Sitting down for an interview with Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club, Diddy finally addressed the large pink elephant in the room. For the first time ever, the music mogul has decided to confront the accusations head on and discuss whether he has stolen money from artists on his Bad Boy Records label.
“If you think that I’m a scumbag that will ever steal anything. My name is Diddy, Sean Combs,” said the music executive. “I never took nothing from nobody a day in my life. All I’ve ever given is opportunity and more money than a person was making. I’d open up the doors.”
Diddy doubled down on his statement when Charlamagne Tha God asked him to explain why similar accusations have been heard from several artists.
“People have this thing called the ‘tap out button,'” Diddy explained. “When you get to a certain point and the money is running low, you gotta run this hustle to try to find somebody to blame. I have all my receipts. And so we are gonna do a special, a retrospective with all the artists and we are going to get this narrative clear.”
The 52-year-old then turned his sights on Mase, real name Mason Betha, whose debut album, Harlem World, Combs executive produced in 1998.
“You know I did one album with Mase, one album. How much money do you think I owe this guy, one album,” he began. “And then he became a fake pastor and went and conned people and then y’all gonna let him throw dirt on the God’s name.”
According to Diddy, Mase actually owes him $3 million after he advanced him money for a second album and the rapper never delivered. The producer says he’s also willing to provide the receipts to prove it and that The Lox will back him up.
“I’m not gonna go back and forth with Mase,” the “I’ll Be Missing You” artist said. “I’m not going back and forth with nobody. I’m just gonna, if I’m here, I’mma speak up for myself now.”
In the end, Diddy declared that he loves Mase, and issued a challenge to any former artist who believes he owes them money.
“I will tell anybody, anybody thinks I owe something, show me the receipt, you get paid in 24 hours,” the exec said.
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You may recall, Mase previously addressed his beef with Diddy when he appeared on the Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast.
“I never got paid what I was worth, and I never got the respect I was worth,” the rapper said on the podcast. “So, the disdain that I got for [Diddy] is more like, ‘You tryna keep me here, n***a. I’m not here. All my peers is up here. All my peers are bosses.’ [It’s] just like [when] somebody raise somebody up, you know, they did work with you, they go from your li’l man to, maybe, A&R, to something else. He just kept tryna keep me right here, like, he didn’t want me to grow at anything.”
