Diddy’s alleged death threat against writer and editor Danyel Smith is detailed in a new piece for the New York Times, published Friday.
The former Vibe and Billboard editor said the alleged incident took place in 1997, the same year the Notorious B.I.G. was fatally shot in Los Angeles. At the time, Smith, then heading up Vibe, was putting together a cover shoot and accompanying feature focused on Diddy, whose massively successful 1997 included the release of his No Way Out album.
Per Smith, Diddy at one point began to demand access to the resulting cover shots prior to their release, which, notably, went against the publication’s policies. Still, Diddy is alleged to have ultimately shown up at the Vibe offices in New York with "two associates." As Smith explained, fellow Vibe employees had devised a safety plan ahead of time in the event of Diddy’s appearance at headquarters. Once Diddy and his associates arrived, Smith says they started going through "various cubicles and offices," all while she held proofs of the cover story in her own office. Eventually, Smith said, she was "shuttled … from office to office" before safely making an exit from the building and heading home.
The following day, Smith said, she received a threatening call from Diddy.
"He was still on message: He wanted to see the covers," Smith, who noted that she previously mentioned the threat in her Shine Bright book "though I got wrong the reason for his vexation" and "repressed the rest," wrote in the Times. "I was still on message: It’s not what we do. It was then that Combs told me, as I’ve retold hundreds of times over the years, that he would see me 'dead in the trunk of a car.' Not missing a beat, I told him he needed to take that threat back."
From there, Diddy allegedly told Smith, "Fuck you," prompting her to mention that she would be notifying her lawyer. But that allegedly didn’t stop the Bad Boy Records founder, at least not initially, as he then told Smith, "I know where you are right now."
After a conversation with her lawyer, who then spoke with Diddy, Smith says she was sent an apology, though the subsequent theft of servers holding the Vibe cover files raised further questions.
"I had reason to fear for my life," Smith wrote in the opening of the Times piece, available in full here, when looking back on the alleged 1997 incident. "What happened was insidious. It broke my brain. I forgot the worst of it for 27 years."
Diddy, recently reported to be the subject of a federal investigation following the raids of his homes in Los Angeles and Miami (the former of which he's said to be trying to sell), was seen in surveillance footage made public earlier this year physically assaulting Cassie. The video’s release escalated the attention on the 54-year-old, who quickly released a statement saying he was "truly sorry" for his actions, though that statement, not to mention every other post on his Instagram, was later removed.
In recent months, Diddy has also been named in several other lawsuits accusing him of assault and other alleged crimes. While he took "full responsibility" for what was shown in the Cassie video, he has denied the other allegations against him.