Key Takeaways
- Cheyenne Roundtree's new biography, Bad Boy for Life: The Rise and Fall of Sean Combs, is a damning account of the disgraced mogul. The book alleges that Combs publicly assaulted a college girlfriend and supplied Faith Evans with diet pills, and it describes a previously unreported overdose before 2010.
- According to Roundtree, Bad Boy staffers gathered to watch the R. Kelly sex tape that allegedly showed a 14-year-old girl while on Ecstasy.
- The book also claims Combs threatened Ryan Coogler over Michael B. Jordan's rumored flirtation with Cassie Ventura.
A brand-new biography of Diddy, Bad Boy for Life: The Rise and Fall of Sean Combs, has just been published. It’s by Cheyenne Roundtree, one of the authors of the similarly-titled Rolling Stone article that first exposed many of the darker parts of the mogul’s story back in May, 2024.
We spoke with Cheyenne about the book, and you can read that conversation here. But we also wanted to give you a taste of the book itself. Here are just a few of the most surprising (and often disturbing) things we learned while reading it.
1. Diddy allegedly beat up his college girlfriend in front of her dorm
In 1988, during Diddy’s time at Howard University, Roundtree heard from eyewitnesses that he once beat up his then-girlfriend in public, right outside of her dorm, hitting her with a belt and dragging her by her hair.
Later, during an interview with Essence, Diddy publicly painted their breakup as a result of meddling from the young woman’s parents—neglecting to mention that said meddling was a result of the assault.
2. Diddy gave Faith Evans a diet pill prescription
Roundtree says that Evans was “self-conscious” about her weight after having her first child. So, the author says, the singer’s label head decided to help out, by making sure she had access to diet pills.
3. Diddy allegedly had one more overdose than we knew about
During Diddy’s trial, it was revealed that Diddy overdosed in 2012 at a party at the Playboy Mansion. But Bad Boy for Life mentions a separate overdose in New York, sometime “before 2010.”
4. Bad Boy allegedly threw a party to watch the R. Kelly sex tape
Roundtree reports that at some point in the early 2000s, employees at Diddy’s label and studio got together in a conference room to watch the infamous leaked R. Kelly sex tape with a then-14-year-old Reshona Landfair—and, the author says, to take Ecstasy. Among the attendees? The teenage members of the girl group Four Colourz.
“Even at that age, I recall thinking, ‘Why would you want to go watch a sex tape with guys on drugs?” one of them remembers.
5. Diddy made threats about Michael B. Jordan to Ryan Coogler
In late 2015, Cassie Ventura had left Diddy, and the mogul was determined to get her back. Roundtree reports that on finding out she had been flirting with actor Michael B. Jordan, Diddy called up Jordan’s close collaborator Ryan Coogler, threatening that the director wouldn’t “have the star of his movie” unless he left Cassie alone. Diddy and Cassie would soon be back together.
