'Bad Boy For Life' investigates the culture that enabled Sean Combs' alleged abuse

Sean Combs, shown here in London in 2011, is currently in federal prison.Ian Gavan/Getty Images/Getty Images Europe hide caption Sean Combs, the music mogul known as P.

Diddy or Puff Daddy, is currently in federal prison, serving a 50-month federal sentence on two counts of transporting people for prostitution.Combs' 2025 trial centered in part on so-called "freak-offs," with witnesses testifying to days-long, drug-fueled sexual encounters involving his girlfriends and male escorts that Combs directed and often filmed.

(Combs and his lawyers deny the civil and criminal allegations.They are appealing his convictions.)Rolling Stone investigative reporter Cheyenne Roundtree says that while the trial created a media frenzy at the time, rumors had swirled for years about Combs' abusive behavior."It seemed to be this background music to whatever he was doing," Roundtree says.

"One of the things that really surprised me throughout my reporting was the amount of little things that were well documented, either in the press, newspapers or little police reports, that just disappeared, went away, and there wasn't really much mainstream attention."Over his career, Combs shaped the sound of many artists, including Mary J.Blige and the Notorious B.I.G., and he built Bad Boy Records into the label that carried hip-hop into the American mainstream.

Roundtree's new book, Bad Boy for Life: The Rise and Fall of Sean Combs, examines how the mogul remained so powerful, despite decades of warning signs and allegations.She theorizes that Combs' adaptation of different nicknames provided him with a fresh start, a way to leave the scandals that came before behind.

"The biggest shift we saw was when he went from Puff Daddy, Puffy to Diddy, which came after the criminal trial in 2001, when he was accused of carrying a firearm into a crowded nightclub where people wer...