aggressively moved in on Porter and convinced her to be Combs’ girlfriend. Combs and Porter then became an on-again/off-again couple from 1994 to 2007.

Combs adopted Quincy and had three biological kids with Porter: son Christian (born in 1998 and nicknamed King) and twin daughters Jessie and D’Lila Combs (born in 2006). In the documentary, Sure says that Quincy was never legally adopted by Combs. Combs has another son named Justin (born in 1993) from a relationship with stylist Misa Hylton.

Although “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” is the first time that Sure has spoken about his accusations in an on-camera interview, he does not provide any proof that Porter was murdered, nor does the documentary investigate further. The documentary also fails to give details or ask questions about what other health issues could have contributed to Sure’s hospitalization. If Sure thinks he was the victim of attempted murder, how did this alleged crime happen? Was he poisoned? If so, how? Don’t expect this documentary to answer those questions.

Sure says in the documentary that he can’t go into specifics for “legal reasons,” as he hints that he is in the midst of some legal issues regarding this accusation of attempted murder. He cryptically says that he has “a file” on the people he believes are behind the attempted murder, and he hints that Combs is the mastermind of this alleged conspiracy. Considering all the other violent crimes that Combs is accused of committing, this accusation is just one more to add to the mess of scandals that have disgraced Combs.

“Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy,” as the title suggests, goes all the way back to Combs’ childhood to try to make sense of how his life ended up this way. Childhood friends (who all worked with Combs in the 1990s), such as Tim Patterson, Lee Davis (also known as DJ EZ Lee) and Rich Parker give interviews and talk about how Combs stood out for being ambitious and fashionable, even if he was bullied for it. From an early age, Combs was very conscious of his image, which he always projected as being more privileged, more business savvy and more upwardly mobile than his peers. But as time went on, and Combs gained more money and power, these childhood friends admit this child who used to be bullied grew up to be a bully himself with a very nasty temper.

Of these childhood friends in the documentary, Patterson has the most interesting things to say because when he was a boy, he and his single mother lived for a while with Combs and his widowed mother Janice Combs in Mount Vernon, New York, when Patterson and his mother fell on hard times. In the documentary, Patterson shares some childhood photos of himself and Sean. Considering that Patterson says that he has not been in touch with Sean since 1999, Patterson’s perspective is not very helpful in commenting on Sean’s recent legal problems.

Sean’s father Melvin Combs was a drug dealer/police informant who was murdered (shot to death) at age 33, when Sean was 2 years old. The murder remains unsolved. The death of Sean’s father had a profound impact on Sean, according to people who knew him in his youth, who say that Sean tended to glamorize the gangster lifestyle. Patterson mentions in the documentary that when Sean was a teenager, Sean was involved in the same gang that was associated with Sean’s father Melvin.

Much later in the documentary, Patterson and Davis mention wild parties that Janice used to have at her house, where they as children were exposed to things (sex and drugs) that underage kids shouldn’t see or experience. Janice, who did not respond to requests to be interviewed for the documentary, remains a prominent figure in Sean’s life. Sean has a younger sister named Keisha, who is never mentioned in the documentary.

Although there have been stories that Sean grew up in poverty, the reality is that he was closer to middle class, since his mother (who worked as a model and a teacher assistant) could afford to send him to private Catholic schools for his pre-college education. Sean attended Howard University, where he studied business, but he dropped out in his second year at Howard to pursue a career in the music industry. Ron Lawrence, one of his former Howard classmates who worked with Sean as a producer, is interviewed in the documentary but doesn’t say much beyond how he’s still processing how far Sean has fallen from grace.

The Notorious B.I.G., the rapper also known as Biggie Smalls, was Bad Boy’s first superstar artist. The documentary briefly mentions unproven gossip that Sean could have had something to do with the 1997 unsolved drive-by-shooting murder of the Notorious B.I.G. (real name: Christopher Wallace), who reportedly wanted to leave Bad Boy Records. Sean’s former bodyguard Gene Deal hints that he believes this theory to be true. The documentary also repeats longtime speculation that in the East Coast/West Coast hip-hop feud of the 1990s, Sean might have had something to do with the death of West Coast rapper Tupac Shakur, whose 1996 drive-by-shooting murder remains unsolved.

“Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” jumps back and forth in Sean’s personal timeline history, which makes the documentary’s narrative a little bit messy and confusing to people unfamiliar with his past. The documentary would have been better served to have a timeline that was more chronological. “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” also over-relies on “fade to black” transitions between scenes that give the tone of contrived suspenseful drama that is common in reality show editing.

There’s a significant amount of time spent discussing Sean’s 1991 scandal of nine people (ranging in ages from 17 to 28) dying in a stampede at an AIDS fundraiser basketball game that he promoted at the City College of New York gymnasium. The documentary includes archival footage of this tragedy. Sean was blamed because the event was oversold. He later settled out of court with the families of the dead victims. Two of these family members are interviewed in the documentary: Jason Swain (whose 20-year-old brother Dirk died) says his family received $40,000 in the settlement. Sonny Williams (whose 20-year-old sister Sonya died) says that his family received $50,000 in the settlement.

However, the documentary barely mentions or ignores the 1999 scandals where Sean was accused of directly committing assault. In May 1999, Steve Stoute (who was the manager of rapper Nas at the time) went public about Sean and two associates beating up Stoute in his office because Sean didn’t like how Sean looked as a featured artist in Nas’ “Hate Me Now” music video. Stoute sued Combs, and the case was settled for a reported $500,000 paid to Stoute. Combs pleaded guilty to harassment and was sentenced to one day of anger management. None of that information is in the documentary.

A quick mention is made about the December 1999 violent fight that got Sean into even worse trouble. Sean, his then-girlfriend Jennifer Lopez and Bad Boy Records rapper Shyne were arrested after Sean got into an argument at Club New York in New York City, guns were fired during the argument, and three bystanders were injured. Charges were never filed against Lopez. However, Shyne (birth name: Jamal Barrow) and Sean went on trial in 2001 for various weapons-related crimes for this incident. Sean was acquitted of all the charges, while Shyne was found guilty of eight of the 10 charges and served almost nine years in prison.

The avalanche of sexual abuse allegations against Sean began with a lawsuit filed against him in November 2023 by Cassie Ventura, who was his on-again/off-again girlfriend from 2007 to 2018. Ventura (who went by the one-name stage moniker Cassie) was also signed to Bad Boy Records. Her lawsuit—which accused him of sexual abuse, sex trafficking and other physical abuse—was settled one day after it was filed, but it didn’t stop more lawsuits with similar allegations from pouring in against Sean.

“Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” goes over many of the same details that have already been widely reported about several of these lawsuits. The documentary also includes the March 2016 security video footage from the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles that CNN televised in May 2024. In this leaked footage, which matched an incident described in Ventura’s lawsuit, Sean can be seen kicking and dragging Ventura in a hotel hallway when she tried to leave by elevator.

After this footage was exposed, Sean made a statement in a now-deleted Instagram video, where he claimed “full responsibility” for what he did in that assault video and said that he was “fucked up” and was “at rock bottom” in his life when he attacked Ventura. He also said he went into therapy and rehab, but didn’t go into further details about when and for how long. It’s unknown if he ever made an apology to Ventura, but he said in the video: “I’m not asking for forgiveness.”

Mylah Morales, a makeup artist who worked with Sean and Ventura, is one of the people interviewed in the documentary. Morales says she witnessed seeing Ventura’s assault injuries from a separate incident after Ventura and Sean were alone in a hotel room together, but Morales doesn’t say she actually saw or heard Sean causing the injuries. Morales also admits she was too afraid to do anything about it at the time because she didn’t have proof and thought that she wouldn’t be believed.

Gene Deal, who was Sean’s bodyguard from 1991 to 2005, says he went public years ago about Sean’s violence behind the scenes, but nothing was really done about it until Ventura’s lawsuit opened up the floodgates. Deal says he quit working for Sean not because of the awful things he knew was going on but because Deal didn’t like that Janice Combs was treating Deal like her personal assistant. Not surprisingly, Deal also says that several unnamed people helped commit and/or cover up the alleged crimes. Deal doesn’t let himself off the hook because he says he was one of the enablers who witnessed a lot of things that he could have reported to law enforcement but did not.

A woman, who is interviewed in the shadows and only identified as Ashley, says that she was repeatedly raped by Sean but doesn’t say what year this alleged crime happened. She claims she filed a police report, which the documentary filmmakers say was withheld from them when they requested a copy of the report. Unfortunately, the documentary does not name the police department responsible for allegedly withholding this information.

Another anonymous “in the shadows” interview is with a man identified only as a former Bad Boy employee, who says that Sean sexually harassed him on the job, by showing him gay male porn. Sean allegedly told this man that gay sex is a rite of passage and what men have to do to get ahead in the music industry. The unidentified man (whose voice is disguised in the interview) also hints that he was sexually assaulted (at the very least groped) by Sean, but he didn’t want to go into more details.

Also coming forward with sexual misconduct allegations against Sean is Sara Rivers, one of the former members of Da Band from executive producer Sean Combs’ “Making the Band 2” reality series, which aired from 2002 to 2004 on MTV. In the documentary, Rivers breaks down in tears when she talks about how Sean put his hands on her in inappropriate places. She says it’s the first time she’s revealed this information in an interview. In “Making the Band 2,” Sean notoriously made the band members do outrageous “challenges” to get his approval and to stay on the show, such as walk from Manhattan to Brooklyn and back to Manhattan (an eight-hour trek by foot) to get him cheesecake.

Rivers claims to have witnessed Sean making verbal threats to members of Da Band in separate incidents. He allegedly said to one member: “You make me so mad, I could eat your flesh.” To another member he allegedly said, “I could give a crackhead $20 to smack the shit out of you.” Rivers does not name the members who received these alleged threats.

The lawsuits and criminal charges against Sean have a slew of many disturbing allegations that have been reported elsewhere and don’t need to be repeated in this review. However, the documentary includes interviews with attorneys Ariel Mitchell and Lisa Bloom, who have separate law practices, and have several clients who are plaintiffs in these lawsuits, some of which are detailed in the documentary. Mitchell compares Sean to the demonic Lucifer, while Bloom says Sean is a “monster.”

Also interviewed are journalists Kim Osorio, Jasmine Simpkins and Sharon Carpenter, who was an on-air host from 2013 to 2015 at Revolt, the TV network that Sean founded in 2013. Sean stepped down from Revolt in 2023, after he was accused by more people of sex crimes. In the documentary, these journalists just repeat things that are already common knowledge to people who follow news about these scandals. Mel Love, a former Uptown Records executive, is interviewed but doesn’t have anything new or interesting to add.

One of the most telling parts of the documentary in showing how victims are often blamed is when Parker wonders aloud if Ventura did anything to make Sean angry in that 2016 video where Sean viciously assaulted a helpless Ventura, who did not fight back in the video. An unidentified documentarian not seen on screen then asks Parker if it matters if Ventura did anything to require that assault, and it suddenly dawns on Parker that he’s victim blaming. He lowers his head slightly in shame and admits that Ventura did not deserve the assault, regardless if she argued with Sean or not.

And therein lies much of the point that the documentary makes over and over: Too often, people who are rich and famous are automatically exalted as “better” than most people, even when there is evidence that some wealthy celebrities have a history of violence and committing abuse. One of the people interviewed in the documentary is Dr. Carolyn West, an expert in trauma from domestic abuse and from sex trafficking. In one of the documentary’s best statements, she says that even though abusers often come from abusive backgrounds, it shouldn’t excuse their crimes and shouldn’t prevent victims from coming forward to seek justice: “Regardless of what trauma you have, you have to hold people accountable.”

Peacock premiered “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” on January 14, 2025.

February 12, 2025 UPDATE: Sean Combs has filed a defamation lawsuit against NBCUniversal, the parent company of Peacock, because of “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy.” The lawsuit, which is seeking at least $100 million in damages, claims that the documentary maliciously and recklessly included accusations that Combs is a serial muderer and has sexually abused underage girls, which are accusations that Combs denies in the lawsuit.

February 14, 2025 UPDATE: A woman identified under the alias Jane Doe has dropped her rape lawsuit against Jay-Z and Combs. In the civil lawsuit, the woman claimed both of them raped her on the same night in the same room in 2000, when she was 13 years old. Jay-Z has denied this ever happened, and his denial did not mention Combs, who also denies the accusation.