Sean Combs’ Mother Threw Sexually Charged Parties at Childhood Home, Friend Claims
Sean “Diddy” Combs’ mother, Janice, would often throw wild parties at the future music mogul’s childhood home, where it wasn’t uncommon to walk into a room where adults were having sex, one of Combs’ longtime childhood friends claims in a new documentary.
“That’s what we were privy to; this is what we were fed,” hip-hop producer Tim “Dawg” Patterson says in Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy, which will premiere on Peacock on Tuesday. “Was it desensitizing us? I’m sure it was. Were we aware of it? No, that was just Saturday night.”
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Patterson used that alleged childhood memory as a possible explanation on how Combs found himself at the center of a federal racketeering and sex trafficking investigation, where he is accused of forcing his ex-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura to participate in filmed, drug-fueled encounters with male sex workers that Combs allegedly dubbed “freak offs.”
The 55-year-old is also facing nearly 40 civil lawsuits from men and women alleging that he had preyed upon them between 1990 and 2024. Pleading not guilty to the three criminal charges against him, Combs’ legal team has categorically denied the claims made against him in civil lawsuits. “Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted, or sex trafficked anyone — man or woman, adult or minor,” they said in a previous statement.
“I’ve always been asked the question why,” Patterson says. “I don’t know the answer to why, but I truly believe it all goes back to childhood.” (Reps for Sean and Janice Combs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)
The new Peacock documentary dives into Combs’ childhood and early adolescence, speaking with Mount Vernon childhood friends, early Uptown Records colleagues and Howard University classmate-turned Hit Man music producer Ron “Amen-Ra” Lawrence.
Combs grew up in Mount Vernon, New York, a suburb on the fringes of upper Manhattan. Janice had moved her young family there after Combs’ father, Melvin, was murdered in 1972. A known associate of Harlem drug kingpins, including Nicky Barnes, Willie Abraham, and Frank Lucas, Melvin was found shot twice in the head, slumped over in a car.
Janice kept the details of Melvin’s grisly murder from her young son, intent on providing him an idyllic childhood. Combs was always dressed to the nines and, as a result, was “looked at as the rich kid,” Patterson says in the documentary. He played Little League baseball, served as an altar boy, and made the football team at his all-boys private Catholic high school. But Combs’ peers could “smell he was not tough,” Patterson said, claiming that Combs was badly bullied as a kid.
Meanwhile at home, “there was always things going on,” Patterson said, adding that Janice would frequently throw parties at the home. “On the weekend, [Combs] partied in the house, and we did that a lot,” he said. “He was around all types of alcohol; he was around reefer smoke. Drug addicts around, lesbians around, homosexuals, he was around pimps, pushers. That was just who was in our house. People that attended the parties were from Harlem, from the streets. It wouldn’t be a thing to mistakenly walk into one of the bedrooms and you got a couple in there, butt naked.”
DJ EZ Lee Davis, also a Mount Vernon native, who was close with Combs and spun for Mary J. Blige in her early years, noted that while he never attended Janice’s parties, he heard rumors about what occurred at the parties where “everyone was welcome.”
“[Janice] had little cool chicks that would come around and … she made sure everybody was comfortable,” Davis explained, laughing.
Combs previously mentioned having an early introduction to sex, frequently watching soft-core porn and losing his virginity at age 12, replicating the rough moves he had been watching in adult videos. “I was acting just like porn stars act. I was smacking that ass. I was smackin’ the girls’ ass,” he told Vibe in 1999. “I didn’t do it on my own, she wanted me to smack that ass. I flipped her over because I saw it on the movie and then she told me to do it again.”
The 90-minute documentary also includes interviews with singer Al B. Sure! (whose real name is Albert Joseph Brown), who opens up for the first time about his acrimonious, decades-old relationship with Combs after the music executive aggressively pursued model Kim Porter. At the time, Porter was dating Brown and recently gave birth to their son Quincy.
Also speaking out for the first time is Da Band star Sara Rivers, who details an unsettling experience with Combs while filming the MTV reality show Making the Band in the early 2000s. “I haven’t said anything in so long,” she said through tears.
Combs is currently awaiting his May 2025 trial date at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, after his arrest in September 2024. He is charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty to the three charges. If convicted, he stands to face 15 years to life in prison.
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