Sean Combs sent Aubrey O’Day a string of sexually explicit emails and images of his penis while they were filming Making the Band, the singer alleges in a new Netflix documentary about the Bad Boy founder.
“I don’t want to just fuck you, I want to turn you out,” O’Day reads aloud in Sean Combs: The Reckoning, which premiered Tuesday. “I can see you being with some motherfucker that you tell what to do. I make my woman do what I tell her to do, and she loves it. I just want and like to do things different. I’ma finish watching this porn and finish masturbating. I’ll think of you. If you change your mind and get ready to do what I say, hit me.”
The email, dated March 23, 2008, included Combs’ standard signature at the time: “God bless. Diddy. God is the Greatest.” O’Day said she continually rebuffed Combs’ sexual advances and was eventually kicked out of Danity Kane. “I absolutely felt that I was fired for not participating sexually,” she said in the film.
O’Day has long been vocal about her negative experience at Bad Boy, and the MTV reality show often highlighted Combs singling out O’Day over her appearance, what he believed was a bad attitude, and calling her “overly raunchy, promiscuous.” However, this is the first time the Danity Kane member has gone into detail about the alleged sexual harassment she faced off-camera.
It was only within the past two years, O’Day said, that she learned of an affidavit from a woman who claimed she had seen an incapacitated O’Day being sexually assaulted by Combs and another man in 2005. “I don’t even know if I was raped,” O’Day added, stressing she had no recollection of the alleged assault. “And I don’t want to know.” (A rep for Combs did not immediately reply to a request for comment.)
O’Day’s account is part of new revelations and allegations leveled against the disgraced mogul in the Netflix docuseries. It includes interviews with former Bad Boy artist Mark Curry, Diddy-Dirty Money member Kalenna Harper, former staffer Capricorn Clark, and Bad Boy co-founder Kirk Burrowes, among several others. The four-part series includes never-before-seen footage of the night the Notorious B.I.G. was gunned down in March 1997, as well as a panicked 911 call as the rapper’s friend raced him to the emergency room, where he was pronounced dead.
Directed by Alexandria Stapleton and executive-produced by rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, the project also obtained footage of a stressed Combs days before he was arrested on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. (The 56-year-old was acquitted of the more serious charges in July, but was sentenced to 50 months in prison after being found guilty on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution charges.)
Love Music?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian/New Zealand music and globally.
Combs’ team have accused the streamer of using “stolen” material that was never authorized for release and labeled the documentary as a “shameful hit piece.” (Rolling Stone has reached out for comment on O’Day’s accusations.)
Here are five other takeaways from the docuseries:
Six days before Combs was arrested on federal criminal charges, footage he intended to use in his own documentary shows him strategizing with his sons, lawyers, then-chief of staff, and entourage on how to fight his quickly tarnishing reputation. The brief window into Combs’ inner sanctum reveals him to be a master strategist, constantly thinking of how to control the narrative around him.
“He’s creating a narrative, always,” explained Capricorn Clark, one of Combs’ longtime and high-ranking Bad Boy employees. “He’s the best storyteller in hip-hop. He thinks he’s Black Superman, ‘I can do what I want.’”
When discussing how current media coverage could prove damaging at trial, Combs ordered his team to find “somebody that has dealt in the dirtiest of dirtiest, dirty business of media and propaganda” to target potential jurors. He reasoned that some people might not watch CNN and that his team should look to social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram to reach his intended audience.
Spotting police officers on a nearby roof, Combs instructed his videographer to get “cutaway shots” of the uniformed officials. He organized a jaunt up to Harlem, smiling as he took pictures with fans and happily downing shots at a local bar. When he jumped back into his waiting SUV, Combs’ mask dropped. “I need some hand sanitizer,” he said. “I’ve been out in the streets amongst the people. I gotta take a bath.”
“I began to see him use the culture only when he needed it,” said Combs’ former head of security Roger Bonds. “Now you’re walking around Harlem because you know that the world turned their back on you, so now you will come back home, hoping that Harlem got your back.”
Combs was seen raging in real-time when he learned of former Danity Kane and Diddy-Dirty Money artist Dawn Richard’s lawsuit against him, declaring that the “gloves are off.” He directed people in his camp, including his adult son Justin, to circulate old clips of Richard praising him in interviews. He also called in a favor from Kalenna Harper, who was in the group Diddy-Dirty Money, begging her to release a statement disputing Richard’s claims. (Harper eventually released a statement.) During pre-trial hearings, Southern District of New York prosecutors pointed to Combs’ repeated calls and texts to Harper as a form of witness tampering. (Combs’ attorneys denied the accusation.)
For the first time, a man and woman who served as jurors at Combs’ eight-week criminal trial over the summer explained why they acquitted Combs of sex trafficking his former girlfriend, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura. Although both jurors conceded Combs was extremely violent towards the “Me & U” singer, one woman, identified only as Juror 160, reasoned that Combs wasn’t charged with domestic violence.
The man, identified as Juror 75, said he couldn’t understand why Ventura repeatedly went back to Combs. Using language similar to what Combs’ attorney Marc Agnifilo used in his closing arguments as he beseeched the jury to find Combs innocent, the man said he believed the couple were deeply in love but locked in a toxic relationship.
“That was a very, very interesting relationship,” he explained. “This is two people in love; they are overly in love. You cannot explain. She wanted to be with him. He took her for granted. He never thought that she would leave him. So [it’s] like both hands clapping together. You cannot clap with one hand, [you have to use] both hands, then you get the noise.”
“Justice was served, 100 percent,” he added. “We saw both sides of it, and we came to our conclusions.”
After Ventura filed her bombshell sexual abuse lawsuit against Combs in November 2023, Joi Dickerson-Neal had two distinct feelings. The first was a deep sense of sadness for Ventura, and the second was relief: she wasn’t alone. Dickerson-Neal quickly filed a civil lawsuit against Combs in New York, days before a special look-back window for previously time-barred complaints closed.
Speaking for the first time, Dickerson-Neal did not rehash her date with Combs in 1991, which allegedly ended in her being drugged and sexually assaulted. (Combs has denied her claims.) However, she produced a note that her mother had penned to Combs’ mother Janice, detailing how Dickerson-Neal woke up screaming from a nightmare she had about “Puffy.”
“I’m writing to inform you of something that your son did to my daughter that has greatly decreased the quality of her life and wreaked havoc on our entire family,” Dickerson-Neal read aloud from the letter dated November 26, 1992. “I realize that this may be hard for you to believe, but if I hadn’t heard this story from my daughter’s own mouth and looked into her eyes, I would have scarcely believed that any individual would compromise another person’s dignity in this manner.
“She said that he, without her knowledge, videotaped my daughter having sexual intercourse with him,” her mother wrote, adding that Dickerson-Neal suspected Combs showed the tape to “at least 60 or more” people. “Apparently, your son shows these tapes to all of his friends at parties on large screen televisions,” she wrote. “From what I understand, he has done this to several other girls.”
Dickerson-Neal said she once bumped into Combs and confronted him about the alleged assault, but he dropped to his knees and denied everything. “When I think back in terms of his rise, it is the most helpless feeling,” Dickerson-Neal added, saying she once threw up when she saw an image of Combs in Times Square with his fist raised high in the air. “You are really raising your hand at victory, and I’m living in trauma and defeat.”
Over eight years, former male escort Clayton Howard claimed to have been hired by Combs and Ventura for freak-offs every few weeks, flying across the country to engage in days-long sex sessions.
Howard said Combs was very particular, giving Ventura instructions and feedback about how she should be positioned, either granting or denying her permission on when she could move onto the next stage of the sexual encounter. He claimed to have witnessed numerous instances where Combs beat Ventura during the middle of a freak-off. “Every time she got assaulted, she would run out,” Howard said. “She would always come back.”
There was clear drug use during the freak-offs, Howard added. “I don’t think I ever encountered Puff at a time where he wasn’t high out of his face,” he recalled. “They used to lace the baby oil with GHB. He told me there was a little G in the baby oil.” (Both Combs and Ventura previously denied that there were drugs in the baby oil.)
Howard said “the weirdest thing” that occurred during the freak-offs was that “they used to physically collect my semen in a cup.” It was “creepy” to Howard, who finally asked what they were doing with it. Combs allegedly responded that he liked to watch Ventura “play with it and drink it.”
It also always stuck out to Howard that the couple would organize a freak-off every year on March 9 — the date of Notorious B.I.G.’s death. “I would hang out, drink, and party with them for three or four days while I had sex with Casandra,” he said. “I don’t know if that was his release for that day or whatever, but they always called me on March 9.”
The docuseries briefly highlights Combs’ history of alleged violence with both men and former girlfriends, including Misa Hylton, Kim Porter, and Ventura. It also raises a new accusation from Bad Boy co-founder Kirk Burrowes, who claims Combs once became physical with his mother Janice.
It was shortly after the City College of New York tragedy in December 1991, where nine people died in a stampede at a charity celebrity basketball event Combs organized. At the time, Combs was still a rising star at Uptown Records, and he was placed on administrative leave as officials investigated the incident. Depressed and holed up in a hotel, Burrowes said Janice asked Combs whether he was sure he wanted to continue in the music business and whether it was a wise choice for him. “I saw him put his hands on her, call her bitch and slapped her,” Burrowes claimed.
From Rolling Stone US


