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Long before he was accused of sexual misconduct in a series of lawsuits, and long before federal agents in military gear raided his homes in Miami and Los Angeles, Sean Combs was unforgivable.<\/p>\n
That was the name he had selected for his first fragrance<\/a>, which he sold through a partnership with Est\u00e9e Lauder.<\/p>\n It was promoted as a scent that \u201cexudes the energy, sexiness and elegance of Sean Combs,\u201d and he was supposed to give it a publicity boost in April 2006 by ringing the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange alongside William Lauder, the Est\u00e9e Lauder chief executive, and Terry Lundgren, the head of Federated Department Stores.<\/p>\n But Mr. Combs didn\u2019t arrive<\/a> in time for the opening of the market, saying he had been stuck in traffic. So his fellow business titans did the honors without him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n By then, Mr. Combs had successfully made the transition from Puff Daddy to the world\u2019s most successful hip-hop mogul.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As the founder and chief executive officer of the thriving Bad Boy Entertainment, he made himself into a Jay Gatsby for the hip-hop generation, complete with \u201cWhite Parties\u201d in the Hamptons.<\/p>\n Vanity Fair<\/a> noted his platinum sales, his Grammys, his fashion line, his turn on Broadway<\/a> in \u201cA Raisin in the Sun\u201d and his \u201cVote or Die\u201d get-out-the-vote campaign, adding that he \u201chas had his hands in almost every thinkable aspect of popular culture and left his mark on each.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Combs, 54, was someone who realized, before almost anyone else, that music could serve as the foundation of the mansion he was building for himself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHe really did set the template for a certain kind of hip-hop entrepreneurism,\u201d said Michael Hirschorn, the founder and chief executive of Ish Entertainment, a New York production company, and the former head of programming at VH1. \u201cHe was really the first guy, along with Russell Simmons, who understood the value of taking your name and putting it on literally everything.\u201d<\/p>\n And yet some former colleagues and business associates said in interviews for this article that they found it hard to read the recent coverage of Mr. Combs without seeing his apparently sudden downfall as part of a slow decline.<\/p>\n The very qualities that enabled him to see across different landscapes might have been his Achilles\u2019 heel, said Teri Agins, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and the author of \u201cHijacking the Runway: How Celebrities Are Stealing the Spotlight from Fashion Designers.\u201d Mr. Combs bounced from one branding opportunity to another as he \u201cchecked off boxes,\u201d Ms. Agins said, without seeming to realize that the real measure of a business mogul comes not with the ignition of liftoff but with the ability to maintain a mile-high altitude.<\/p>\n He grew up in Mount Vernon, N.Y., and was raised by his mother, Janice Combs. He attended Mount Saint Michael Academy, a Roman Catholic high school in the Bronx, and went on to major in business at Howard University. Things moved quickly after that. As an intern at Uptown Records, a label founded by Andre Harrell, he helped produce hit remixes and \u201cReal Love\u201d by Mary J. Blige, a song that introduced the rapper the Notorious B.I.G.<\/p>\n Mr. Combs wasn\u2019t cut out for the life of an employee, and he started Bad Boy in 1992. It was a time when the hard polemics of Public Enemy and the earthy ethos of De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest<\/a> gave way to a culture of flash, with Mr. Combs as its avatar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 1998, he branched out into fashion with his men\u2019s wear label, Sean John<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHe knew that, when your name also signals a lifestyle, he could market that in many ways and forms,\u201d said Samantha N. Sheppard, an associate professor and chair of the department of performing and media arts at Cornell University.<\/p>\n He was photographed by Annie Leibovitz<\/a> for a 1999 Vogue feature headlined \u201cPuffy Takes Paris,<\/a>\u201d in which he is seen in the company of the model Kate Moss and the industry heavyweights Oscar de la Renta, John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier and Karl Lagerfeld. \u201cIt became all about rap culture and high fashion and the meeting of the two worlds,\u201d Ms. Leibovitz said of the shoot in a later interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n In December of that year, he arrived, dressed in white<\/a>, with his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, at the annual Met Gala. He performed during the dinner and chatted with Henry Kissinger, who was heard asking the socialite Pat Buckley, \u201cWhy does he call himself Fluffy<\/a>?\u201d Lil\u2019 Kim was also present, signaling that a party once reserved for New York\u2019s old aristocracy was changing with the times, a shift ushered in to a great extent by Mr. Combs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A few weeks later, he and Ms. Lopez made tabloid front pages after they fled a nightclub where shots were fired, leaving three people injured. Mr. Combs was arrested<\/a>, but later acquitted; his latest hip-hop prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Jamal \u201cShyne\u201d Barrow, was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison.<\/p>\n In 2002, Mr. Combs beat another world-famous tabloid showman to the punch of reality TV as the host of \u201cMaking the Band,\u201d<\/a> MTV\u2019s precursor to \u201cThe Apprentice.\u201d The show is probably best remembered for Mr. Combs\u2019s demand that the contestants walk the five miles on foot from Midtown Manhattan to Junior\u2019s<\/a> in Brooklyn to fetch him a slice of cheesecake. When his charges protested, he told them they would be dismissed if they failed the mission.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 2001, he offered a live broadcast of a Sean John fashion show on E!, making the runway more accessible to a wide audience. Two years later, the Yucaipa Companies, a private equity fund operated by the California billionaire Ron Burkle, poured a reported $100 million<\/a> into Mr. Combs\u2019s clothing label. The next year, the first Sean John store opened on Fifth Avenue, across from the New York Public Library.<\/p>\n Maxwell Osborne, the head of the fashion brand An Only Child, started his career as an intern at Sean John at around that time. In an interview, he said he had no doubt that there were people who had \u201chorrible\u201d experiences working for Mr. Combs. Yet he was not among them.<\/p>\n He recalled Mr. Combs as someone who saw no hierarchies, who considered Mr. Osborne a member of the design team from the beginning. Mr. Combs nicknamed Mr. Osborne \u201cOne Dread\u201d and invited him to his parties in the Hamptons.<\/p>\n \u201cHe saw tension as part of how you make diamonds,\u201d Mr. Osborne said, adding that Mr. Combs didn\u2019t hold it against employees who pushed back on him.<\/p>\n In 2004, Diddy was named the year\u2019s best men\u2019s wear designer<\/a> at the Council of Fashion Designers of America\u2019s annual awards ceremony, beating out Ralph Lauren and Michael Kors. He was the first<\/a> Black person to win the honor. In his acceptance speech, he gave a shout-out to Mr. Lauren and announced: \u201cI am living the American dream.\u201d<\/p>\n He used his newfound status and understanding of power-sharing to invest in other brands, including that of Zac Posen, then an up-and-coming designer favored by the Vogue editor Anna Wintour. In those days Mr. Combs was often seated in the front row of Mr. Posen\u2019s shows, next to Ms. Wintour, as the models traipsed by. And he hosted high-octane fashion shows of his own at Cipriani in Manhattan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He also appeared then in the successful 2004 revival of Lorraine Hansberry\u2019s \u201cA Raisin in the Sun\u201d that, according to the theater publicist Rick Miramontez, set a new template for how to market a play.<\/p>\n Rather than trying to reel in white tourists, the producers marketed the play to Black people with a campaign that included ads on urban radio. The influence on producers was \u201cseismic,\u201d Mr. Miramontez said, and the strategy was later used in recent hits like \u201cSlave Play.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe knew how to launch both people and products,\u201d Ms. Sheppard, the Cornell professor, said. \u201cDiddy really knew and knows how to market Black cool \u2014 the idea that fashion, specifically streetwear, could aesthetically signal a kind of cultural relevance and cultural capital, to both Black people and wider and whiter audiences.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2006, the New York Post reported<\/a> that Unforgivable was bringing in $1.5 million in sales per week. That was more than new fragrances from Calvin Klein, Vera Wang and Juicy Couture, according to the NPD Group, a market research firm, which reported that Mr. Combs\u2019s cologne outsold every other new fragrance that year.<\/p>\n Mr. Combs announced his sequel cologne, \u201cI Am King,\u201d in 2008 with a Times Square advertisement \u2014 showing him in a white tux \u2014 that was reported to be the tallest billboard in Manhattan up to that point. But \u201cI Am King\u201d didn\u2019t match the sales of his original scent, former colleagues said. And Mr. Combs\u2019 habit of showing up hours late to meetings and berating Est\u00e9e Lauder executives became a source of consternation, said one person who was granted anonymity to describe internal business meetings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 2009, Est\u00e9e Lauder opted not to renew Mr. Combs\u2019s contract. That was when things seemed to take a turn.<\/p>\n Mr. Combs\u2019 venture into women\u2019s wear did not meet with the success of his men\u2019s line. He \u201cgot blinded by the headlights of superstardom,\u201d said Jeffrey Banks, a CFDA board member who worked for Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein before starting his own brand in the 1970s.<\/p>\n Restless and ambitious, Mr. Combs explored the idea of starting a cable network with Mr. Burkle and Bob and Harvey Weinstein. \u201cFor a minute, I was going to be the fifth partner on it,\u201d Mr. Hirschorn said. \u201cThen the whole thing kind of collapsed for reasons that weren\u2019t super clear. But I think he imagined, \u2018I\u2019m going to take over the means of production and not only be a star.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n By then, the Sean John label had crested. Mr. Combs obtained what industry colleagues said was a lucrative deal as a spokesman for Diageo, the alcoholic beverage company behind Johnnie Walker, Tanqueray, Guinness and other brands \u2014 only to be outdone in that field by a fellow celebrity turned business mogul, George Clooney, who started a tequila brand with two partners and ended up selling it to Diageo for roughly $1 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n As Mr. Combs\u2019s interests splintered, his fellow hip-hop impresarios caught up. Among other business pursuits, Jay-Z had Rocawear, a clothing line he named after the management company he headed and whose roster included Rihanna and J. Cole. Kanye West achieved scale on his fashion brand largely through a partnership with Adidas. That provided Mr. West with an infrastructure that Mr. Combs lacked, according to Ms. Agins.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Pharrell Williams, the super producer who had worked with Justin Timberlake and Gwen Stefani, moved into fashion with a store called the Billionaire Boys Club. And with the music executive Jimmy Iovine, Dr. Dre started Beats Electronics, a company that would be sold to Apple for $3 billion<\/a>. Even the famously laid-back Snoop<\/a> Dogg<\/a> found himself<\/a> in The Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n Ultimately, Ms. Sheppard said, Mr. Combs \u201cwas able to see the connection from artistry to industry and aesthetics, but he was also limited by his artistry, which never quite developed enough to get him to the next level.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2013, Mr. Combs finally started his own cable network, Revolt<\/a>, a would-be competitor to MTV and BET, in partnership with Comcast. At the time of its launch, he opened up about his father, Melvin Earl Combs, in a video<\/a> titled \u201cConfessions\u201d that was posted on Revolt\u2019s social media channels: \u201cMy father was killed when I was 3 years old,\u201d Mr. Combs said, adding, \u201cHe was a drug dealer. He was a hustler.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Hirschorn said that Mr. Combs \u201calmost pulled it off\u201d when he went into the TV business. \u201cHe was right about figuring out a niche low-cost cable channel,\u201d he said. \u201cHe was wrong about the decline of cable in general, and it never really did anything that became part of the cultural conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 2016, Mr. Combs led a nationwide Bad Boy reunion tour. Lil\u2019 Kim and Faith Evans were among the artists who performed with him. Four New York-area shows sold out, but dates in the Midwest and the South were canceled. Organizers blamed \u201cscheduling conflicts,\u201d while industry people whispered of low ticket sales.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That same year, he sold Sean John to Global Brands Group for an undisclosed sum \u2014 only to buy it back five years later for $7.5 million, a seeming reflection of its diminished standing.<\/p>\n Even as he seemed to be settling into the role of elder statesman \u2014 a lifetime achievement honor at the BET Awards<\/a> in 2022; a Global Icon Award at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2023 \u2014 Mr. Combs made an attempt to recapture the zeitgeist.<\/p>\n He teased a Sean John couture<\/a> collection<\/a> at the Met Gala, when he arrived in a black cape of his own design festooned with camellias. Afterward, he hosted a party<\/a> at Box, a downtown burlesque club. Guests included Paris Hilton, Marc Jacobs and Ms. Blige.<\/p>\n Later that month, Mr. Combs filed a lawsuit against Diageo in New York State Supreme Court, alleging that he had been subjected to racist treatment by the company. The suit was ultimately settled, without admission of fault on the part of Diageo. Whoever was in the right, what seemed not to be in dispute was that, like many of Mr. Combs\u2019s ventures, his association with the spirits company had fizzled.<\/p>\n In the fall of 2023, Mr. Combs released his first solo album<\/a> since 2006, \u201cThe Love Album: Off the Grid.\u201d Weeks after it was nominated for a Grammy, the singer Cassie, a onetime Bad Boy artist, filed suit against Mr. Combs, accusing him of rape and repeated physical abuse over about a decade.<\/p>\n It was the first in a series of lawsuits filed against Mr. Combs. It is unclear whether they are related to the investigation into his affairs by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and by federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations. Through a lawyer, Mr. Combs has vehemently denied all the claims made against him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The most recent lawsuit was filed by Rodney Jones Jr., a music producer known as Lil Rod. He accused Mr. Combs<\/a> of making unwanted sexual contact and of forcing him to hire prostitutes and participate in sex acts during the making of \u201cThe Love Album.\u201d<\/p>\n If Mr. Combs thought that, after his more than two-decade foray into various businesses, he would find a safe haven in music, he was mistaken. It seemed that he had gone from \u201cI Am King\u201d to cautionary tale.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n