“Does the Sean Combs affair, alias P. Diddy, global rap star, accused of rape and sexual violence, herald a #metoo of music? »

A reading the American press, one wonders how Sean Combs, global rap star with evolving stage names (Puff Daddy, P. Diddy or Diddy), could have been adored for thirty years while leaving accusations of rape, sexual assault, sex trafficking, kidnapping, corruption, kidnapping, beatings and violence, death threats, forced prostitution, racketeering. We must forget some.

Sean Combs, 54, denies it outright. But on September 16, a federal judge in New York placed him in pretrial detention – despite a proposed bail of 50 million dollars, or 45 million euros – so that he could not make pressure on his accusers. It is true that his status as a producer and then as a singer, with phenomenal success, was good fuel.

Around ten complaints have been filed to date and the figure could quickly rise, according to a New York lawyer who says he represents no less than 120 other victims, including 25 minors at the time of the events. At the origin of this stunt, there is the R & B singer Cassie (Casandra Ventura), Combs’ companion for eleven years from 2007. She is the first, in November 2023, to pursue him. The latter managed, in just one day, to find a financial agreement with his ex, but the singer’s notoriety and the leaks to the media had a strong impact. Which sparked other lawsuits and snowballed.

Control over his partner

Cassie describes a daily life with Combs in the form of an ordeal. He drugged her, she said, raped her, hit her, forced her to have sex with prostitutes, filmed the antics. His testimony takes on credibility when we look at the video recorded in 2016 by a security camera in a Los Angeles hotel, and disclosed in May by CNN: the rapper hits Cassie in the face, she collapses, he hits her kicks, drags her to the ground, throws a vase in her face.

These images and all the complaints outline a repeated influence and method: Combs seduced and drugged his prey before making them participate in endless collective orgies. Behind the triptych “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll”, often presented as romantic, the rapper dangled careers in music in the same way that Harvey Weinstein did in cinema. The musician’s pre-trial detention shows that times are changing, and the future will tell if his fall is permanent.

Journalist Ben Sisario, in the New York Times of September 23, rightly wonders if the Combs affair announces a #metoo of music (disguising in passing the specificity of rap, as if we did not want to stigmatize this music). Because, despite a few cases, such as the conviction, in 2023, of R&B star R. Kelly – confirmed on appeal in April – to more than thirty years in prison for sex crimes against children, sex trafficking and racketeering , there was no big unpacking in the music industry. And yet, recalls this expert, according to a survey carried out in the United States in 2018 among more than 1,200 musicians, 72% of the women questioned say they have been victims of discrimination because of their gender, and 67% of sexual harassment.

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