Sean “Diddy” Combs has won numerous industry accolades throughout his career, but some of his colleagues don’t think he deserves the acclaim.
In Netflix’s new docuseries Sean Combs: The Reckoning, several former collaborators and peers share their thoughts on Diddy’s musical abilities — and they don’t all have positive feedback for the disgraced mogul.
Kirk Burrowes, who cofounded Bad Boy Records with Diddy, 56, claims in the first episode that the rapper was more interested in fame than music.
“He wanted to be in the flashy, swaggy music industry,” says Burrowes. “He started off dancing, wanting to be in videos. Wanting to be a pop-culture mover and shaker at a time where things were changing. Hip-hop was evolving.”
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Burrowes goes on to say that Diddy excelled at promotion and packaging more than he did the nuts and bolts of composing music.
“It was him that put Jodeci in the pants: baggy, sagging at the bottom, the boots not lacing it up. He is able to sponge from the community and the culture and package it,” he explains. “And in the studio, he did the same thing. Sean wasn’t a producer where he can tell you, ‘You need a C here or a C note or this is an F.’ But he did have a good ear for what could be a hit.”
Burrowes and other Bad Boy affiliates continue discussing Diddy’s talent (or alleged lack thereof) in episode 2.
“I think Sean had an envy for his own artists,” Burrowes claims. “He was jealous of their talent and wondering like, ‘This talent is wasted on people who don’t even really know what to do. And if I had that talent and my know-how, wow!’”
When asked to discuss Diddy’s abilities as a rapper, former Bad Boy artist Mark Curry simply replies, “Sucks.”
Curry, 54, goes on to claim that Diddy looked to him for help because he was unafraid to share negative feedback.
“He used to always ask me to be there on the sessions because I would tell the truth. I’d be like, ‘That’s not it,’” recalls Curry, who appeared alongside Diddy on the track “Bad Boy for Life” in 2001. “But he always wanted to be an artist.”
Burrowes, meanwhile, describes Diddy as “big on strategy” and “big on swag,” using “other methods and ways to get to where he had to go.”
R&B singer Al B! Sure, however, has some of the harshest critiques of Diddy, saying, “He has zero talent musically. He don’t know nothing about R&B. None of that stuff.”
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Sure, 57, and Diddy have clashed over the years because of their respective relationships with the late Kim Porter, who died in November 2018 at age 47. Sure and Porter welcomed a son, Quincy Brown, in 1991. After Diddy began dating Porter in 1994, he adopted Quincy, now 34.
Sure has claimed that Diddy was somehow responsible for Porter’s death, but Diddy and his children have vehemently denied his claims. The Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office confirmed in January 2019 that Porter’s cause of death was lobar pneumonia.
While Burrowes and Sure expressed their skepticism of Diddy’s skills in the docuseries, Erick Sermon of EPMD was slightly more positive.
“It boiled down to the music,” says Sermon, 57. “‘Even if I didn’t touch it, I showed you what to do.’ So, that’s what he was. That whole Bad Boy [label] was built on him. You cannot take that from him. But I think that Puffy wanted the light like he always wanted.”
Diddy was arrested in September 2024 and charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He pleaded not guilty and denied all the allegations against him.
In July, a jury convicted him on two counts of transportation but acquitted him of the other charges. He is currently serving a 50-month prison sentence at New Jersey’s FCI Fort Dix.
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Diddy slammed the docuseries in a statement shared with Us Weekly via his spokesperson on Monday, December 1.
“Netflix’s so-called ‘documentary’ is a shameful hit piece. Today’s GMA teaser confirms that Netflix relied on stolen footage that was never authorized for release,” the statement read. “As Netflix and CEO Ted Sarandos know, Mr. Combs has been amassing footage since he was 19 to tell his own story, in his own way. It is fundamentally unfair, and illegal, for Netflix to misappropriate that work. Netflix is plainly desperate to sensationalize every minute of Mr. Combs’ life, without regard for truth, in order to capitalize on a never-ending media frenzy. If Netflix cared about truth or about Mr. Combs’s legal rights, it would not be ripping private footage out of context — including conversations with his lawyers that were never intended for public viewing. No rights in that material were ever transferred to Netflix or any third party.”
The statement continued, “It is equally staggering that Netflix handed creative control to Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson — a longtime adversary with a personal vendetta who has spent too much time slandering Mr. Combs. Beyond the legal issues, this is a personal breach of trust. Mr. Combs has long respected Ted Sarandos and admired the legacy of Clarence Avant. For Netflix to give his life story to someone who has publicly attacked him for decades feels like an unnecessary and deeply personal affront. At minimum, he expected fairness from people he respected.”
Director Alexandria Stapleton previously said she had acquired the footage legally.
“It came to us, we obtained the footage legally and have the necessary rights,” she claimed to Netflix’s Tudum last month. “We moved heaven and earth to keep the filmmaker’s identity confidential. One thing about Sean Combs is that he’s always filming himself, and it’s been an obsession throughout the decades.”
Sean Combs: The Reckoning is now streaming on Netflix.
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